when you were young you were the king of carrot flowers

the first time:
we licked popsicle off our thumbs
and counted to ten with our faces in the hot brick
and we wished we were twenty five
the second time:
we washed our hands of dirty chucks and pop punk
and realized our parents were only human
and we wished we were eleven
when the sun would drip with promise
and we were all skinned knees and endless afternoons

you are still endless, just-
different
more dark and infinite and distant with words that sting like
the spaces between the stars
and you want to know
i know you do
and you understand
because who doesn't nowadays
but we're the clenched fist
white knuckle bloody ragged nails sliced palms
and you act like it doesn't matter
and maybe it doesn't to you
but we curdle and you smile
and sometimes i wonder if we were better off as children

i be on that crip tonight

i've been home for a week & a half now, acclimatizing to the temperatures and the sight of white people and yeah, mostly the food. speaking of which i've started on a diet as of yesterday and already with the loss of water weight and whatnot i'm down almost 5 lbs already, sweet. so far i've cleaned out my room and sorted out a lot of my things, and started pursuing jobs. my short term plan is to find a job by march, then have my own place by april. i feel bad living off my parents again and i hate losing the independance that comes with having your own home and space, but it's okay. i also have to get my full license so i can cap off the freedom completely. ah well.

it's snowing like crazy here and i feel unequipped to deal with these temperatures, but there's a noticeable difference between cold in canada and cold in china. china has that damp snap to it that works its way into your joints and ices the tips of your toes. canada's got that dry cold that is actually tolerable despite extreme temp.

today i have to email my resume out, tomorrow going to the grandparents and seeing some old friends, saturday going to party, sunday is pipe band performance/practice. man oh man did i miss drumming and the uncomfortable creak of ghillies on the tootsies.

i love finding new bands and listening to them all day and finding these incredible songs that become my new soundtrack. i've been listening to jawbreaker, sunny day reak estate, mineral, rites of spring and jimmy eat world, etc for quite a few years - all the old school emo stuff before anyone had romances with chemicals or confessed to dashboards - but i never really listened to samiam, having thought for some reason they were 90's hardcore. yeah, i don't know either. i'm just blown away by how great they are, i missed listening to honest to goodness emo music with that raw, non-overproduced edge to it. the kind that makes your breath catch a little and you'll keep humming a few days after your first listen. i'm actually feeling that way about the new feist album too and i know everyone and their grandma is listening to it but it's just so ridiculously catchy.

okay, so this is the ol winter day playlist for those mornings when your feet are cold and there's snow in the window and you have no committments.

1. feist - i feel it all
2. tragically hip - bobcaygeon
3. silversun pickups - lazy eye
4. arcade fire - rebellion (lies)
5. patrick wolf - magic position
6. yael naim - new soul
7. kate nash - foundations
8. okkervil river - savannah smiles
9. the national - fake empire
10. jeremy enigk - on the wayside
11. samiam - sunshine
12. bob dylan - song to woody

come in she said i'll give ya shelter from the storm

more snow today...i can't get over how stunning it is. we went for lunch at the radisson with chris and auntie lin, huge buffet, lots of sushi and red beans a la pineapple. came home and watched lost all day. i love that show, dominic monaghan somehow managed to still come across as meriadoc brandybuck despite black nailpolish and a heroin addiction. also ian somerhalder is gorgeous, so, you know.

we're doing bbq tomorrow with ivy and lisa, then friday is pancakes with kim and sightseeing. i like these busy weeks that fly by, from one weekend to the next. argh.

with your feet in the air and your head on the ground

Another lazy Monday topped with a spot of shopping and 9 new rows on my scarf. I like the ethereal quality of Mew and Muse and Modest Mouse in the afternoon, and organizing photos and buying new pretty things to drape around my neck. Tomorrow we're playing tourist and visiting some temples and scenic spots around West Lake so I can take some final snapshots of this beautiful city. Two weeks, my friend(s). Another expiry date to stamp onto this year of finalities. Too bad I'm happier than I've ever been; I can savour what I have because I have learned what it is to exist in transition, to always be living in the temporary.

The new iPod touch is a truly stunning piece of machinery so hopefully in a year from now when my 30gb video iPod has kicked the crApple battery bucket, I can trade it in for summa dat free WiFi. In the meantime I am going to invest 50 bucks in an ipod speaker deal like I've got here in HZ. The only thing that absolutely destroys me is the fact that I paid the equivalent of 15 bucks for my speakers here, and now I'll have to shell out a small fortune for the same thing. Argh! I have a hard enough time justifying shelling out for anything that equates $5 here, how am I supposed to go back to a $9.99 society?

