time [mis]management

How did this happen?

alias squirrel

This is the squirrel that's been working the 2nd and 3rd floor windows (possibly more...we have to confer with the other offices below us), over three years, going by several aliases.

Chubby, Steve, Frank, Larry, Fatty.

Whatever his name is, he's going to have an easy winter ahead since he's been getting handouts from the creative team, account team and digital team.

30 before 30 revisited

I tripped over this ancient blog post a while ago.

So, here I am, 28 years, 5 months, 16 days old. I still have a little while to go in completing The List. Problem is, since writing this post the first time around I have only managed to complete #7, #11, #16, #19, #20, #26, #29? (I married one - does that count?) and, of course, #30...which means I still have nearly 80% to complete in just under two years.

Unfortunately, buying a house, being a youth pastor and having a child aren't on this list (silly 2007 me!) which would have made it easier to finish, since they are milestones I'll most likely hit before I'm 30 anyway.

1. Take dance lessons again.
   
2. Get my driver's license.
   
3. Perform in live theater again.
4. Visit ESL teacher-friends in B.C.
5. Watch the Nutcracker live.
6. Organize and attend a 10 year DTS reunion at Holmsted Manor.
   
7. Attend a Coldplay concert.
   
8. Visit my grandparents in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
   
9. Take vocal lessons. Preferably jazz.
10. Upgrade my B.A. to an honours.
    
11. Promote 24/7 Prayer (preferably a Boiler Room) in Toronto.
12. See my grade 6 teacher, Miss Huberts, again.
13. Visit the twins I used to babysit, Dylan and Taylor, when I was a teenager.
14. Find my pearl earrings.
15. Finish my tattoo.
16. Get into the habit of saving regularly.
17. Write and publish a book.
18. Host a proper, large-scale house party. At my own house.
19. Do a wine tasting tour in Niagara.
20. Get a credit card. Use it wisely.
21. Spend one weekend in seclusion and silence away from the city.
22. See Venice and Florence.
23. Do a day at the spa.
24. Read The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.
25. Volunteer with a homeless ministry downtown.
26. Do a Healing Week.
27. Go on a trip with each of my brothers, specific to them.
28. Scuba dive.
29. Promote and support local artists, musicians and performers.
30. Get married.

addict

My name is Sarah Aubrey Gazaneo and I'm a poetry junkie.

Ever since that fateful night, over fifteen years ago, when I couldn't sleep, slipped out of bed to snatch a pencil and piece of paper from my desk, and scrawled my first poem in the dark, I have been an addict. I've just completed my third (unpublished) book of poetry which would sound impressive if you weren't aware of the tawdry verse that fills most of their pages. Especially the first one. Preteen angst, mostly.

Those tear filled nights, those epic travels, those introspections, those seasonal colours, those unmentioned grudges and those first-time experiences wouldn't have been half as exciting, however, if I hadn't captured them in poems. Plus, tediously feeding my contemplations through the eye of poetry greatly diminished the risk of lashing out. Often the task of writing brought low every mountain and hill, raised every valley, made the crooked roads straight and the rough ways smooth.

I'm still torn between the cathartic nature of poetry (I mean, we all feel better after a bowel movement but we don't publish the results) and its art form. I still feel embarrassed, like a third-grader who has had a painting displayed on the family refrigerator but is old enough to recognize its substandard quality, when my poems are aired. And yet, as my brother would dryly point out, I voluntarily blog about them. And email them to close friends. And, when the illusions of grandeur are particularly strong, attempt to have them published.

I told you, it's an addiction.

Alan R. Wilson wrote this brilliant article on the addiction of poetry in the Globe's Life section a few days ago. He laments:

"Distressed, overwhelmed, resigned to my fate, I joined a university writing group. The experience was more like AA meetings adjourned to the pub, where confessions and drunken suggestions poured out."

Fifteen years of this habit have not been enough to break me of it. I still write, I still share, and I'm submitting six more to be considered for publication. Shortlisting these prized six revealed two comforting aspects (defenses?) of my poetry:

1. My skill is improving.
2. Graciously, the improvement has occurred as I enter into what I expect to be a long, delicious season of writing about one man, one romance, just one, my hubby. Twenty-five poems and counting.

so soft he is with me,
gently, so!
i am lace
i am memory
i am crème brûlée

fo eva, eva

I like the state of familiarity that has settled upon our marriage.

I was recently pondering about the sheer amount of time a married couple spends sleeping - just sleeping - beside each other. Sharing the same bed. Breathing the same air. Wrestling with the same sheets. I wonder if that, together with the the act of making love, the plans for the future, the raising of children, accounts for the way couples gradually meld together over the years. All those hours, multiplied by days, weeks, years, spent completely at rest, sleeping, side by side. I figure since our minds, spirits and souls remain open while our bodies take a break (hence methods of nocturnal hypnosis, a là Chandler trying to quit smoking), this marriage-bed-osmosis has something to do with it.

This article, in the Globe Life section, entitled: The Science of a Long Marriage, which referenced the famed, 50-year, Newman/Woodward marriage, included this quote:

"There is scientific and psychological insight into the benefits of long-term marriage, and the reasons why marriages that survive often become better as they age. In the long run, marriage is a state of being that suits, even enhances, human biology, experts say."

I was scrumptiously reading my copy of October edition of Vogue when I came across an article written by Christina Thompson about her 20+ marriage with her husband. who delineated such a beautiful piece of prose it stuck in my mind for weeks after reading it:

"These days my husband and I have a lot in common: three sons, the dog, and two happy decades spent in each other's company. We are entwined in the way that only two people who have spent half their lives together can be. I love his peculiar ingenuity, the way he can make anything from scratch; still marvel at the circuitous pathways of his imagination; am still impressed by his phenomenal strength, as breathtaking at 47 as it was at 25. These qualities...have gradually become as familiar as my own hand."

Don McKay's words come back to me nearly two and a half years after Andrew first bought me his book of poetry:

I want memories that germinate
I want to spread the shed years on us as a mulch.