I am not finished exams, exactly, but I feel like I am. I have one test left, and it's next week, and it's for a class I really love and I'm not that worried. I tend to get this way during winter term exams. I try to care--I feel like I'm supposed to care, because I'm a good student and that's what good students do--but I don't. And the sun is out. I usually force myself to study anyway, if only to keep myself from feeling useless. This year, though, I have nothing to give. 

And I think that's okay. I wrote a final this morning for which I actually did not even open a book. I was--am--remarkably relaxed about this. I made some really sad and halfhearted attempts at review but they didn't amount to much. I'd spent the afternoon prior at a cafe tucked into a nearby residential area. It has a lot of windows. I went there thinking that I will get work done and instead found myself drinking coffee and watching people on the street. For hours. 

I think I did fine on the test, though. I just don't see the point in worrying about it--which is a weird thing to say, because most of the time I worry about everything. All I want is to be finished. Summer is coming--and I am spending it in the mountains.  

The whole thing was sort of haphazard. First, I applied for a bunch of library jobs for which I was vastly under-qualified and then, not surprisingly, didn't hear anything. Then my best friend started talking about this really great restaurant where she wanted to work, that gave its employees cheap accommodations and was smack in the middle of a national park. At that point I was tired of waiting to hear from libraries and completely unexcited about the prospect of returning to the museum for yet another summer. So when it occurred to us that the mountains could probably use more than one waitress, I applied.

I'm excited. I will be living just a few steps from a lake. Since getting the job, I've been called by a few libraries, and I know that working at one of them would be smart: it would look good on my resume, it would probably pay better, and it would give me valuable experience in a field in which I intend to eventually have some sort of career. So, because I worry about things and because I like to do things right and because this is very clearly not the most goal-oriented decision I've ever made (though, you know, it's still a job, and that itself is pretty great), I experience a little bit of panic every time I think about how I told them no. But, really, I would rather have a lake than a library this summer.

I have been taking a lot of walks. I have a lot to think about. It used to be that it was really hard for me to be in silence--I couldn't fall asleep without the radio on or some sort of movie playing quietly, and I still don't walk long distances without listening to music (although sometimes it's just about liking the music). But it's getting easier. I fall asleep in quiet now. I sometimes go places to just sit. I used to think I had a pretty thorough understanding of myself, but it's one of those things that isn't terminal. You have to continue to pay attention and I think for a while I had stopped. So I've been walking. And sitting. And filling journals and trying to piece together the person I want to be. 

The person I want to be makes different choices. I'm going to hike to the top of something and it will be more beautiful than my stupid resume. 
 

h.

I've been working at a very tiny library. It's part of the Catholic college affiliated with the university, and because it's relatively unknown, it's often very quiet. My shifts consist mostly of doing my own schoolwork in the office behind the circulation desk. 

The library is two stories tall, but its first floor is in the basement of the building, and the second floor is almost like a loft - it takes up only half of the area of the upper level, and three of the four walls of the upper perimeter are lined with windows. And there are real plants--long, green vines that hang down from the second story ledge. The walls are brick and the tables are wooden and the light is always lovely. I love it most because its old and sturdy. Every other library on campus is either so new it looks like a spacecraft or has machines to do just about everything except collect your overdue fines. My job is not complicated but it's necessary, and mostly I like that I get to keep this wheezing brick box company, even if all I do is sit behind the desk and study. 

On the second story of the library, there is a small table--big enough only for one person--tucked away in a windowless back corner. In the fall, I was sitting up there studying for a History exam and found that its tiny drawer was full of notes left by other people. It looked like the sort of thing that had been going on for ages--this written collective of conversation happening on scraps of notebook paper and the backs of old assignments. I check the drawer every time I close the library. It was pretty stagnant for a few months, but starting around January, the notes have picked up. Somebody left a handmade, cardboard-covered notebook in there, and its pages are slowly filling up. Somebody else keeps leaving tiny chapbooks of poetry and collage art. There's a typewritten card attached to one of those plastic canisters of goop that makes fart noises when you squish it. 

