Category Archives: Not your average writing

I’m sitting here at Virtual Coffeebean typing in my blog. Why am I paying 17 cents a minute when I can do it for free at home? Well, not exactly free. I pay 35.00 a month for Telus ADSL. But why am I paying this bloody extra cash? My computer at home sucks. It is an old Mac riddled with problems. The keyboard is too small, my chair is not comfortable, and I don’t have MS office. My boyfriend has tried several free versions from friends that never work because we don’t have the CD registration number that comes with all MS software, and it doesn’t let you run anything without this magic number. OpenOffice for Mac just sucks royally. It is NOT just like MS Word, and it takes forever to figure out how to do things like view header and footer that take otherwise take one click. I find most software for Macs just doesn’t compete with PC’s. There’s always a bug or two, and then when you open it back up on a PC, the formatting is all fucked up. I’m so used to super fast computers at work, school, and here at the cybercafe. Plus here at the Virtual Bean, I have a nice cool breeze from the ceiling fans, lots of natural light from the floor to ceiling windows, and a stellar view on a sunny day of mountains and a sliver of dark blue ocean at their feet. Plus I have a delicious cup of hot tea. I can get that at home too, but it’s nice to get out of the apartment which heats up to about eighty degrees celcius on a clear sunny day, even when it’s zero degrees outside.

I’m a short walk away from my five hour shift at Pier 1 Imports. I have two hours to do my resume, cover letter and portfolio that I’ve been putting off all week. I’m so scared of rejection and failure that I put it off, which further increases this rejection and failure because he’s waiting for it. He is Barry , the editor of Dundurn Press. I think that’s why I’ve been so fucking lazy for the past few months. I just can’t get out of bed, away from the couch, the television, the desserts. What the hell is wrong with me? I pissing away my life, my education, opportunity. It’s a good thing I’m smart or I’d be flunking. I can pull off a solid B without trying. But I could be an honour student, an overachiever, a stellar successful entrepreneur if I applied myself. But (another “but”-I have too many “buts”!) I am so fearful. Thanks DAD!
He imported so much fear into me from his family, from his motherland of the dikes, Holland. HE told me I couldn’t do it when I was 19. Nineteen, Rochelle, get the hell over it! It’s amazing how one comment can take a lifetime to get over. Afterall, it was my childhood, and behaviours are instilled during that important, irreversable time of development. Yeah, thanks Dad. You blame your parents, and I’ll blame mine. That’s why I don’t want to have kids. I don’t want someone to blame me, since I already feel guilty for so much.

Anyways, tomorrow I’ll write about my bulemic cat. Today I will do my resume.

Ciao

Well, not really, but it’s better than yesterday. I’m at school, writing in this blog before I begin a dreaded, proctrastinated essay for Communications. Right now, I definatley don’t want to pursue Communications as it is so dry, boring and seeminly useless. Who the fuck cares about genre analysis? Not me. I’d rather drink tea and eat hickory sticks all day.

At least the sun peaked out today from behind stretched cotton candy clouds. It was not bright, but hazed behind the gray blanket. I saw Mount Baker on the Skytrain today, all covered in snow, giant. I thought about how it is a live volcano, and if anyone was skiing on it today. It’s amazing that it’s so big and so far away. I imagined it exploding all over Washington and BC, and felt the vibrations beneath me. I saw the ash fill the air, blind my vision and fill my lungs full of fiery ash and soot. Oh the joys of living in the ring of fire.

What would happen if we had an earthquake? I’d go flying off the train, a magnificent way to die. A horrible way to die, with other screaming people on top of me, bits of broken glass and shards of metal stuck in my scalp. Suffocating under a cement block, hoping someone will dig me out. I would think about earthquake victims in Pakistan that I watched on TV, and how I thought it would happen here someday, and here it is now, and we’re not prepared. How could we prepare for something this big? It’ll just swallow up our earthquake proof buildings, our stores of food and water, our flashlights and first aid kids, into the depths of the earth where we can’t find them.

One day I saw the sunset while riding the Train. The clouds were in strange formation. They were all over the place, stretched, puffy, flat, long,small, billowed, in all directions. My eyes were drawn to a large formation just above the melting sun. A large, long oval of dark cloud, and inside it was all jagged, like a shark’s mouth trying to swallow the sun and earth below. It was very striking, and I couldn’t stop staring at it. I had to strain my neck as the train drove away from it in the opposite direction.

Today it’ll probably be raining when I leave, and I forgot my umbrella. We’re going to see “The Stars” in concert today at the Croation Cultural Centre. I hope it’s good. We’re going with Ashlee, our roommate.

Signing out,

R.

Today I am a bad writer
Today I lack motivation, confidence
muse
discipline
Today I do not deserve to be here
In a place where I can do so much
Where I am free to express ideas
Where I can create, write
build a nation
build a new world
Where opportunity knocks
with large, gnarled hands
aged with knowledge and experience
the lines in its skin full of stories to tell
past lives rich with detail
longing to live on in me
My hands are weak and deprived
Weighed down with sadness
low self-worth
and calluses caused from hard labour
instead of a pen
labour betrothed to me
from my ancestors
who don’t know any better
than to survive this way
I struggle to break free
with my pen in hand
to revel in the warmth
of opportunity’s large embrace
somehow
I will be set free