mountain goats

There's a great deal of similarity between the mountain goat and its fellow ungulate the sheep. But this enigmatic creature stands out from the crowd with its unique combination of alertness, generosity and unassuming charm. For the mountain goat is a loner. An edgy, introverted soul. who abhors crowds and puts is nimble legs to work in the great outdoors.

If you're looking for a scout guide or hiking partner, this sure-footed beast is an ideal choice. However, its talents as a leader are suspect. Because of its solitary existence, it does not have the insight into human behavior that is required for leadership. Mountain goats are not risk takers and need to feel solid ground beneath their feet before making any major decision. Mia Farrow is an exemplary mountain goat who manages to maintain her balance while snakes and rock-falls threaten to dislodge her grip on life.

The mountain goat's desire to find a mate can lure it from its solitary hideout, and it seeks partners with strong personalities that promise protection in an unfriendly world. However, when choosing a mate, it will quickly withdraws if it fails to get a commitment. This behavior is often interpreted as desperation and some relationships are doomed before they get off the ground.

A relationship with a mountain goat is an exercise in ups and downs. Even though its emotional fragility causes the premature death of many love affairs, provide its partner remains faithful, the mountain goat will honor it with commitment and fidelity. For mountain goats are unconditional with their love and try hard to make their relationships work. This species of ungulates has a special relationship with the eagle with whom it shares a common mountain perspective.

The ice was melting, slowly revealing the bright orange and red mud underneath it. Spring was taunting her.

Two days earlier she stood at the cross lights on the main street, with the frost slowly working its way onto the flesh of her ears. The water from her breath blew into her nose, pulling her nostrils shut and freezing them together.

She pressed the little sensor on the side of the light three times, knowing it wouldn't make the light change any faster, but enjoying the security of knowing that it was actually pressed. The hand on the other side of the road began to flash. It blinked on and off continuously, teasing her. It was as though it would never stop, and she'd be stuck there in time, waiting to cross a road covered with gravel and ice and the tires of crawling cars.

The next day jokes were made that finally set her off. Of all the things to offend her, and of all the times. She hated him for this, but it wasn't his fault, he wouldn't have known.

She spent the rest of the time sighing and frowning as another girl pulled at her hair and burned her frost bitten ears. They asked her if she was alright. She's just tired. She lies a lot, because she's really not tired at all and she's certainly not alright.

She braced the cold to buy things that would slowly pull apart her insides. She thought about drinking most of it alone that night, but everyone looked at her oddly when she suggested it would be what she would do. So she left it.

She got dressed up, and walked into a dark room where people she didn't know covered her face in powders that were a few shades off from her skin colour.

She's too pale.

It's not pretty.

They pulled and pushed her in awkward poses, trying to hide all her flaws while leaning her over a table.

They took her picture 100 times.

Tonight she has to go back to pretending. She likes to pretend, because she's so tired of herself.

The ice melted, and revealed the leaves and the dirt and the plants.

Then the snow came in large masses and covered it all up and killed it again.