Last night it snowed for the first time since I've been here. Just wet snow, the kind that sticks to your hair and coat and melts all wet and warm. The kids were so excited, scraping it off the cars and balling it in their fists, huge smiles all over their faces. It felt like the first time I'd ever seen it; I couldn't stop laughing at how happy they were, and I must have looked really stupid giggling to myself on my walk home. By this morning it had melted but the windows were fogged and the air was cold and crisp, our cheeks ruddy in the wind and our fingers bright red as we ventured out to Wulin Square.

Tonight: three classes, wok steak & salad, Roswell. I hope it snows again.

in which our gal takes up knitting

there it is, my biggest achievement to date: knitting a "headband" over the course of a day! this initially began as a scarf but it ended up being too wide and a little wonky. fantastic.

it's so strange that it's 2008 now. where did 2007 go? i assume it has been laid to rest somewhere in a vault amidst poofy sleeves and flavor of love re-runs. christmas here was good, one i think i'll always remember. we had wine and cheese and christmas pie, things were warm and we laughed and teased my dad over sound of music then had an incredible buffet dinner. it definitely wasn't typical but it was just as good as what we've always done at home. i guess what makes it work is the people who are there - home is wherever your family is, be it china or fergus.

new years was a little less family-oriented, seeing as richard and i put away a bottle of champagne each. theresa and i visited richard and sam and yeah, chris even made an appearance. we had pasta and dingo fell in love with chris's right leg. the next day was off so we slept and shopped and i ached a little over leaving my life here. however, life is about change and what we make of it. so that's that.

speaking of shopping - we (theresa and i) woke up early today and took to the streets. nothing compares to hot milktea at 10am and that feeling of having the whole day ahead of you, stretching out all warm and lazy. i bought some candles and a toque/beanie/whatever (i'm progressively losing my canadian-isms and any semblance of the english language) plus season tree of 4400. and the knitting supplies. theresa just took off for work so i'm going to whip up some dinner - we're going to the night market in a couple hours, and i'm not really looking to buy anything, maybe just black ugg style boots if i can find them in my size and undoubtedly some sort of scarf since i can apparently not walk two feet without buying one.

this is easily the funniest/strangest thing ever...taken from danwei.org:

2008 is barely a week old and already the Chinese blogosphere is exploding with snark about a badly made, CCTV propaganda program about the dangers of the Internet. The program featured a young girl who claimed to have seen a shocking web page that was 'very yellow [i.e. pornographic], very violent'.

danger will robinson! she claimed that the web page randomly "popped up" which is leading to speculation from Chinese netizens about how it is possible for such a thing to happen unless actively pursued or clicked on. i feel bad for the girl but still, CCTV has once again enriched everyone's lives with its hilarity. thanks, china!

with burnt sage and a forest of bygones

i tried to make it feel photoboothy but who are we fooling. i'm spending every waking second with my stupid cat. make it count. he sleeps folded up like a pretzel against my arm, nose pressed to my hand and if i move just a little bit he'll lick my knuckle and mewl in protest. my heart breaks everytime i look at him, i hate being so attached to an animal that i'll never see again in three weeks. not even ten years with our fat old tabby at home have compared to the four months raising a kitten and teaching him not to pee on the couch (he still does) or headbutt my hand when i'm trying to fill his food dish (yep, he still does). when i'm home and living in my own little $600 a month bachelor in guelph, i hope to get a cat from the humane society, preferably one over it's couch peeing and headbutting phases, aka 2 or 3 years old, maybe older. i just really enjoy the companionship of a pet which is probably why i will grow up to own five hundred surly tabbies and never marry.

oddly enough i cannot wait to go home now that i know it's really happening. i keep picturing what i'll do, those early morning walks for coffee and taking up a million hobbies. i have to-do lists for my to-do lists at this point. i want to learn mandarin and sewing and figure out how to bake a pie and knit a scarf. i think i can do anything now; living alone halfway across the world from what you know has a certain way of empowering you. funnily enough the only thing that now terrifies me is jumping back into the advertising industry. i'm afraid i won't be good enough or that i'm so out of touch with marketing that i'll fall flat on my face. who knows.

i am now an avid fan of neutral milk hotel, matt pond pa, and the new shins and against me! albums. i am also hooked on the 4400. i consume media faster than hz consumes mi fan.

i'm trying to make a diary/journal deal of my experiences here in china, and i have quite a few pages now of taped tickets and horrible poetry that only manages to wax pathetic. i wish i could write. i think i can i think i can i think i can.

i remain yours faithfully,

the consummate cat lady

you've got me listening to zwan, that's never a good sign.

