How long is too long?

I tossed and turned all night
with a loneliness I couldn't sate.
And I woke up with a list
nine miles wide and a thousand miles long
of the injustices against me.

Each step I took
the second I got out of bed
adding to the list.

Until I left the house
sick
with unshed tears and
anger.

My heart,
usually capable of
so much love,
twisting and turning
in bitterness.

I keep asking myself,
"Who am I?"
"What is this?"
"Why?"

But all
I can keep doing
is checking off my list
counting on my fingers
the injustices of life
nine miles wide and infinitely long.

February's End

A list of very slightly inconvenient things to happen to me right before our engagement pictures which are only mildly important:

- I have insomnia for like 5 nights straight which makes me look super beat.
- I break out in various places of my face due to lack of sleep and PMS hormone surge.
- I gain 2 lbs in a week. The first time I've gained ANY weight since I lost weight like 6 months ago.
- I get a haircut and for the first time in a long while I get a haircut that I actually really dislike and feel like I can't work with or hide.

So, basically, my body has conspired against me to give me dark circles beneath my eyes, ugly hair, huge zits, and looking as chubby as ever.

I hope these pictures die and go to hell.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

All the Names by Jose Saramago

If any of you were planning on reading it, I'm gonna go ahead and spoil it for you:

In the end, the registrar is in on the madness, he doesn't get fired, and the woman is dead.

I think it was somehow about the way the lives of the dead interweave through the lives of the living and we can't separate them out. Maybe it was about how life lives on long after death. (More so if someone fusses with all the records and erases the date of your death and no one is ever there to correct them).

I want to know what happened with the ground floor apartment lady. I want to know what his journey back into the darkness really meant. I want to know why or when or how the registrar came to love her too.

I found the book relatively difficult to read because all of the sentences are VERY long. Sometimes an entire page length long. Each sentence is about so many things you forget what happened at the beginning of it, and I constantly had to re-read entire sections to understand what was even going on! I don't know if this was a style adopted by the writer or if it was just the way it was translated.

I think I could spend a lot more time post-read contemplating the various parts of this book. In fact, weeks from now it may still be edging it's way into my thoughts.

But I really have no time for that. I'm onto my next book! If I can finish it by the end of this week then I will caught up with my goal.

What next? A book by another Portuguese writer: The Implacable Order of Things by Jose Juis Peixoto. 

Book Week 3

Errrhhmm.... This week I didn't finish any book. Mostly I didn't feel like reading.

But partially, I started reading a book that's very interesting but not particularly intriguing. And then I started another book that's very intriguing but very difficult to read.

I hope maybe then, next week, I'll have finished two books, meaning, I'm caught up.

If not I'll start feeling really bad about having set a goal that I'm falling behind on. I like to put a lot of pressure on myself like that...

Diets

Everyone always talks about how terrible carbs are for you and how the world will end if you eat too many carbs and how the reason I'm so fat is because of carbs.

But....

I LOVE carbohydrates. In an immoderate sort of way.

I love rice and bread and pasta and pretty much every kind of grain made in every way. I've tried to switch to whole grains, and I do mostly consume whole grains, every time I can, but "everyone" says that that's just not enough. That's why I'm fat.

I just want to go one record saying that if I could I would have a diet that consisted entirely of bread and bagels and pasta load after pasta load. I'd never need to eat meat again. Cause I'd be so full and happy of terrible for me carbs.

The Clandestine something something Miguel Littin

This week I read This Book:

It was a good, interesting, and short read. It wasn't anything close to the usual Gabriel Garcia Marquez style but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

I read a lot of information that I hadn't previously known, read about a documentary I've never watched, and hey, I finished a new book.

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

The title somehow left me wanting more than what was given.

The book is about a couple whose lives are inexplicably intertwined throughout their lives in ways that as a reader we don't quite understand. We are sure that in his own guarded way he loves her. He is unfit for sex so they never have an affair. They are unfit as partners so he marries a suitable, docile, and other than mere introductions is never introduced again. She (the counterpart of the couple, not the barely mentioned wife) miiiiight love him, but we find out that maybe she was too traumatized by her own secrets to have loved him.

 We are sure that their paths cross many times, by her design and love, I have come to doubt.

They are both so self-conscious, guarded, and secret laden that the entire six-hund-some-odd pages they can never address each other earnestly. They're too caught up in their characters they've made for each other out of irony, sarcasm, and wit to sincerely interact. Not to spoil it for any would-be readers (though I doubt I have any readers of my own, actually) but they finally give in and in the last 15- 20 pages they share ONE embrace and have one real, honest, and upfront interaction with each other.

The book is an approximately 60 year saga of the history of newfoundland. I don't know enough of the actual history of newfoundland to quite grasp what's a joke, what's the truth, and what is poetic license. But it did teach me a bit about the country, which I always like in a book. We get to read of unionizing attempts, extreme patriotism, and inner politics. Page upon page of scenery boasting bores me but that's just because I'm that type of reader/person.

Beyond the couple's oddsandends relationship and the history of newfoundland the novel is mostly about a man's embaressing ambition. He is often "whitewayed" (a term used in the book for someone scammed) and made to look the idiot. He makes a lot of bad decisions and in some ways has understandable good intentions. He somehow ends up the first premier of NF. (To be honest I still hardly know what a premier is. I do know he is voted into place and heads the country even if it is just a province of Canada). From there he makes and takes a lot of money and.... That's sort of it. I feel like he never redeemed himself. He started out and remained a physically and otherwise small man that wasn't able to understand the people around him, make any imprint on their lives, or help anyone. He died unable to speak or see. Surprise surprise. I was waiting for the moment when he would emerge the big man, the hero with a sturdy chest, and champion something, anything. It's the idealist in me, the one that always wants a fairytale.