Meeting People is Easy

Snow is building up outside my window and the white van has already disappeared into the great lonely tumult of a January blizzard. The snow is indistinct, its appearance doesn’t change from day to day even if each individual flake is some unique miracle. Tell crystallized water that each piece of it is unique and wonderful and you end up with a million pieces of it each one trying to out-shine the others. Tell an entire generation they’re each unique and beautiful and you have a generation of failed stars each trying to tarnish the others. It’s all the same.
I was a failed writer by the age of nineteen. I’d tried without success to market my childhood, offering up memoirs of my stolen innocence; forged accounts of a teenage rape. The truth was that I’d invited the rabbi into my Dad’s station-wagon knowing full-well that he was a pedophile and an arsonist. To this day I can’t pass a burned-down building without hearing his voice say “I love you, I miss you, come to Temple.” He was a top-notch guy, I felt bad when I sold all his phone messages to CNN. That stunt back-fired though, in the end he was the only one Barbara Walters was interested in interviewing.
After the rabbi I got involved with my first real boyfriend. His name was Brett and he was a sloppy-kisser and alcoholic-in-training (though he aspires for the big leagues.) We met at a meeting of the ‘Leaders of Tomorrow’. His collar was popped and he’d clearly spent most of his morning getting his hair just-right, but I smiled and asked him for a cigarette even though I didn’t smoke. As it turned out neither did he, completely shattering the James Dean comparisons I was percolating.
“It’s paying to pollute your lungs.” He said reproachfully. I bit my tongue and didn’t mention that the water bottle he’d filled with vodka was paying to kill his liver. Instead, I played the part.
“Yeah, I’m trying to quit.” I sighed, “It’s just hard, you know?” I gave him my pathetic eyes, a boy can’t shrug you off if you give him the pathetic eyes.
“Two of my friends are trying to quit, they’re using these nicotine patches or some shit like that.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve tried the patches.” Let me remind you that I’ve never touched a cigarette, “Those things will kill you faster than the cigarettes will. Do you drink coffee?”
“Yeah, sometimes.” For the first time in the conversation he turned to me, I could see his eyes. They were dull. “It really sucks how they treat their workers though.”
“Totally! I know this great free-trade coffee place though, could I buy you a cup after this?”
“Sure, that would be great!” He smiled and I smiled back, more because he didn’t know the difference between fair-trade and free-trade, but also a little bit because he was cute.
I met up with Brett outside of the high-school the meeting was held at, it was pretty much open all the time since nobody went to school anymore. Everyone was too busy ‘succeeding’ in life to get a formal education. Some people still did correspondence, but it was rare that anyone graduated anymore, there was just no need to. It was too easy to get set for life by learning how to throw a ball or really convince the camera you’re still a virgin. This isn’t to say that the arts were dead, quite the opposite really. Anyone ugly or weak needed somewhere to go so they all flocked to their canvases and their notebooks. They documented every inch of the earth, no matter what angle you looked at something from it had already been painted, printed and pressed that way twice.
“They were still making tapes when this came out?” I laughed, referring to the Beck cassette I found in the cluttered glove compartment of his Dad’s SUV.
“Of course not,” He laughed, “it’s a mix-tape I made after my last boyfriend dumped me.” It was only a little pathetic, but it somehow became exponentially more so when he said it out-loud. “It’s helped me through a lot of hard times.”
“Wait, so you’re gay then?” I mumbled and parked in-front of the coffee house. The sign outside said ‘Java the Hut’, a reference largely lost on the customers.
“No, bi.” He replied, I wasn’t surprised. Everyone was a bisexual these days.
Brett held the door for me and I stepped in. I knew the girl working the counter, her name was Apple. She’d been my girlfriend last-year before I realized that the market of authors was saturated with white, jewish, lesbians. Despite the year’s time between Apple and Brett I hadn’t dated anyone between them, at least me and Apple were still amiable.
“Hey shit-bag, what can I get you?” She spat towards me. “We’re out of espresso since 8:00 this morning, so we can only make flat drinks.”
“Can you make me a tea?” I asked, locking eyes with her. There was an unpleasant tension. She was probably off her meds again. She was convinced they fucked up her menstrual cycle. “This is Brett, by the way.”
“Hey.” He mumbled uncomfortably.
“What did he say? I can’t hear it when people mumble.” Apple hissed, pouring the tea into a cup as she said it.
“I just said ‘Hey.’” Brett said louder but less interested. “I’ll just have water.”
I brought him over to the chairs near the counter where hipsters usually sat and drank their mocha-soy-double-frappe-latteccappacinos while discussing bands that may as well not exist. He sat uncomfortably in the chair, it was a bit too big for him. That’s something I always forget to mention about Brett, he seemed gigantic from a distance, but up close he was pretty small. Not scrawny, but small.
“So what’s your story, Brett?” I asked casually, folding my arms over my chest. “Why are you a ‘Leader of Tomorrow’?” He laughed after I asked him.
“I joined it to meet girls.” He stated matter-of-factly. I laughed, hard.
“What made you think ‘Leaders of Tomorrow’ would be a place to meet girls?”

