I had a dream last night that the world had ended. I have post-apocalyptic dreams every now and again. It’s strange because they’re not always nightmares (although I do have the zombies chasing me through the abandoned, sun-bleached streets dreams now and again… doesn’t everyone?)

The difference between this dream and the others was the method by which the world had ended. In a lot of my dreams, it’s post-war, or invasion of aliens, or just plain breakdown of human civilization into small groups of nomads that kill to survive. Again, the usual. This time though, the world ended through water… that is, a flood.

My dream took place after the flood, although there was the constant feeling of impending doom throughout – like I had to hurry, because destruction and danger were imminent. The water was mostly gone, although everything was still wet, with puddles everywhere. At one point, I made my way to my water logged, almost fully crumbled home, to crawl around in the depths and try to recover my things to take with me to my new life. The basement was exposed to the elements, and seemed to be all that was left of my home (although it’s not my real home, I live in a condo… so some dream home). My things floated in the water. I had the strangest feeling that important things were strewn throughout, under water, in floating boxes and furniture.

I had to hurry to recover everything, because the last humans (as far as I knew) that were still alive were all in a beaten up bus outside, and I knew that they were leaving very soon, with or without me. They had to. I had spent all of my time at home searching for something (I’m not sure what the item was that I seemed to need so badly) that I hadn’t packed all of the necessities that I could scrounge up: clothes (that were still some how intact… lots of socks into the bag, don’t want to get trench-foot!), weapons, food (again, somehow still good).

I had a split second to choose: do I stay here and keep looking for whatever it is that is drawing me deeper into the depths? Do I leave what might be my only opportunity to stay with other people behind, in favour for a life that could be nothing but perpetual fright, perpetual solitude?

Somehow, I knew I had already chosen to stay, for some reason I couldn’t fathom. But a second before I had to make the decision and experience the consequences of my choice, I woke up.

1. A 50th wedding anniversary. I want to live blissfully with my husband, long after our looks have faded, our spines have curved and taken away our height and our hair has faded to ash. I want to look back on our lives together and think, we are the lucky ones. We are the ones that overcame all odds to make our lives meaningful, intertwined, complete. Together.

2. So many creative published works that I can’t begin to keep track of them. Narratives that succeed in making people feel something as they read, that can take people from monotony, and for some, a day or even a life of moments that never added up to a sum of what they hoped for. To feel love, hate, excitement, possibility, from words I’ve created.

3. A knowledge that I have made my community a better place, and the sense of accomplishment that comes with that. I want to make a difference in the lives of others by doing good things, all things in my power, to change the world around me for the better. I want to be able to say that I donated blood as many times as my body could handle, I saved someone’s life with donated bone marrow, I made someone else’s day better by volunteering my time with a smile, with interest, with an open ear.

4. I want to have children that grow up and say, she was the best mother she could be. I want to be emotionally and physically involved in their lives, I want them to know that I’m interested, I care, my attention and intentions are captivated and sincere. I want them to grow up knowing that I actually did think their best efforts were worth something, from finger-painting to education to a successful, happy life.

5. Worldly knowledge and experience. I want to have been to every continent, explored not only the commercial “fun” tourist places but also deep, less frequented territory harboring interesting people with stories unlike anything I can imagine, being so ingrained my own world view. I want to have a better understanding of varying cultures, especially the ones that most conflict with my own understanding of the world.

6. A great insight into the human experience. The motivations that spur people toward acts of greatness or of tyranny or of grace. I want to understand and have insight into stark, bare human emotions that make us all real, and the same. When social graces and egos and expectations fall by the wayside and people are just what and who they are at their core.

7. I want to have adopted as many animals as I can manage from bad situations – knowing that coming home with me means they’ll have a beautiful, happy life instead of an unstable or unpredictable fate.

8. I want to have read so many books  that no matter what situation, or the taste of the person I’m speaking with, we can find one we’ve mutually experienced and can find common ground for discussion.

