your glittering evening dress

I'm home. I'm so glad. I will be even more glad tomorrow night when I no longer have to share 30 square feet of living space with my father. Awkward.

New year's eve. There will be some serious absconding to Elise's tonight. Maybe I'll even dress up.

If I love you, I'm going to do it semi-automatically.

It doesn't seem to matter where I am. Leaving is always hard.

My drafting table and my teak coffee table are in pieces on my living room floor. My clothes are everywhere. Viola, my first plant, is joining my father and I for the trip. We're sneaking the relic Royal typewriter into the car with us without my mother's knowledge. I get custody of the sheep's wool rug. My incredibly emo high school art portfolio has finally been dredged up from the depths of my closet. I have more stuff than I thought, but it will all fit.

I am being uprooted. I am uprooting myself. I don't live here anymore. I've been saying it for months now: I live in Victoria. This is my home. And it is. And when I think of what I'm going home to, who I'm going home to, I know I won't miss it. But, you know, I have a strange, masochistic, self-loathing affinity for this place, which I don't really like to admit. Nineteen years in one city is a long time. I'll miss the skyline at night the most.

Ready to party like it's 1984.

We got the dregs of the last West Coast storm. The roads are absolute fucking arse and it's cold. Finally. I had lunch with Char and Luca (who lives on the second floor) and ate the entire planet. I bought things. Like hot underwear and a rust coloured turtleneck frock extravaganza. I have a half-finished poem in my Scraps folder. I'm tired. I want so many things, and none of them are here.

2.5

It's snowing.

Last night I cut my own hair to avoid self-destructive behavior. It looks good.

I want to go home.

came home with a mission

I haven't even been here two weeks and already my bedroom is a complete fucking catastrophe. I don't know what it is about this city, but I just can't seem to keep my shit together here. This, of course, is the case on many levels. I need to clean so badly. And make cards. And play Scrabble with my mother. And start packing. And finish the poem I started last night and collage the bottom of my longboard and spend my Christmas money. But my uterus is trying to kill me and I have Girl Blues and everything just seems like such a big chore. I want to listen to Shawn Colvin and read the Globe in bed wearing nothing except my underwear until Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, there never seems to be any time for this. Ever.

Auras

I am drunk almost to the point of unconsciousness.

This is how Christmas away from one's significant other should always be spent.

I'm tired of walking around with my hand on my gun.

I'm eating a breakfast of cold fish and chips out of a styrafoam take-away container. Fries are not good after they've been refrigerated for twelve hours.

Yuletide domestic upheaval = me keeping quiet. There's nothing of much interest to report anyway.

I wouldn't mind spending tomorrow alone. As sort of a protest. Or something.

Fuck.

That's all.

Remixin'

I think if a black scarf, a black turtleneck, moccasins, and a pair of girl-boy underwear was an outfit suitable to wear in public, my life would probably be complete.

The sun, it came burning.

I have been stoned for what feels like forever. This is, for the most part, wonderful. I couldn't recount the last week to save my life if you asked me right now, but I woke up this morning and realized that next Friday, I'll be on the road to the V-Dot.

Whatever, man. I'm like cilantro: I get five percent of the population and the other ninety-five hates my guts.

This is where I'll be whenever you come or go.

I looked everywhere.

It's dumb, I know, but I was just kind of hoping.

Gender bending is fun.

The end.

i miss living alone

Today I:
- wrote a letter
- mailed things
- saw Kate (!)
- collaged my handmade longboard
- worked on Brit J. Bates' Christmas present
- studiously avoided the Ben & Jerry's ice cream stand in Eau Claire
- lost my camera
- found my camera
- got along with city transit for the first time in human history
- smoked in my bedroom
- thought dirty thoughts

Where's that at? If You want me, I'll be in the bar.

Last night, I cried when Fraulein Maria and Captain von Trapp confessed their undying love for one another.

And now I'm drinking Italian Shiraz - holy wine - and chain smoking clove cigarettes at twenty past twelve in the afternoon.

This is how sad and pathetic I have become.

I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel.