A town full of ghosts

I've lived my whole life in a place that is nothing but a constant reminder of how much I hate myself. You can't run away phsyically, but you can sure as hell remove yourself emotionally, or so you think. It all works until you realize nothing is never new. You'll never actually find anything which you can put all your faith into. I'm like a fucking time bomb in all the relationships or friendships I've ever created.Some person inside of me constantly telling me to get the fuck out of where I am, that nothing is going to end well, that I'll never really appreciate myself that I'm so fucking undeserving of anything good, that it'll all blow up in my face. It's countered of course, countered by a naive moron who keeps telling me that everything will work out and that this year will be different. That this year I'll be a good person, that this year I'll communicate,that this year I've gotten healthier, that this year I'll try my hardest to apologize . Well..now it's time to apologize. Now it's time to start a new, and all I can hear is 'get the fuck out of here.
This is what happens when things are left unresolved. When you learn that you dont really know each other and you are left with all the pieces at your feet. When i was falling apart and dying to get noticed and it just never happened. When you were falling apart and i just didnt care. When we exploded into oblivion.
I need to learn to forget the people who didnt care enough. I need to stop wanting to know how they are doing, if they are happy, if they think of me. Its hard letting go of anyone. I've never been good at it. I miss every person i have ever let go.

I'm fucking sick of turning people into ghosts.

Like Girls in Stilletos

What do you write when there are no words? Or when the only words that are there are too ugly and hateful to become realized on the page? Do you just ignore them despite the way they percolate insidiously within you, or do you write them anyways despite their hateful nature? I guess that's the difference between a writer and an amateur, but which does which? Does the writer scribble the cold words despite their impact because he's honest? Does the writer know better than to write things they know will hurt the people they love? Do you sell hatred and loathing in hardcover or paperback? It's all just impossible.

Nothing here feels permanent. Friends and family disappear for months then return and nothing has changed. Family members leave, but return when they realize it's easier to change the thing that drove them off in the first place. Friends are content to pop pills until they're cold to the touch. The girls are happy to die for love. The boys happy to die for nothing. What do you do when all your friends are dead?

This Salad is Unsatisfying

She's searching her mind tucked neatly under her mass of hair curlers to try to find the right words. She likes to talk about herself like an omnicient narrator, so that maybe if she says something disturbing, or not quite right, no one will be the wiser that she's confessing all sorts of things about herself.

She feels average, so horribly average, and she's unable to express how much she absolutely hates this. Even in her mind the words get all jumbled up and tossed around, like her brain is playing Boggle and just throwing out any word it can find.

Someone asks her if she's alright. She's obviously not. She sighs and tells him that her salad is unsatisfying. He looks and her strangely, and turns to talk to someone else. She laughs to herself at the stupidity of her excuses. There's always been tension between him and her. Some sort of awkwardness you think they would have gotten rid of after these past two months of embracing and kissing in front of twenty of so people.

Secretly, she thinks he isn't rather fond of her at all.

She's partially given up at any attempt of beauty a long time ago, and can't take a compliment at all. She wears makeup, because she wants to cry if she doesn't. She's fine with showing her body, because she finds it so boring and ugly that it's absolutely hilarious, and she's always up for making a joke. Or being a joke. She lacks the self-esteem and decisiveness to tell the difference sometimes.

She breaks down at the worse possible times. Sometimes it takes something phyiscal to set off something emotional, and after he slaps her it's off to a secluded area to cry her eyes out over things she isn't entirely sure of. Sometimes the area isn't so secluded, and she needs to scream at people to stop touching her. She's convinced she'll be fine as long as she never actually has to interact with a human being ever again.