I like the drawer. I'll miss the drawer. I'll miss the job, too--because I don't know where else I'll get paid $16 an hour to get my homework done and occasionally sign out a book or two. This library has always felt almost like a secret--it isn't nearly as well-known as any of the other campus libraries, and has always felt sort of special as a result, visited by the same handful of people every day and full of philosophy and C.S. Lewis and the lives of the Saints. I like that it has secrets of its own, too. The day I found the drawer, I scribbled this (attributed to Derrick Jensen, who I don't actually know very much about at all, except that he writes things) on a scrap of paper and slipped it inside: "Some of the ancient Greek philosophers called the point of life: eudaimonia. It's commonly translated as happiness, but I believe a more accurate translation would be fittingness: how well your actions match your gifts, match who you are." 

There's a coffee shop I go to sometimes. It isn't my favourite place to go--or, rather, it's a place I have to visit under the right conditions. It isn't very good for studying or reading. It's okay for a coffee and a chat, but mid-afternoon is better than the evening. At night the place is ten kinds of overstimulating, with lineups at the counter that snake all the way to the front door and an assortment of smells that are nothing short of confusing when inhaled in combination, all with Beirut playing loudly enough that people at the crosswalk outside bop along to the music as they wait for the light to change. Most of the time, it's chaos.

But I like its soft armchairs and leather couches, its fairy lights around the bar, the coffee served in giant, mismatched ceramic mugs. I like that when I sit there at the right moment on the right day, I can see that the girl at the table in front of me is marking up a block of text that's been written on a typewriter. I like that, once, I sat down  in a misguided attempt to study and the person at the next table over asked me to explain the Ukrainian folk rituals about which I was reading. And I love the bathroom. 

I'm sure this place is not the only eating establishment in the entire world that lets its patrons and their sharpie markers have free reign of the walls of the loo--but it's the only one I know of. The walls of the Remedy bathroom are covered in scrawled black text of all sizes--a lot of it bears some sort of peace-and-love-and-self-acceptance message, but sometimes people quoted poetry or drew portraits of their best friends or asked a question beneath which would follow row upon row of responses. It makes me happy, this place with nice thoughts scattered about like confetti. Not often can I go to the bathroom and read Charles Bukowski at the same time. I like that these strange nets of kind conversation happen sometimes. I like that even though we're all too scared to sign our names, we try.  

The last time I went there, it was February and I was meeting the poet I had been paired with as a mentor as part of this writing contest. The day sort of turned my world upside down. This contest, in general, has unexpectedly altered my priorities, drawn my attention to things I had been too scared to think about before and given me permission to be a little braver in the way that I go about doing the things that I love. It's been good. But the meeting itself was especially interesting. I don't know what to say about it that won't make me squirm with weird discomfort at repeating praise that I'm still not always sure that I deserve--but I want to say something, because it was the kind of experience where you start as a certain person and finish feeling like it's possible to be another. I was apprehensive about the whole thing. I was afraid that I'd leave feeling somehow exposed.  I have so little experience with this kind of thing--with talking about my writing as if it's more than just me kind of fooling around. I am rarely in the position to explain myself. Nobody ever even sees these things, really--and I was about to discuss them with not just a total stranger, but a total stranger who really knows what he's doing.  I was afraid I'd leave feeling stupid for even showing up. 

This guy is the writer in residence at my university right now--which means that people show up to his office with manuscripts and ask him to read them and give feedback and so on. He told me that the poems I'd sent him were better than anything anybody had shown him all year, that even though I sounded kind of ambivalent (which I did, because I was really, really nervous and determined not to let on just how much this whole thing was freaking me out), if I wanted to pursue this, I absolutely should, and "I'm not just saying that. I wouldn't say that if I didn't mean it. You are more of a poet than half of the poets I know."

I always say that I started all of this--writing poetry,taking classes--out of curiosity, and while that's partly true, what is more true is that I started it because I felt some sort of need I couldn't quiet: a need to learn, to be taught, to practice, to produce. I couldn't not do it. And I have grown to really love it but have never felt like it was okay to take it too seriously because who on earth goes to university and pays all kinds of crazy tuition to write poems? It's the kind of thing that always gets all kinds of raised eyebrows and so I just don't talk about it. I've said this before, but although I know I shouldn't need permission, I needed permission. 

I've been trying to make this leap in my head where I go from years of being all shy about poetry to at the very least being able to claim, confidently, that I write it. It's hard (for me, anyway) not to sandwich that kind of statement in between apologies. But I am trying. And although I can't always (or ever, really) judge the quality of the things that I write, this bit of external perspective has helped. I am good at this. I don't know what this will amount to but it will amount to something. 