I picked the wrong day to gallivant around town in a pair of cotton ballet flats. However. Tea with the poet laureate wouldn't have been quite the same if it was sunny out. She seems to think I'm prolific enough to put out a Collected Works one day. I told her she was giving me too much credit. She looked at me like I had two heads. I dare you to start submitting, she said. Double dare.

My Tarot readings have been really murky these last couple of days. It's making me nervous. They've been predicting things like civil unrest and stagnation and infidelity and deceit and new beginnings. Three days running, the six of wands has shown up in the future. A journey by water or air... I would stop caring so much, but they're always right. There is so much to do today. So much packing. So much recycling. Fortunately, all my laundry is clean for the first time in what feels like all of human history. I have to catch the airport shuttle at five thirty tomorrow morning. All day I've been feeling really sad, and only half an hour ago did I figure out why. Blegh. Calgary. Here I come.

Yesterday,

a woman who works in OPUS fawned over Stephanie Christella and I for a good five minutes - because we accidentally wound up wearing sort of the same outfit - and told us she wanted to hang us from her Christmas tree. With meat hooks.

I am a lonely painter: I live in a box of paints.

My room is looking emptier and emptier by the day. Tonight I'm painting and yours is finished. I have five billion dollars worth of laundry to do tomorrow because I haven't put a wash through the cycle since the third week of November and this time I'm actually running out of underwear. I have two days left in Chelsea Hotel. I have an exam on Thursday that I should really be studying for right now, but I'm not because I can only concentrate on one thing for any extended period of time and it's not Forms and Techniques in Poetry. Victoria is so cozy at Christmas time with all the lights in the trees on Government street and the fake pine branches festooning the rafters in Market Square, but you're not here to frolic with me through cobblestone squares and alleys all dressed up in their electric yuletide costumes. A week ago, we were in Cadboro Bay eating cashews and freezing through our coats and marvelling at the moonlight washing the whole beach like thinned out watercolours. Tonight, there's no moon because it's been raining all day, and you're not here. And I am slowly going insane.

we strain for it

I have the hugest craving on the planet for perogies and a certain member of my workshop whose name I will not mention is almost entirely to blame. I could just sit here and eat rice crackers instead (which is what I'm currently doing), but I have a feeling this won't work and I'll consume 230948904570398590327 milligrams of salt for nothing and wind up going to the grocery store to buy perogies anyway. The funny part is that I know this is what's going to happen, and yet I'm still eating the rice crackers. LOL @ my eating habits.

Last night I painted for the first time in six months and I almost died of pure joy. It kind of made me wish I was an art student instead. But if I was an art student instead I wouldn't have you. And I still get a discount at the art supply store, so I win.

These rice crackers are burning my mouth. They remind me of the ceyenne you put in your tea. The tea I won't drink again until January. SIGH. And my It's Too Early to Start Pining campaign was going so well. Oh well. Who needs mental health over winter break anyway. Not me.

Chelsea Hotel is moving.

This house is a hundred and fifteen years old.
I know. You're all really jealous.

Dear everyone,

Profuse apologies for my absense from Little Black Dot. I've missed it as much as you have, believe me. Hostel internet is currently being the most gay socks thing in the universe and I've had no connectivity for the last four days. However, all is not lost,
seeing as I've been too busy living to blog anyway.

News in brief:
- I love Elise.
- It looks as if Chelsea Hotel is moving into a decrepit old character house painted various shades of Easter Egg in FAIRFIELD (!!!) at the beginning of January. This is infinitely exciting.
- The ocean is one of the only reasons I'm even alive.
- Moonlight is the best kind of natural lighting ever of life.
- Half my workshop apparently is comprised of Roman Catholics.

Love,
Chelsea

You live a double life.

Today I am endeavoring back into fiction. This should be... Interesting.

It's been so long.

This is also worth noting

because it only further proves that weird, weird things are happening in the universe.

Yesterday I beat both Steph and Elise at Scrabble. And I was stoned.

The end.

Peace out.

If you ask, that's what I'll say.

Classes are done.

December is already shaping up to be an even more bizarre month than November was. And judging by November, well, whatever.

I'm angsting for no apparent reason. Most likely, I just need to consume something that isn't French cheese/ stoned wheat thins/ dried figs. And/or remember there's nothing left to angst about.