She has to say names she'd rather not hear, and all the sudden words and phrases come out that haven't ever been said. These are not in the script. They sputter off her lips anyway, and push their way into the air around her, for everyone to grasp at and hear. Her soul is trying to tell her something, but what? What is it that didn't work?

She'll pause to consider this for a moment, then remember she is not who she actually is, right now she is someone different, and this person doesn't have these issues. This person can't think of what didn't work and answer everything. This person is about to die in two minutes, and she needs to prepare herself to let that happen.

Lets pretend we don't exist
Lets pretend we're in Antarctica.

Big, Heavy Shoes

I can fly.


In fact, my feet have hardly touched the ground since January when I made a New Year's resolution to grow some balls, stood on my tippy toes one last time and pushed off the ice covered concrete into the cold air.

This wasn't the first time I've flown. I discovered early on that flight was something of a natural predisposition for me, that I am not a creature meant to be attached to solid ground, that solid air is good enough, and by that I've lived most of my life in a reality quite different from that which might be expected of me by others. In being airborne I have discovered that reality is, in fact, quite independent of the society that exists solely on the land. There are all sorts of people living on the land, on the sea, under the sea, under the land, and even above the air. There really is no uniform, constant evenness to the options before any singular or plural human being(s). For every person who lives in the same house for their entire natural life, there is a gypsy nomad with no fixed address, for every suburban family with a white picket fence there is a van full of babies, and for every social problem there is someone who wouldn't have it any other way.

I would rather not crawl around on my hand and knees anymore. I would like to destroy my standard issue cinder block shoes. It's ok to be unexpected.

ahoy hoy

My writing is a body count to remember in broken pencils and ripped papers multiplied by a world surplus of disease and broken hearted angsty bullshit. It has many tendencies. Sometimes I like writing about seasons and nostalgia because I guess i wish that explained how insecurities and memories hang in the air. I write about the same topics incessantly. Friendships, people changing, emotions that are up and down, the good times, the bad times,self deprication, goals, bitterness, graduation, stress ,guilt, animals, family. The theme is the emotions behind anything and everything. How I think I really feel, how I'd like to really feel, how I honestly sometimes do feel.
"Don't write about emotions" Mr.McMahon put on my paper last year
" The emotions should shine through the writing, they should be implicitly understood."
But i know that's bullshit as half of my adolesence was spent in the staleness of implying and tip toeing around thoughts and self expression rather than honest communication,both in words that came from my mouth and in my writing. However, I didn't honestly expected any teacher to know that...but I still wanted to tell him that he really wasn't talking to me specifically.

So that's my introduction for those who are unfamiliar with my style...or lack thereof. I'm sitting here giggling at myself for first creating a livejournal, then a deviant art site, a fake nexopia page, a myspace, and now I'm part of an actual blog. This 'communal blog' does sound rather promising though. I'm looking forward to reading these, and I half promise to post something with more substance and meaning , but for now this is what I've got.

going the fack to sleep,
Dee

Motion Lines

I wake up in your bed again, my skin crawling with the quickly fading sensations of whatever dream had provoked this cold sweat from my pores. My dreams have become turgid; great swollen gathering grounds for the fruition of seedy, whispered concepts. Brief flashes of lightning that came and went with the sunlight grow into great thunderstorms of rhetoric and hope with the nurturing of the moonbeams. They’re contrasted against a cityscape backdrop of angular and unstable towers of cynicism, fear and disbelief. Torrid dramas unfold themselves before me, people who’ve made themselves know in my waking life tear in and out of focus in both minor and major parts, frequently both at once.
They share lives and deaths together within the frame of a moment before separating and adhering to new partners. Every night is a new fascinating spectacle. A dominating man throwing himself from a building, a smiling, blond housewife selling her toned body. Tight lipped debutantes and long-legged heiresses rolling in mud on the television. My mother and father waltzing on the wings of a plane as it plummets towards the ocean where aging men with wax faces watch from yachts. I remain the voyeur, by choice or by happy accident. These bizarre, often haunting, nocturnal visions are better from afar. The tragedies are less tragic when I know I have no more sway than old English figureheads. I watch tragedies both minute and epic wash over the ones I love. I can’t stop the dominating man from plunging to his death anymore than I could have stopped the buildings from collapsing in on my first loves and their families. I am nothing and nowhere until morning.

