-Montreal Calling-

There is a payphone outside the college
But it doesn�t accept incoming calls
From payphones in Canada
So I stood by the phone in the lab
All hormones and nerves
Talking to someone I had never met
Canada traffic sounds just like American traffic
When you hear it through a phone line

Maybe he is right after all, maybe all of this is me just trying to capture some piece of what I left behind, what I lost, what I gave up... but I don't think so. This feels... hm. I guess in some ways it feels the way I remember feeling as a child, on those field trips into Portland from Tillamook... the long wait... the drive, with distractions and reactions and a bus that smelled faintly of cows and cleaning liquid... then the memorial, looking up, reading off the names of the dead... and for just a moment, remembering them, thinking of the war, of what was lost and gained... then the rest of the day spent elsewhere, at the science museum, shopping, in the parks, discovering an entire life that maybe wouldn't be here if it weren't for that past... but forgetting the past in the process, moving on, inventing the future. I feel like that, like I am inventing a future, like I have a chance to shape the world into something I want it to be.

I'm still sick. I am supposed to try to see a doctor today... emergency rooms and naturopaths, the promise of hours spent waiting for nothing helpful. Tomorrow my bard arrives, not the kitten but someone... hm. Physically older. Emotionally younger. The bard is going to see me at my worst, sick, tired, grouchy, miserable... and I find myself glad of this, that the worst will be OVER with after this, that he will not get some false picture.

I think I'm going to have to stop writing soon... I'm dizzy. Part of that is lack of food - I am lousy about taking care of myself when I am sick, I expect everyone else to do it so I can just lie back and try to get BETTER... unfortunately, this doesn't work too well all the time. Especially when my throat hurts so much that eating is nearly impossible. I am starving, but it hurts enough to eat that I have avoided doing so. *shrug* I'll eat when I am hungry enough, I suppose.

I read boy-ashamed's latest entry... I think he is too hard on himself. I also think he is too hard on those around him. *wry grin* He's a perfectionist in his own way... he may not admit it, but he wants the world to measure up to his maths - neat, orderly, and easily solved just by following directions. *shrug* Can't blame him... I want the world to fit my writing, beautiful and perfect, and always with an ending that leaves everyone happy or dead, no in-betweens, nothing out of place... a world that I can organize into neat paragraphs, where I know who is the hero and who is just a bit-part.

Pity it's not that way.