I have always had so much respect for the people who do what they love fearlessly and without apology, and for a while I thought that the fact that I was writing--even if I was self-conscious about it, and even if none of it ever saw the light of day--was enough. But it isn't. I've been trying, but I can try harder. My actions do not match my gifts. 

h. 

Until my paper is written (the last paper of my degree, holy smokes), here are some pictures. These are what my mornings look like. 

h. 

So, life is ridiculous. I keep wanting to write--I have so much to say--but school is insane and I have no time and I swear I've written at least forty-seven papers in the last two weeks and also turned 22 and did my first poetry reading ever (which I know at some point I will explain in detail, because the whole thing was kind of a mind bomb) and went to our year-end formal and bought a new dress and grown-up perfume and got into the Master's program at the school that's been my first choice all along which means that I know where I'll be in the fall which is amazing. And I would like to say many many things about all of this but first I have to write a research paper and also maybe sleep. 

For now, I will leave you with one of the bigger mysteries of my life, which is that I got a birthday card in the mail from my grandma and it said this: #22 is like a rifle. If you don't know about it, ask an older person.

Precisely.

h.

I am 22 today.

My birthday usually falls in the middle of a horrific pile of deadlines, so don't often do much to celebrate. I don't have time and, at this point in the year, neither does anybody else. But this year there is just enough of a gap in my list of due-dates that I can take some time to enjoy the day. I don't know what I'll do--spend some time reading for fun, maybe--but I'll do something. At this point, any excuse to stop and breathe for a while is a welcome one. 

I am looking forward to the summer. It isn't very far away at all now. I got a job as a waitress. I realize that isn't super thrilling, but I got a job as a waitress in a restaurant in a tiny tourist town very, very far south, near a national park and mountains and a lake and the American border. I am looking forward to being somewhere completely new. I am looking forward to living near water, to being able to climb mountains on my days off, to being able to go outside at night and be dwarfed by trees, by the sky.

And I want to write and take pictures and draw, to fill envelopes with letters and photographs and leaves from the trees I will sit under to read. I want to stand on a rocky ledge and scream. 

22 is going to be interesting, I can promise you that. 

h.

I am at home for the weekend. It was a combination of wanting to escape the roommate drama and really missing my mom. My mom just had foot surgery and is home, couch-bound, for something like six weeks. One week in and she is bored, bored, bored. We've been watching a lot of television. Tonight, after I'd spent the day working on a paper, I sat next to her on the couch just in time to catch the end of some sort of documentary about Celine Dion. 

I often forget that Celine Dion is Canadian. There was a scene in the documentary where she was in the backseat of a car, speaking French to someone on the telephone. I don't know the specifics when it comes to the differences between the French spoken in Canada and the French spoken in other places in the world, but I know that the French of Canada is different--and regardless of how many of the words I can understand, I can recognize it just by the sound. You can tell. I know this will sound crazy (because why not France-French or why not Spanish or why not classical music or rain on the windows or high heels clicking on a tile floor), but the sound of it--of people speaking Quebecois French--is one of my favourites in the world. (But I like the sound of rain on the windows, too.) 

In high school, I did a summer French exchange where I went to Quebec for six weeks, got a job, and lived with a host family. I went into the program with about two years of significant French education under my belt and I was so shy. In class, I could rattle off verb tenses like nobody else, but in a room full of French speakers, I was intimidated. 

That summer was good for so many things. I had spent the last year being pretty miserable--and my response to that (whether I was aware of it or not) was to throw myself into a situation where I had no choice but to toughen up. Through the exchange I was forced, over and over again, to do things that made me uncomfortable--to talk to people I hardly knew in a language I hardly knew, to move in with a family I had never met, to eat the things they cooked for me. I had spent the last year living almost entirely inside my own head, and suddenly I was being confronted, over and over again, not only with people, but with people I could only talk to in a language I only barely knew. I could have used it as an excuse to never talk at all--and there was a part of me that would have been okay with that--but I didn't. Instead, I learned a lot of French. (And ate a lot of cheese, and went on weekend trips to Montreal and rode roller-coasters and drove to Maine and swam in the ocean.) 

But there were days when I was tired of being so alert, of straining my ears and my mind to try and understand the conversations going on around me. And so I would sit – in the back of a car, by the window of the bus, on my host family’s back patio – and let every rolling r roll right over my head. I would sit and wrap myself in the sound of things I didn’t completely understand, and I would marvel at how I ended up exactly where I was.