I secretly hope they made a canadian movie from the book so that way they'll bastardize it and make it about some ruggedly handsome scruffy man fighting for his ideals while his life is woven with love. His soulmate, tortured by both her past and her love for him, dances in and out. They share extremely passionate scenes of heartbreak. I spend 75% of the movie aching for them to see the truth and allow themselves to give in and be happy. When they are old and decrepit they finally see the follies of their ways and have nights of heartbreaking, its-too-late-now type of passion (Love in the time of Cholera style) . As watchers we cry over their lives wasted and the love not lost but carried on against all odds. A happy ending. That would be the much better version of it.

(Before I finish, let me iterate that I didn't DISLIKE the book, really. As it was unfolding I thought it was rather interesting. I was just let down and disappointed by the time it was over.)

2012 Book Challenge

This year I arbitrarily decided to set my sights high for the 2012 book challenge. Last year I did 25 books and barely made it.

This year I have decided to try and read one book a week.

It isn't the reading pace that worries me. I'm quite sure I can read at least 600 pages easily in a week. These are things that worry me:

1. Having 52 books on hand that interest me enough to read them fully. I'm a terrible reader in that I like what I like and don't appreciate EVERYTHING for the sake of it being so. I have personal taste which makes me a very bad reader indeed. Good readers have open minds and are willing to read anything and can appreciate a book for, if nothing more, than being a full book.
2. When I read I'm likely to let everything else fall to the wayside: exercising, socializing, sleeping, eating, etc. I'm known to reading-binge and not sleep for two days to get a particularly long book done. I usually don't allow myself to read much because I need a life beyond books.
3. I don't have a lot of money. So I'll need to start making serious friends with the nearest library.

Aside from those worries, I have a terrible habit of forgetting something as soon as I'm done reading it. I can keep in my brain a thousand useless facts about germs, weddings, the origins of pomelos, yet once I'm done with a book or movie, I'm done.

To help fight against this I have decided to write a small something about each book each week. Even if a 5 word impression of it. I will write SOMETHING.

Last week's book: The People of Paper by Salvador Plasencia

A year in review

So far this year (the past 4 days) I've been struggling to get into the "let's review the year" sort of mood. Usually I'm all for being retrospective, nostalgic, and metaphoric about the evenings happenings. All this new year's season I haven't been able to muster it.

It doesn't feel like something ending. Or maybe I'm just not ready for it to end.

I can barely remember what happened in 2011!! Let's see what I can think up...

• I moved into our apartment. It's had it's ups and downs, moments I just couldn't take it anymore, moments when I couldn't be happier with it, and a lot of laughs in between. (Don't forget the chronicles of the crazy neighbors). We have our dinner days which is extremely convenient. I've pretty much stopped seeing friends other than the ones I live with. I've pretty much resigned myself to Adam's mess. I've also resolved to finally MOVE IN (if you know what I mean). 
• I left my old job and was ecstatic about it. I got a new job which I was incredibly hopeful for. I worked REALLY HARD and REALLY WELL and was incredibly disappointed with the overall results. I spent most of the year in that stage. I got laid off and was happy about it, miserable about it, despondent about it, and finally accepting of it. I enter this year unemployed but still trying to maintain a bright outlook.
• I worked on about half a million hobbies: photography, painting, whittling wood, drawing, cross-stitching, rubber stamp making, jewelry making, language learning, instrument playing, puzzle doing, and countless countless others.
• I finally got around to really changing my life in regards to eating habits and exercise. I make healthier and smarter choices that make me feel better about myself when I eat. Instead of napping or watching TV or vegging around reading a book, I often choose to exercise instead. 
• I was hit-and-run, just straight out hit, my car broke down a couple of times. 
• I still don't know what I want to do with my life and if you ask I'm likely to just start crying. But on a more positive note, I do know, now, several things I DON'T want to do.
• I've learned how to fish.
• Ok, that last one is a lie. But I watch a lot of "River Monsters" late at night.
• I've planned what I would call approximately 45% of our wedding.
• I've gone to new cities I never even considered visiting (but no new countries this year).

But more importantly and much more to my satisfaction here are some things to note:

• I hardly spent any time in the hospital visiting dear/loved ones. Only a couple days or so. This is a BIG change from last year if you'll recall.
• I didn't spend ANY time in ANY funeral homes or funerals. This is also a big change from last year and a VERY welcome one.
• I spent at least 85% of the time working on being really positive, upbeat, and looking at the bright side.
• The relationship with my parents have significantly improved.
• My relationship with my dog has never stopped growing.

........

And I guess that's it really.

It's been a perfectly boring, mundane, nothing crazy happening year. I loved it. It was everything I was hoping for.

As for resolutions?

Stay tuned to another entry.

And so it is...

There is a long list of things I can do for you:

• Help you find your glasses
• Pick up your groceries
• Pick up your dry cleaning
• Answer the phones
• Drop off the check to pay your water
• Cheer you on as you swim
• Let you borrow 10 - 20 bucks here and there.

But there is a longer list of things I cannot do:

• Buy you a beautiful home
• Solve all your problems
• Help you enough to decrease the stress I see weighing you down
• Make sure you're wearing only the best and most stylish clothes at all times
• Ensure you aren't working too hard
• Make you happy.

My entire life has been accumulating this list of things I can and cannot do. Sometimes it kills me that certain things are on the list of things I cannot do.

What I wore today

I wish I could wear my fleece tights and wool shorts EVERY day.