i wish for the life of me that i could figure you out.

wait, they don't love you like i love you

a lot has happened since my last update almost three weeks ago. it's weird how your life can change in a split second; one moment you have your course mapped out, you're happy, and the next moment you have no idea what happened, what you're going to do, how to even put one foot in front of the other. last weekend i found out the melanoma my dad had - that had supposedly been removed through surgery on his shoulder - had actually spread before the surgery, leaving him with cancer in his liver. i was so hopeful that it would be gone, and i honestly thought it would be okay, and now i realize that a lot of it was my parents trying not to make me and my brother worry. i don't really want to talk about it a lot but these things happen and you just have to try to deal with it. i've processed it over the past week and i've been talking to my dad through e-mail and skype a lot and trying to support my mom as much as possible since she she's stressed out and worried. my parents seem to be okay though, regardless of how surreal this whole thing is. they're all coming for christmas next week, well my mom comes on friday and then dave, my dad, and tory are coming next tuesday from shanghai and staying til the following saturday. as i said my dad seems to be in good spirits and he's been visiting our pastor back at home, so i'm drawing comfort from his positivity.

because of all of this, i'm going to be moving back home to canada when the semester ends in about a month. i'm sad about leaving china because the eight months i've spent so far have been some of the best in my life - i love my job, i love my apartment, i love my friends, i love my daily life here. i love my dad more than any of these things though, and i want to spend as much time with him as possible and be there to support my parents and my brother. i've re-evaluated what i need to do, job prospects in advertising/design when i'm back home, and started looking at apartments in my parent's town/the surrounding area. i guess this is a new chapter, a hard one, but i'm looking at it as a challenge and a chance to grow, a chance to be closer to the people i love the most both in physical distance and an emotional sense. things happen for a reason, i've always believed that, and i believe god has our lives planned out for us from the moment we're created, he knows every step of our path even if we don't. i have to believe that and have faith that he can take care of my dad and the rest of my family, no matter what the circumstances or to what ends.

my life over the past month has otherwise been full and i'm appreciating each moment i have left here. theresa and i hosted a big christmas party for all our friends a couple weeks back, and this past weekend the school had their big annual christmas program, in which the foreign teachers sang and danced to rudolph the red-nosed reindeers to thunderous applause. i'm looking forward to christmas and seeing my family, and in a way i'm also looking forward to new year's, because i know 2008 is going to be a tough but important year.

All I ever wanted was to be your spine.

Really good playlist right now; I call this "songs to put your feet up to":

1. The Mercy Seat - Johnny Cash
2. Teardrop - Massive Attack
3. Sidottu - 76
4. You will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. (live cover) - Snow Patrol
5. Star Symbols - Jets to Brazil
6. Shelter from the Storm - Bob Dylan
7. Come Together - The Beatles
8. Untitled 03 - Brand New
9. The One Who Loves You the Most - Brett Dennen
10. Love of the Loveless - Eels
11. 1234 - Feist
12. My List - The Killers
13. Call Me Ishmael - Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
14. In My Secret Life - Leonard Cohen
15. Yours to Keep - Teddybears & Paola
16. Amsterdam - Peter Bjorn & John
17. Vexed - Say Anything
18. Vapour Trail - Ride
19. Once Upon a Time - Smashing Pumpkins
20. Back in Your Head - Tegan & Sara

I wish I had to dedication to sit down and update this every day, let alone once a month. I vowed to write in here weekly but it's just too hard.. it's like, living here and all these experiences have now become my typical daily routine over the last half year, so it seems pointless and petty to talk about anything I do. I have to remind myself that my day-to-day life is a complete 180 from anyone back home, routine or not. Be it the loud songs of the cardboard collector biking around at 6am, the crabs being sold on the sidewalk, the little things like drinking hot milktea and dodging bicycles, listening to a busker playing an erhu, weekly foot massages, tiny twisting hutong alleys, laundry drying on tree branches and across phonelines, monks buying food in Carrefour, and all the other things that make China and Hangzhou what they are. I can't imagine myself not experiencing these things, they are as much a part of my life now as sleeping and eating and working.

I don't know why I always sound so brooding and/or pretentious when I post here. I'm actually really happy, sitting here in my woolen cap and pajama pants and having just cleaned the ears of my kitten with q-tips. It's cold, but there's a heater by my feet and tiny white Christmas lights to my left. I have the day off tomorrow and I plan to go to a contemporary art exhibition near Wushan Square, maybe see if there's anything for sale that I can hang in my room. I feel a sense of ownership towards my bedroom now, and maybe that sounds strange, but finally after six months I feel like I've staked a claim on it, made it personal, a sanctuary of sorts. I've only ever felt like that towards my bedroom back home at my parents' place in Canada, so it's kind of a new experience.

