I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals. I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.

Blogposts have been sporadic of late, mostly because my camera went to The Big Shutter in the Sky, and also because I'm starting to find myself aware that I'm not aware, and that maybe I should spend more time becoming aware, rather than unawarely writing blog posts in which I adopt the pose of awareness. However, I still like to write, perhaps mostly in small sound-bites. Also, lists don't require a camera.
Thus, I present:

Five things that struck me upon return to Montréal:
1. The weather is decidedly autumnal at points. I wore tights out to the bar last night. It's August!
2. The difference between Parisian French and Québecois French is pronounced. This becomes more and more obvious to me as I improve in the language and realize that I still can't understand the shopkeepers, the police, or my classmates from Sherbrooke.
3. The amount of hot girls in Montréal is ridiculous. No, seriously. The slim, beautiful, sartorially perfect girls are everywhere, riding bikes, carrying baguettes, reading books, and in general going about their daily lives with the barely there chic smugness the mademoiselle who knows she's gorgeous.
4. Bixis! They're bikes that can be rented from the city with the swipe of a credit card. They're sleek and grey-red, with a small electromotor that generates light when you pedal. They seem quite popular.
5. Due to the Québec dairy tax, buying cheese feels a bit like assault and muggery.

Lack of cheese notwithstanding, it's lovely to be back, living a few carefree, semi-sunlit days until the return to the academic balls-to-the-wall that is McGill.

One of my best friends is having surgery.

I am worried about him- surgery sounds terrible any way you look at it.
A few days ago, I spent an evening moping because I got a shit haircut. (I'm not sure why, but hairstylists in general kind of assume that "I want a haircut" means "I want to look like David Bowie and/or the eighties personified." This happens a lot, and it tends to put a damper on my otherwise obviously stunning appearance...)
Maybe I shouldn't mope about having a shit haircut, then, because at least I'm not getting my knee sawed in half.
Good luck, Nomad Turtle...

Emmy the Great

Wrote a song about first love and blue skies.
Hear it here.

Here she is:


Pretty bard with an acoustic guitar.

I like this poem from Jacques Prévert

Alicante
An orange on the table
Your dress on the rug
And you in my bed
Sweet present of the present
Cool of night
Warmth of my life.

I also like texts from last night.
I don't own a phone, and I've never understood texting, but I like the stupid youthful love of life that seeps through them.

-This is a mass text. Does anyone know where I am?
-I got us kicked out of the bar because the waitress found me in the kitchen trying to make spaghetti
-Also, I may or may not be wearing a cape right now. hint: I am.

I like early morning thunderstorms

And this photo of Ian McKellen.



what Gandalf would look like if he wore scarves and read poetry manuscripts on staircases.

And when it's time for leaving, I hope you'll understand, I was born a rambling man

I'm out, for at least two months.
It's time to abandon the internet.
Write me letters.

The world stretches out ahead, vaguely insecure and menacing, and all I want is to go to sleep.

Evasion

This book I've read intermittently when I had the time. Someday I will get to finishing it.
Download it for free, and read about an angry trainhopping vegan.

I'm headed back up the east coast tonight.
Another adventure with the grey hound yapping at my heels, spiriting me off into the distance for the low price of $78.89, tx included.
I guess sometimes everyone needs a little evasion?

Cats and a blackandwhite suicide

I like this picture of Kurt Cobain.

I sometimes wish I liked grunge. I don't, though, and to pretend I do would be silly.
I like Seattle, though.
And my father's flannel shirts.
And rain.

Almost?

On the plains of Morocco

There is a tree called the argan tree.

It bears a fruit that looks like an olive.

Goats like olive-argan fruit.

So they climb the tree.




I refuse to give up on a world in which goats climb trees.

J.R.R. Tolkien's Ents, That Girl In My Biology Class, and the nature of labels

When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough;
When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow;
When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!

I always liked the Ents. I remember fourth grade, not paying attention to the simple multiplication we were doing for the umpteenth time and reading about Pippin and Merry and Treebeard, wandering through ancient forests and talking to the trees. I like land fighting back against the furnace of industry. I like Tolkien's unattainable ideal and the image of a soft, golden light falling through the cracks in the canopy. I liked the poetry of those books, the trandscendentalism. And besides, I've always liked trees. I like the roaring sequoias and the pines of my mountain home. I like the willow trees by the river in West Virginia and the green leafy canyon walls.

Which kind of brings me to my next point, which is not about trees.

Sometimes, during the course of my general activities, I get labeled a hippie. Perhaps this is because I like trees and bikes and guitars and long, flowy skirts, because I have a lesbian haircut and drink green tea instead of soda. I don't like brands and am pro-queer, pro-choice, and anti-bigotry. But here's the thing - I am not a hippie, whatever that term may entail. I'm fine with acquaintances labeling me as such, because maybe what they think of me represents a point I'm trying to make, but I am not a hippie. I like setting deadlines and meeting my own goals and competing. I drink far less beer and smoke far less weed than is the university average. I'm flamingly straight and don't recognize gay as a political party. The term "anarcho-syndicalist radical organizing" really makes me cringe. I suppose what I am trying to say is that labels are inherently misleading. I can see why they are used - I too am wont, sometimes, to scoff at a person in an Abercrombie sweatshirt or lululemon tights-are-not-pants, because labeling them as ditzy and clueless and consumerist makes things easier; I no longer have to be challenged by them as people and it gives me a nice little superiority thrill. Inherently, though, the indulgent label of "punk", "hippie", "bro", "GTA girl", or "prep" doesn't mean much and kind of obfuscates the whole point of one humanity. I quite like some people who went to prepschool, although their stories of seated dinner and chapel and little green courtyards make me simultaneously scornful and angry. It's been said before, I know, but the artificial boundaries that people create are harmful. How do we expect to reconcile Israel and Palestine, end Darfur, make peace with Russia, if we can't even get on with each other and our own little social groups?

That said, there was a girl in my biology class this year. Her name was Caytee Lush. I quite liked her, and she plays acoustic guitar music. I quite like her music, too. You should check her out:
HERE