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enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Always keep your child-like sense of wonder, and your yen for exploration.

I still haven't bought my plane ticket. I was about to and then I worried that I would buy the ticket and work would say that it is too many days. But at the same time I don't want to wait to buy it until they decide that it's OK. If it's not I can just change jobs. ;)

Actually, speaking of which, I think it is hilarious that they are so uptight about my vacation, in that the senior economist has already taken a week of vacation (he'll take three more in the summer), two additional weeks to have "nose surgery," a couple of days to have a new dryer installed/delivered, a couple of days to either take his son to the doctor or do something at the daycare, a few more for illness...all since October.

And yeah, he makes twice as much money as I do.

So ridiculous.

Anyhow. I am NOT GOING TO COMPLAIN!

My stomach has really been aching since yesterday.

Oh! Want to hear something sad? I was supposed to meet Ava at yoga this morning and I actually bona fide forgot. I stayed up too late and slept in and then I woke up and thought that there was something wrong. DOH! I forgot that on Monday we had planned yoga today. Whoops. Not good.


Anyhow, I have bad aches today in my stomach, unfortunately. I wish I could get to the bottom of this.

So I was goofing around on ebay last night whilst thinking about shortening the length of my Florence trip so I'd be less fearful about being denied, and I saw that dveef has a red and white dress this season that has PIRATES in the pattern.

THat's almost cruel. How can I not buy that???

EEEEEEEeeeeee.

I don't know what I'll do today. I want to buy my plane ticket, but it feels a bit sad to buy for Sept. 13- 29. I suppose that it's still going there, and that's what matters.


YOu know, I was listening to a radio program yesterday morning in which they were talking to people who were reading things that they had written as children (diaries, etc.) out at a public reading in Toronto. They were really funny! (Particularly the teenage angst guy, whose reading on foolscap had a note attached at the top from his mom asking him to make a copy of this for her on the computer.)

And then I thought back to any old diaries that I have. To be honest, before I started this diary an unbelievable five years ago, I could never consistently keep a diary. I would write a few entries and then I wouldn't keep it up. I could never go back and read old entries.

Actually, still, I cringe when I read old entries. I feel horribly embarrassed by the things that I write sometimes, and that I wrote, especially when I first started out.

But I suppose that that is the process of growing.

I will never be someone to print out and bind my entries. I just don't want to know. To me it's like throwing out things that I want to get out of me. I think of it as getting those frustrations and anxieties and joys that take up too much space out into the ether, to make room for new ones.

Speaking of, well, space, I had to laugh as I was walking back from my last morning with M. in Florence. When I got to the street on which my hostel was located, I noticed that the space at the end of the street was entirely filled up by this:


Do you see the hot air balloon? My hostel is 200m down the road on the right.

OK. NOW you do, for sure!

So back to my original thoughts about childhood writing. I was lying in bed in the morning listening to the radio program, scanning the room. That is, I was doing so yesterday morning. And bear in mind that I have NOTHING left over from my childhood or youth. Everything has been thrown out. Probably the only thing left is my pair of racing flats from when I came in 17th in the London Marathon. They're on my shelf. Those shoes are a piece of me.

BUt next to the shoes - and I don't know how exactly it remained in my stuff and made it here to Ottawa, now (I must have had a huge moment of weakness or sympathy for myself) - is a liqueur bottle with a wide base that is covered by paper macheed pieces of coloured paper from magazines. (I know that I've written about this once before, waaay back.) I remember making this little piece of "art," wrapping blue yarn in a coil to make a base, at our kitchen table at the house to which we had moved just before my dad was diagnosed with his disease. We only lived there for a year and a half, so I know that I was 8 when I "artistically" adulterated the bottle. It was the autumn/winter of 1978/79.

And I remember this bottle so clearly, because I remember that I used to write little messages to myself on little slips of paper, and that I'd stuff all of the pieces of paper down the long neck and into the base of the bottle. I always was crying when I did this, so I believe that the messages were mostly sad and angry. I think I continued to do this when I was teenager.

Anyhow. Not to make anyone sad, but it occurred to me just now the degree to which this bottle is a metaphor for all of the suppression and shame that I was taught to feel as a child over my emotions. My mother used to always tell me to stop. I wasn't allowed to feel pain. I had a problem, apparently. But for some reason she never thought that I should go to talk to someone, to see someone.

I find this very funny now, actually, or at least it makes me smile. Because actually I think that I was just being me, and being me in a healthy way. My mother was completely wrong. I knew that I needed to exorcise those desperate thoughts. I needed to be free of them. Locking them away in a bottle not to be seen again might be an interesting thing to raise with a counsellor! (Actually, I am very, very curious about this.)

The funny thing is that at this point in my life I can honestly say that I don't feel that I need a counselor. I feel as though I'm building the mechanisms within myself to bounce back from things, sort through things. If I could get over that lingering fear of setting myself free from things like my rotten job... :)

But slowly, slowly, life is leading me by the hand through progress. I'm not bad.

But that bottle intrigues me. Were I to crack it open - quite an effort, given that it is very thick - I suspect that the notes would have been sufficiently damaged by water over the years that none of them would be legible.

I'm starting to get curious about them, though, which is odd. I've never before wanted to know what I thought then. I'd probably discover simply that I was the same then as I am now - wanting to believe in people and wanting to believe that you have to turn the bad into butterflies that float away.

But maybe what should be done is some kind of ceremony, a burial or something.

Well, burial isn't really my style. Recycling is more my style. Or maybe grinding to dust and then blowing the dust off a bridge into the Arno (poor Arno!). Or trying to sell it at a garage sale (it's so ugly!). Or making it a part of an art display of childhood trauma. Or maybe I could stuff it with balancing beautiful and joyful thoughts. I just don't know.

I don't know. I need to think about it. I don't think that I want that bottle in my bedroom, though. It seems an unfortunate totem. It reminds me of how trapped and alone I sometimes felt as a child. I do remember that, even if I try to forget.

But then maybe that's what helped me to "nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune." :)

Yeah. I'm grateful for the experiences that acted as teachers that I've had in my life. I wouldn't be who I am had I not had them. And I kind of like myself. Maybe a lot. Maybe too much! No, just enough. I find myself interesting sometimes. I really shouldn't admit that. ;-)

OK. That's it. I think I need some oatmeal. I looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove oatmeal.

So yeah, always keep your child-like sense of wonder, and your yen for exploration. If I can do that I will be a lucky woman. :) OK. I think I MUST buy the dress with the pirate ships. I mean, really, how a propos to wear that to a LINE DANCE department? :) HA!

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11:03 a.m. - 2008-05-31

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