9. I want to have made amends in my heart and in my mind with all of the cracks that have fractured my faith in the people I love most, or those that even in the absence of a love that can only stem from familiarity – are meaningful and permanent in my life. I want to understand, relate to and feel a genuine, peaceful acceptance toward a family that keeps everyone at arms length under the guise of intimacy and connectedness. I want to understand what connection I have to my father, as my understanding of life widens the gap between my memories and my expectations of him. As my grief has melted away over the years, I’ve had a harder and harder time reconciling within myself whether or not I have genuinely missed a present father, or rather the idea of one. I want to be really, absolutely alright with all the things I’ve bitterly missed and wished I could have had in a relationship with my mother. I want to feel a sense of completeness and wholeness that I was never able to feel in either of those relationships. I want to accept what is real, instead of falling self-pityingly into the hole inside that I dug for myself from a longing that has always been greater than fulfillment or satisfaction. I want to be able to say: much of it was not what I expected, needed or wanted. But it was what I had. And I’m alright with that.

10. I want to have that sense of home and interconnectedness that only comes from having a family I’ve built for myself, from residing in a meaningful, prominent place within it. A family in which emotional connections and intimacy takes precedent over convenience or selfishness.

11. I want to have lived in busy cities all over the world. Toronto, London, Rome, L.A., to name a few. Even if only for long enough to get sick of them. Where my husband-to-be and I can be loud and brash and young, and have to make no apologies for any of it.

12. I want to have lived in a home on the water, where I can sit out in the sun in the mornings and read or write to the sound of waves and birds instead of car horns and the din of thousands making their way across the city. Where peacefulness is not something to be sought after, but rather richly immersed in, naturally and easily.

13. An adopted child that knows she’s as important and loved as my other children.

14. A six-pack and the ability to run 10k without wanting to promptly vomit and/or jump off a cliff just thinking about it.

15. A healthy and accepting relationship with my own body. An acceptance for every part of who I am physically, instead of alienation and contempt that I sometimes feel for my own form.

16. Confidence and utter acceptance of my abilities, opinions and self worth that cannot be shaken, compromised or brought into question by the hands or words of another human being.

17. A tiny, weird looking, self-righteous, bad-tempered chihuahua and a gigantic, gentle natured, sweetheart Great Dane at the same time. Preferably the Chihuahua will learn to ride the Great Dane– hilarity will ensue.

18.  A trophy from winning a dance competition with my favourite dance partner… belly button buddies.

19. Faced all of my fears, and risen from their hindrances to a place where I know I can do anything. Giving blood to overcome my fear of needles was the first step. Heights, you’re next… I want to jump out of a plane by the time I’m 30.

20. I want to have directed at least one full length film, and done it well. Risen above the world of men who look to demean or conquer and earned their respect (not that I’ll crave it).

21. A never ending, constantly burning hunger for experiences and challenges that test my creativity, ingenuity and abilities. But only with an unbridled sense of excitement and satisfaction from all of my endeavors. Rather than pushing myself forward simply for the sake of professional or monetary progress, I want to be pulled forward by my creative interests and passions; satisfied and deeply emotionally fulfilled  rather than simply professionally established. A love for every step of what I do, rather than a need to constantly bound three strides ahead of myself. As it is, I haven’t seriously taken my happiness into account with all of my professional endeavors, and I’ve been left with a sense of being emotionally exhausted, behind my life’s supposed “itinerary”. Constantly out of breath and thinking about the next hurdle, rather than enjoying the entire process of overcoming them. Rushing through experiences without savoring them; swallowing them up whole without ever taking time to chew. I want my own happiness and well-being to run laps around my type-A personality’s screams for forward momentum.

22. Long lasting, unbreakable relationships with the friends that mean the most to me in my life. The knowledge that no matter where we are in the world, we will always think of each other, make time to reconnect. I never want to be like those I know in my own life that have no other company but themselves and their significant other. I take their loneliness and abhorrence for connections with other people as a personal affront… it bothers me. Sometimes I think it’s because I’m a part of the “other people” category to them, someone they claim to connect with deeply simply because the same blood runs through our veins. The blood I’ve donated runs through the veins of someone in this world, and I don’t claim to know them at all. How can you love someone without a craving for a deeper understanding of who they are? I never want to live like that.

23. A laugh that is always frequent and natural, never contrived or silenced awkwardly. I want to experience the world in a lighter way, lose the heaviness I sometimes carry with me through my days. I want to laugh because I can, not because I should.

24. The ability to always write freely and well, without self censoring, without wondering or caring what anyone else might think. To judge my words less, and value my honesty above all judgement.

25. A cat that can do its business in the toilet, then flush. And a dog that can get my slippers. And a parrot that can recite Shakespeare. Seriously, how do you teach them to do that?