She's On the Move

There's something I must secretly enjoy about moving, living out of a suitcase, and flying from place to place. It's a lonely thing, to travel and move so much, but there's something romantic in always being so lonely.
There's things of mine packed in boxes from two moves ago, that I haven't seen in 5 years. Some things I doubt I will ever really unpack. There's something too permanent about unpacking, and I have commitment issues.
There's things of mine that I have lost, and now lay scattered in fields and houses and along side roads and in hotel rooms all across the country.
I've driven across the country.
I've slept in a van in the parking lot of a gas station in Nova Scotia. Well, I spent the night.
I've slept in a hotel in a small town in Quebec, the same hotel my grandpa died in.
It was his van I spent the night in, after we picked it up and were bringing it back to PEI for my grandma.
I've slept on the 6th floor of a Toronto hotel, at least, I think it was the 6th floor.
I've been so sick and delirious that I thought the giant statues outside the CN tower were real birds, and that the rocks lining Lake Ontario we're covered with plastic wrap.
I've almost been thrown off the Rocky Mountains after fishtailing in a car during a blizzard.
I've driven through Oakville late at night and seen lights that seemed so different that it literally made my heart ache.
I've slept on several small islands on several small lakes.
I've canoed on several small lakes.
Driven across the ice of Rainy Lake.
I've sat under the lilac tree in the back yard in the first house I can remember living in, the only place I've ever felt stable and permanent, and the scent still haunts me.
I've walked through a park overlooking the city of Calgary, and could not think about anything but how lonely it is to live in a city that sleeps under a cold, white blanket.

All I want is something permanent, but I have commitment issues, and I'm unwilling to unpack.

This is the tangerine (machine)
Samantha Merritt

This Rock is Rolling!

Okay, well I've been asking around and it looks like this dream of a communal friend-blog is yet to be dashed! So far we have at least four people who have expressed interest in joining this Web 2.0 party; Tanya, Erin, Fairen and potentially Dee! If you're reading this and you are one of the above you probably already know that there's an e-mail from BlogSpot inviting you to become an author. Before you say 'Oh god! I don't want my thoughts on the internet!' don't panic! You can update the blog with whatever you want, whenever you want. I think it would be cool if we could get people to update regularly, but there's no pressure. You can update a frequently or infrequently as you wish, or not at all even! That little exposition will probably go somewhere on the blog permanently, so don't worry if you totally skimmed it!

Today is one of the days that Erin is back in town, so me and he and Tanya went into the Courtneyside and took excellent pictures of dead fish then ate some dead fish in a more Japanese environment. I meant to go up town to attend a Book Launch and get a Library Card, but the Book Launch wasn't where I thought it was and the library needs you to have a parent signature. This was ridiculous and to be expected of the Comox Library. I guess I will never obtain a copy of Naked Lunch, Howl or any other books by the beat authors of ye olde dayse. Today was productive nonetheless though, I bought a copy of the new Bonnie Prince Billy album and one of Neko Case's 'The Tigers Have Spoken' and 'caught up' with T. Prinz and E. Green.

Second Post,
Travis Cannon

Let's Start This Madness!

Maybe this isn't Revisionist History...
No, this is certainly Revisionist History.
It's necessary nonetheless.
It's necessary for me to be heard and understood
even if it means revising the 'truth' and making it 'untrue'.

I don't love Jamie Stewart
the emotion I feel is just a profound respect
and awe at a person existing who can say so bluntly
every emotion I feel but can't express
and wish I didn't feel but can't help but express
and obviously ones I don't feel and could never express.
I don't pretend to understand
and I don't pretend to be unique in these regards.

No, You Rule.