French, to me, will always sound like freedom, like independence. When I hear it, no matter where I am, I remember being seventeen and small and brave, staring out a window at a place I didn’t know and knowing that just by being there I had accomplished something good. Just by being there--whether talking or listening or dreamily watching the St. Georges hills roll by--I had changed my own life. 

h.

I’m spending the night at my aunt’s house. She lives near the university, but I don’t see her nearly often enough. When I arrived, my older cousin and her new baby were visiting. My cousin got married four years ago and had her first child over Christmas. She is one of the coolest people I know—the kind of person who seems completely unshaken by anything, including perpetually crying newborns.

We had a really nice visit, and the baby is terribly cute. My cousin is one of many people in my life that I really want to learn from—for as long as I’ve known her, she’s always seemed somehow deeply content, in an internal, not-governed-by-the-material-world way. She’s peaceful. It seems rare (or maybe just feels rare for me, Queen of the Anxious).  I was glad to have the chance to talk to her. Since her baby was born she has been reaching out to me a lot more than usual—she’s in touch by text message far more often, and continues to invite me to visit and have coffee and even to stay with her and her husband for the summer. Whatever the reason for it, it makes me happy. I want to get to know her better.

After she left, my aunt and I had dinner. She made a fancy lasagna with vegetables in it that I have never heard of. She recommended a bunch of books for me to read and I taught her how to send a text message. We watched an episode of Modern Family and then a rerun of How I Met Your Mother. And then her cat tried to kill me.

I am more than a little suspicious of this cat. I think he has it in for me. The last time I was over here—many months ago—there was an incident between the cat and I. I was sitting on the couch, minding my own business, and he was lying on the corner where the back of the couch met the armrest. And then, out of nowhere, he got up, hissed, and swatted at my head.

And I thought, “Well, maybe I was sitting in his spot or something.”

My aunt yelled at him and he hid in shame behind the armchair, and although he left me alone for the rest of the night, I could feel his Cat Eyes of Death following me wherever I went.

But when I arrived today, I had mostly forgotten about it. I figured, you know, it's been a while since I was here, maybe he'll be in a better mood, maybe I really was sitting in his spot on the couch, maybe I smelled weird the last time I was here, I don't know. It'll be fine!

But it wasn’t! 

A few hours ago, I went into my aunt's room to change into my pajamas. When I’d finished changing and opened the door, THERE WAS THE CAT, staring at me. I walked past him, out into the hallway, and he LEAPT out from behind me, back arched, teeth bared, and HISSING. And he backed me into the wall.

And my aunt yelled, and the cat went back behind the Armchair of Shame and I thought, "Well, that was encouraging." 

He has been giving me the Cat Eyes of Death all night. Just a few minutes ago, I went back into her room to get something out of my bag, and the cat was sitting there, guarding my backpack. I stared at it in mortal fear for a while and then thought, "h, no. That is a cat. You are a human. Man up." 

So I walked, slowly, towards my backpack. I looked the cat in the eyes as I reached down to open the zipper. I pulled out my computer, closed the backpack, and backed up. 

The cat stared me down but didn't do anything. I left the room and sighed.

And then he darted out from behind me and, positioning himself right in front of me, arched his back, bared his stupid, pointy cat-teeth and hissed until my aunt whacked him with a dishtowel.

So I think I am probably going to die.

  ****
 

It’s been nice to be here, though. Things are a bit insane in my apartment just now. I keep coming here and writing and re-writing posts about it and then deleting them because I feel like I shouldn’t discuss it anywhere (even though it's being discussed pretty openly in my actual life), including my secret internet clubhouse that only three people in the world know how to find. I will try not to go into too much detail—I am writing mostly because I feel like some sort of mental purge is necessary, but I might get rid of it later.

(This is turning out to be the longest post ever—the last week has been so busy, and things keep happening and I feel like I could write until the sun comes up--not about anything in particular, I'm just full of...thoughts. I’m in my aunt’s living room looking out her balcony window and she’s gone to bed and Conan is playing quietly on the t.v. and I am continually peering over the arm of the couch just in case the cat has decided that it is time for me to meet my maker and I’m not sleepy and it’s so nice to be off campus and to be in a place that feels like a home.)