I honestly would like to marry Wentworth Miller for the following reasons:

1. He has no sense of humour but I'm kooky enough to make up for what he lacks, so look, we complete each other.
2. He went to Harvard.
3. He has fake tattoos.
4. He has a strange ethnic background.
5. He isn't built or anything which makes him easily the most appealing man on television.
6. I just really like making numbered lists.

I'm never situating a computer 4 feet away from a cat's litterbox again. This is life lesson number 290423 that I will take home from China.

no caps & run-ons but it should satisfy my parents

i missed being in china and feeling like my life was stretching out in front of me, brilliant and golden and mysterious, maybe even uncontrollable. those two weeks back in canada threw me off, i wasn't sure whether who i was supposed to be - danielle the teacher abroad going on all sorts of bizarre adventures in a foreign land or danielle the dippy advertising student who drinks too much and gets awkward at the worst times. i'm happy to be back though because i missed this feeling of complete independance. the thing is i still have to learn a lot about myself and piece these odds and ends together, there are new ones turning up every day so it's sort of hard. half a year ago i was terrified of, say, going into a restaurant and eating alone because i thought everyone would think i'm a loner or something but being here has made me infinitely more confident in myself and my abilities in doing something even as simple as going out to eat alone or shopping alone or even seeing a movie alone, and i guess to some degree it was originally out of necessity but after a while it becomes nice, devoting time to yourself and letting yourself just breathe, away from people and separated from everybody around because of the language barrier. hearing people speaking chinese has just become like white noise to me- it secludes me. that isn't to say i don't like being around other people - i've always been social and i'm happiest when i'm animated with my friends, so i can confidently say i'm enjoying having my friend theresa living and working with me, especially just to share the simple day to day things like doing groceries or watching a movie or the act of being able to cook up some dinner to share with someone else.

a starbucks opened about a seven minutes walk away from our apartment so we went yesterday on the way to getting groceries, and then i went back this morning to just sit and plan my lessons for tomorrow and friday. it's incredible because it literally JUST opened so when you go in, there's really only ever like 6 other people there but it's so huge and air conditioned and clean and wonderful, plus they have outlets so i can write and do lessons and what have you on the ol macbook. i have the most vague outline in my head right now for a book on living in china, mostly just a lot of my own strange daily experiences in it plus things like tips and recipes and tidbits i've picked up over the last three and a half months. i think it's going to be geared towards women and i might end up just having it online, like a blog or a site i guess but a book would be cool too. i don't know, this is something i have to think about but it would be a cool project. i also have to start working on my advertising portfolio since i have finally settled on being a copywriter or account exec if getting a job on the creative side is still difficult in a year from now. i want to work in shanghai next year at an ad agency, even if it's only for six months or something, since my contract at victory english school ends next july so i guess we'll see. 10 months is a long enough time to mull things over. at the very least i am going to bring my laptop to starbucks tomorrow and start working on both portfolio and book so at least i feel like i'm making decisions and being productive.

today i bought a plant and a bunch of dvds (billy elliott, mummy 1 and 2, breakfast at tiffanys, the reaping, knocked up, harry potter and the order of the pheonix, etc), and i have tonight off so i'm making tacos while theresa's at work and then when she's back, kim's coming over so we can have a laowai mexican fiesta. i'm happy and sort of well-adjusted and i'm wearing an astroboy t-shirt so pretty much my life is good right now.

as an aside - the greatest song that i have heard in a very long time is "the crane wife 1 and 2" by the decemberists. i forgot all about that story until i started listening to it; japanese folklore dictates that a man finds a crane bleeding out in the snow one day, so despite the fact that he is very poor he takes it in and nurses it back to health until it's ready to fly away. not long after a beautiful woman shows up at his door and it isn't long before they are married, but because he has no money she offers to weave for him. she makes these beautiful silk pieces that they sell at the market, they're softer and shinier than anyone else's and she continues to make them under the condition that he is never to go into the room she is in when she's making the silk. however over time he gets greedy and makes her work harder and harder so they can make more and more money, so she becomes tired. one day he opens the door of her weaving room and looks in, and he's shocked to find that she's actually the crane he rescued that one day, and she plucks out her feathers to weave into the cloth - that is what makes it so soft and beautiful - but because he has worked her so hard, she's lost almost all her feathers. when she finds out she has been discovered, she leaves the house and flies away. needless to say the song is as impossibly beautiful as the story.