26. A romantic, passionate, intimate relationship with my husband-to-be that never fades or cools down enough to be worrisome. The connection with him that I can count on forever, the knowledge that someone else is a part of me, always on my side, always has my back in every situation. There’s a strengthening piece of mind that comes with a partnership with the right person that I could have never conceived of in any of my previous relationships. It’s knowing that you always have someone to laugh or cry with, to relate to the world with in any situation. It’s so much easier to face hardship when you’re with someone you love with your entire being, who you adore beyond words. He makes me twice as strong, and problems half as difficult to face.

27. A life free of back-pain, or at the very least, lessened pain. It hinders so much of my life, keeps me from doing so much. I don’t want to be held back by it forever. I want to wake up, walk through my day and go to sleep without feeling the constant pain.

28. A concrete, solid knowledge of who I am, what makes me happy, and what endeavors in life will give me a sense of success. At this age, I know what I think I want. I’d like to have a better knowledge of what I need from my life to feel successful and satisfied, so I can appreciate these feelings while they’re happening, rather than missing them at present and only discovering them years down the line in retrospect. I want to know, rather than just suspect, what will make me feel complete.

29. I want to have a life in which I never feel boxed in. I want to always feel the warmth of sun, even in the coldest of winter; a sense of open space and possibility, of gaping open door frames with the doors long since torn from their hinges so they can never close. I never want to feel trapped, by my own choices or other people’s influences. I want the possibilities, the things that might be, to always outweigh the things that can’t be or that are out of my reach. I want to see possibility in everything I experience, and never become so jaded that I can’t see promise in even the most stifling situations. I want to be free in every sense of the word, emotionally, physically, spiritually.

30. I want to have the ability to, as often as possible, make other people, friends and strangers alike, feel happy, respected and heard. To leave every situation and conversation better than it was before I got there. I want to be happy enough with how I carry myself and react to others that even when I don’t behave in the best way I could have, I forgive myself easily. Put more weight in the things I do right than those that I do wrong, and learn from everything.

31.  I want to have the sense that I have made my life a success in my own terms (once I figure out what that means) – I have made a lasting impact on the world in some way that carries my view of life,  my thoughts, my work into the future long after I’m gone.

Long time since I wrote last. One update: I’m getting married! In the spirit of pre-wedding beautification, I’ve been considering the future direction of two very important hairlines: my eyebrows. While researching shapes, widths and lengths, i’ve come across some amazingly inspiring pictures. Who would have thought: even in the world of eyebrows there are pioneers, boldly going where no woman, creature or beast has gone before. But the question remains: with all these great styles, how will I ever choose?

#1: Who needs symmetry when you’ve got a Sheriff badge? She uses them to disorient criminals before capturing them. These brows make the streets safer.

#2: The longest eyebrows in the history of faces. They actually used to go all the way around her head before she plucked.

#3: These brows are example of true, natural beauty, and perfectly compliment her lip, which looks like a snake that has recently eaten a medium sized rodent.

#4: Glamour shot! Now that’s attitude – intermingled, obviously, with the extremely heightened eyebrows, with drastic surprise. It’s like she was getting ready to pose for vogue and was suddenly slapped across the face with someone’s, as Lady Gaga put it, disco stick.

#5: You can tell by her expression that she’s really serious about life… maybe even a little… purrrturbed? Furry in training for sure. I bet she’s Yiffing some hot dragon type as we speak.

#6: If Miss Cleo (psycho psychic look), Elizabeth Taylor (old & over-makeupped look), Michael Jackson (slightly dead look) and Sandy from the OC (awesome brows!!) were merged…

#7: She’s so sad!! She looks like those messed up old 80’s toys that cried, and needed comforting. Except instead opening the window and letting her in out of the cold, I want to slam the window shut in her face, close the blinds and hope that the subzero weather sets in quickly.

#8: One thing I’ve learned from this picture is that, as a general rule, your brows should take up less than 50% of your face for optimal effect.

#9: The latest trend: Mood Eyebrows. Left: surprised, slightly turned on. Right: EXTREMELY angry. Unimpressed. Someone feed it NOW.

#10: Scared by the prospect of yet another MySpace angle, the brows escaped into the scene kid hair forever, never to seen again.

#11: It’s a triple threat! These blonde babes love the 3 B’s: Botox, Bleach and Bitchin’ brows.

#12: Daaaayum. They’re like smooshed caterpillars. This is a great style for people who want to look threatening, all the time.