I live in a small, Catholic women's residence—and residents have to reapply at the end of each year if they wish to return in the fall. Because the residence is small, and because it's still fairly new and still getting on its feet, selecting residents is not done lightly--because in such a small community (and a community that is still in the stages of really having to prove itself), you need everyone to be as on board as possible if things are going to go well. 

Our residence is divided into six apartments. I live with a close friend of mine, and a set of nineteen-year-old twins. One of the twins reapplied to residence and didn't get back in.

The decision was made by the director, whose judgment I really trust. I care about the twins—they’re nice girls, and we got along really well all year—and I understand that this is a really crappy situation. But the whole thing has gotten pretty crazy—which, partly, I think, has to do with the fact that the girl in question is still pretty young. She’s really angry (which I totally get) and is taking it out in weird ways—which stresses me out. Our apartment has been full of door-slamming and stomping and whispering and general hostility and, because we live in such a small community, the whole issue has become a huge topic of conversation and everyone has an opinion--and I just don’t have the energy. (And I know there is no reason for her to be angry at me, but sometimes it feels that way anyway, and that's uncomfortable, too.)

And I'm tired and, mentally, I'm mostly elsewhere—my brain has leapt into summertime, into library school, into all of the crazy waves of change that are on their way. I ended up getting the summer job I wanted, which makes me really happy. I'll explain it later, because this post is long and ranty enough for one day (or two). But things are lining up, and it's nice. 

I have to remember that, in the midst of papers and roommate drama and endless stupid winter. I just need to get through, and there are good things waiting on the other side.

Provided the cat doesn't kill me in my sleep.

h.

I'm slowly becoming consumed by this novel assignment. I have been filling my notebooks with flowcharts and family trees (because although I only have to write the first chapter, I have to provide an outline of the entire thing). I've been scrawling ideas on post-it notes and old newspapers and the back of my hand. When I get to write a paper on a subject that I like, I mostly enjoy the process--but I still pursue it with a certain reluctance, because regardless of the topic, it feels tedious to analyze a text that people have been reading for decades, or even centuries--and there's a futility in constructing an argument you know a million people have probably already argued (and argued better and more thoroughly and with less whining along the way).

But this is different--I get to create an entire world of my own, an entire tangle of imaginary lives. It isn't frustrating and it isn't repetitive and it doesn't feel pointless--it's just fun. 

This afternoon I had to run a bunch of errands. I needed groceries and I had film to develop and I was on a mission to find myself a red cardigan (I've been searching for one since September). I took the train to the most convenient mall/Safeway combination and checked item after item off my list (including the cardigan--hurrah).

As I waited for the train home, my winter jacket too warm in the afternoon sun, I felt spring nestle deep in my chest. Every time the seasons change, it feels like a miracle. The transition from winter to spring is my favourite. Every year, it happens--the snow melts and the sun stays late into the evening and I turn my face to the sky without fearing the slap of the wind. And every year, it's like a gift. 

Today it doesn't matter that I'm worried about getting through these last five weeks of school, or that my roommates are mad at each other, or that for the 27 hours of American Lit I've attended this term, I've taken 6 pages of notes. Spring is coming. 

h.

There is no way out of the spiritual battle
There is no way you can avoid taking sides
There is no way that you can not have a poetics
no matter what you do: plumber, baker, teacher

you do it in the consciousness of making
or not making yr world

- Diane Di Prima, “Rant”

Revisiting Diane Di Prima lately--she's one of my favourites. 

h.

I got into graduate school. I received an email this morning, and a letter is on its way. I applied to four schools and this is the first I've heard back from--of the four, it isn't my first choice, but it's a very good choice all the same. It's a huge relief to know that, even if nobody else accepts me, I have somewhere to go. I will become a librarian. It's happening. 

It's hard not to be antsy for time to pass. These months of the year are always the hardest--it's heartbreakingly cold and you're neck-deep in work and the end still seems impossibly far away. But there are so many good things on the other side of these two months. My mom and I are planning a trip. It's something she's been talking about for ages--the two of us doing something special after I graduate--but I was never sure if it would happen for real, or if it was just a really lovely idea.  A really interesting summer job sort of threw itself in my path a few weeks ago. I won't hear about it for a while, but it could mean a much bigger adventure than anything I'd imagined I'd be in for this summer--and I'd love that.