something is wrong in my life.

i just turned down free marijuana.

tonight i had a conversation with the tarot instead of doing my reading.

chelsea: am i ready to fall in love again?
tarot: yes.
chelsea: is anyone in my life attracted to me right now?
tarot: maybe.
chelsea: will i get involved with this person in the coming months?
tarot: maybe.
chelsea: will the next person i get involved with be a woman?
tarot: probably.
chelsea: will i ever experience requited love?
tarot: please ask again later.

today, i am twenty-one.
it's already ten to five, and idealistically, the rest of my birthday would look like this:
pizza from ali baba on fort street.
a joint.
the first half of season two of the l-word.
realistically, the rest of my birthday will look like this:
pizza from ali baba on fort street.
sobriety.
a term paper on margaret atwood's "death of a young son by drowning" as a depiction of a canada.
this is my own fault. i could ostensibly have written this paper ten days ago. i made this stupid bed and now i have to lie in it, but sometimes, like today, when i'm having a mental breakdown, it's just easier to say
fuck you, academia. you are so lame.

ok.
all i want to do with my life right now is
grow out my hair.
drop out of school.
take the money i have and live off it for as long as it lasts me
in the chelsea hotel.

i am so not kidding.

soon i will stop talking about the apocalypse

but today i wonder if
the apocalypse i'm afraid of is the one
the universe has made for me or
the one i'm making for myself.

lol, universe?

- i was freaking out about the apocalypse, and the ghost straight up knocked my easel over! like, onto me. and that doesn't make sense. my easel doesn't just FALL OVER.
- yeah, elise told me about that.
- like, what does that mean?! does that mean the ghost is telling me to chill the fuck out? or does that mean the ghost is telling me i'm going to die in the apocalypse?!
- i don't know, man.
- i asked the tarot cards if i was going to die in the apocalypse, and they said:
maybe.

about three weeks ago, on a tuesday, after what may very well have been my worst workshop ever, i lost my umbrella. i realized i left it somewhere about ten minutes after i got on a bus home. i figured it was sitting on a bench at the fine arts bus stop and i would never see it again because i simply didn't have the energy to go back for it, and even if i did, it probably would have been gone by the time i got there. it was a nice umbrella. it was my dad's umbrella. i somehow manage to lose almost everything that man gives me.
today when i left my house to go to my professional writing advisory council meeting, it was pouring down rain and i thought, fuck, i wish i hadn't lost that umbrella. i would really like to be dry right now. after the meeting, i waited outside the writing office for lynne to get her coat and what should i see out of the corner of my eye but MY UMBRELLA stowed on top of the faculty mail boxes?! lorna made a joke about simple pleasures, and then we all went to lunch at the university club. lorna and the lynnes told me i have a beautiful head and i ate a cheese omelet.
then, magically the sun came out and i bought groceries and my afternoon is being spent cleaning and smoking and editing workshop poems. i've been overcome by some kind of post-apocalyptic bliss and i actually think it's high time i smoke a bowl. high time.

i am exhausted in a way i don't recognize.
tonight i will slip into a coma and wake up in time for my art history class, and whether or not i bother to shower, i will feel cleaner somehow. cleansed.
she says, the universe is realigning itself.
i say, this is the season for sleeping, for healing.

there's holes in all the bottles and my lungs hurt.

today was a weird fucking day.
there are still green leaves on the chestnut trees, but winter is coming and everyone knows it.
i'm sad and anxious and lonely and all i want to do tonight is paint my canvases and crawl into my bed with you already curled inside it, but you aren't here and there is no time for painting because there are notes to be taken and cover letters to be written and decisions to be made.
on the bright side,
the government of canada contacted me today.
they said, happy thanksgiving, chelsea.
here's a cheque for seventy-two dollars and seventy cents.
and i said to the envelope in my hands, thanks, government of canada.
you sure do have impeccable timing.

i was right about last week.
last week, i finally learned
that chickpeas and garbanzo beans are the same thing,
and i saw my first ever raccoon.
milestones, right?

i have real hair again. it has stopped being post-head-shave fuzz and resumed being hair. it's nice. it's nice to have that reminder that at least some parts of me are growing. also, my head is warmer.

this week, i think, is going to be a week of things
to be remembered.
my mother, if she were here, would call it a milestone.

chelsea is smooth.

she says: i want to see you. let's make it happen.
i say: i want to take a bath in your clawfoot tub.
so smooth.
smooth like water.
smooth like steam.