#13: Fact: when rocking the bald look, one should compensate with maximum amount of hair on the rest of one’s face.

#14: She underlined her brows for emphasis. Double trouble!

#15: Spray tan + Sharpie  + unsuccessful pout pose = this.

#16: It’s like her face is frowning… twice… it’s wounded.

#17: If Genghis Khan wore tube tops. ME WANT JONAS BROTHERS!

#18: If you wax your brows entirely off by mistake, there’s always felt.

#19: Super villain brows. A good style if you want people to refer to your look as “dastardly”.

#20: Boomerang brows.

#21: The Hitler ’stache brow line. Or the Chaplin.

#22: Who says sharpie’s aren’t a beauty accessory?

#23: Sad puppy says: What you talkin’ about, Willis?

#24: She’s got Mange of the face. And that makes her UNIMPRESSED.

#25: Times new roman font brow.

#26: How to save money during the recession: one black pencil, all over the face. I like what she’s done here in all seriousness: it’s like she’s wearing a hair-tiara.

#27: There’s got to be a solution for this. Gel? Hairspray? Do they sell eyebrow combs (someone could make a lot of money).

#28: Barbed wire brow = tough AND sassy.

#29: Face games: Connect the dots.

#30: Don’t forget to eat your leafy greens. And if you do usually forget, draw them on your face as a reminder.

#31: She has great eye makeup. She looks like an alien. But her shirt is okay (compliment sandwich).

#32: For some reason, she reminds me of Geordi Laforge.

#33: Terrifying. Brow style: The devil’s mistress.

Fashion faux pas: Brows should not exceed the size of eyes. But that’s just the first in a series of problems here.

Now that we’ve seen a bunch of examples…. any votes for best style?

School has begun yet again, and I’m super psyched. This summer, I realized that it was an extraordinarily daunting thing to be dedicating so much time and energy to a job and industry that is completely not for me (read: my job as an

Account Coordinator at a top ad agency). Advertising may have extinguished at least 1/3 of my soul, but luckily I was only in for a year and managed to retain some semblance of humanity. (I kid–it wasn’t that bad. You lame-os hate advertising because you’re told to hate it by your university professors, who come from a long line of advertising detractors equipped with sub-standard, flimsy lines of reasoning and used up, cliche arguments. But I digress).

So, right, school. My teachers seem pretty cool so far. They’re not your usual professors, since they all still work in the industry and wouldn’t exactly call themselves “teachers”. This makes them especially qualified to give us real, substantial advice, and it also makes them somewhat disorganized, hard to follow and assuming previous knowledge in areas of conversation that are just too basic to them. But I think this course will be a great investment of my time. Coming out with some spec scripts, recommendations and an internship will land me leagues ahead of my competitors.

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A friend of mine gave me a little push tonight…. asked me to make sure he had something to read whilst bored at work tomorrow. I’m of course ever reluctant to leave a friend hanging. As I discovered earlier in the week, while reading through blog entries from my insanely angsty teenage years, I really do love looking at relationships and examining them. Maybe even over examining them. Romantic, frienship, any kind really–I like to think about the people who connect with me (or who miss the mark completely) and wonder why.

The friend who asked me for a post tonight, for example, is one of those Epic friends. He’s the kind that I don’t see that often, nor do I hang out with much (purely due to circumstances this last while), but he’s one of those friends that I know I will always have. He has always made me laugh (like, shoot milk out of my nose laughter) and he’s incredibly intelligent, and thus good to talk to about practically anything (although I’ve never tested that theory on the more serious side of life’s matters). He’s one of those people that I would stand beside even if he picked an absolutely futile fight (i.e.: When he picked a fight with a bouncer who was approximately 16.4 times his size) because I know he’d have my back in an instant. Those kinds of friends are few and far between. I feel like I could talk to him about some pretty serious, heavy stuff, and that I’d have his undivided attention, and his sympathetic ear. Thinking about this fact, his reliability (although I don’t call on it often), made me realize that friendship is sometimes just as complicated as romance. With the case of the particular friend i’ve been discussing, I never think that our relationship is in jeopardy. He’s just one of those people that I know without a doubt will always be around (and I’m certain that when I live in TO–eventually–we’ll become a lot closer than we are now). Our friendship is, thankfully, easy.

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Does truth in music matter?

Whenever I’m listening to Beyonce belting out her soulful tunes about betrayal, cheating and lost love, I wonder: How does Jay Z feel about all of her melodic, end-of-days style caterwauling? Does he say to her, “Listen Yonce,”(that’s probably his pet name for her), “Yonce, I don’t want you writing about all of your lost loves and gender confusion fantasies,” (if I was a boy?) “because I got 99 problems, and a bitch ain’t one.”

Actually, I think she’d probably take more of an issue with Jay Z’s lyrics than he would with hers. Or is that actually a compliment? If a bitch isn’t one of your 99 problems, then that probably means she’s a supportive, down to earth bitch with a great personality. Which means she’s a pretty fantastic bitch!

My point: like any form of art, music is expressive of what’s inside, which isn’t always factual. Music is often about storytelling, and I wonder: how often are the stories true? And do musicians have any sort of obligation to tell us the truth?

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Life has a way of ebbing and flowing in a way that can really make waves, especially on things like friendship. One thing I’ve learned so far in life is that nothing is ever certain, nor is anyone. The old saying is absolutely true: sometimes, you can only trust in yourself. That’s not to say you can’t try to have faith in other people, because a lot of them deserve it. Many people will never break your trust or your heart, and will be there for you no matter what comes up. I have many of those people in my life, people whom I both love and respect. But something I’ve learned that I didn’t know a few years ago: no matter who they are, no matter what they’ve done for you, there are always loyalties that run deeper than yours do. There is always the possibility that even that most trusted person in your life will simply cease to be a part of your life at all, no matter how much you once loved each other. C’est la vie. Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight while at a friends house, I thoughtlessly lost track of time, without realizing that my phone had died. Heading out a little later than I had planned, I jumped in the car and plugged in the phone, which promptly began vibrating furiously as if to say, “How could you leave me, thoughtless human? I thought we were friends.”

I hate it when my cell phone yells at me. Where does it get off? Much to my remorse, during my extra two hours at my friends house, I had received four text messages and three voice mails, all from frantically concerned people who hadn’t heard from me and thought that I may have met an inglorious demise on the highway of life.

I was driving home, several apologetic phone calls and miffed rebuffs later, when I started thinking about death, and my history with it. Everyone thinks about dying, increasingly so as ever aging creaky limbs and clogging arteries force us to consider the inevitable: we are racing toward the reality that life will one day end, and we will cease to be the center of anyone’s universe, or the center of our own awareness. Daunting subject matter for a late night highway cruise, which made me realize something interesting that I had never considered before: while I have had a fear of death since an early age, I have never feared dying in general terms. Instead, I have feared dying in very specific, and often sort of weird, ways.

The thought of taking my last breath as a white haired, foul mouthed grandmother of ninety four, for example, really doesn’t scare me; in fact it sounds like a nice way to go. There’s nothing terrifying about drifting off to sleep while feeling comfy and safe in a warm, welcoming bed, having lived a long and prosperous life.  My last words would obviously be directed to one of many maids that I’d inevitably employ as part of my old rich lady estate: “get me some cheesecake and turn on the damn Macgyver reruns, Gladys!”, or, “Shake that tight ass, manthing!” to Domenic, the Chip n’ Dale dancer who would also have full time employment at my rich old lady mansion. Read the rest of this entry »

Some men are different than the rest. They understand that even the least materialistic women will still cringe when presented with a vacuum cleaner, duster, kitchen appliance or other any indicator of domesticity and dependence. My man is an example of one such creature that truly understands the importance of being romantic, hence the truly unique 25th birthday present he gave to me this year: a private horseback ride into the sunset.

I’ve always assumed that horses are docile, peaceful creatures, who adore being ridden, especially into the sunset, and are highly contented when their rider has long, flowing hair that whips about just so in the wind (I do!). I imagined my horse nudging my hand in appreciation as I caress her mane, while I outright refuse to employ the rib-kicking technique that her tyrant handler suggests as a method of acceleration.

After an effortless evening whipping around on a beautiful, abandoned beach and through cool, moonlit paths, I would take her back to the stables and reward her for being such a noble creature with a handful of sugar cubes and by combing of her glistening soft mane.

What I found out, however, is that horses are not majestic, peaceful creatures by nature. They are actually a bunch of stinky jerks that prey on weak, inexperienced handlers, and who do not give a single thought toward the flowing, wind-flung hair of their riders. I now understand why some feel compelled to turn horses into glue. Read the rest of this entry »