Will do snuff films in exchange for free pastries.

Time to myself, (which I have had an unsuprising lack of over the last three months between my job, living with Matt and a seemingly endless string of visitors) is rejuvanating and lovely but invariably pummels me with overwhelming listlessness. Without the constant distraction of other people and the endlessly repetitive, meaningless but somehow entirely demanding tasks of the marching band, I start to realize how lost I am.

Being lost, which is by definition just being without clear direction, I guess, is not entirely unpleasant. In directionlessness there is the potential for innumerable possibilities. I didn't really know who I was, when I had a plan. When I had one or two or three more years of music school ahead of me and a vague idea of being a professional musician which I expected would just somehow fall into place. I didn't know who I was but I worked under the illusion that I did. I attached myself to ideas, to easy labels that I thought conveyed some type of inert quality. I was a musician, a student, an idealist.

I haven't really lost anything in straying from my plan, what I guess I've gained is the realization that I never had it any more figured out than I do in this exact moment. I have no clue who I am. I have a string lazily maintained relationships that span several countries. I am still a musician, I suppose, but these days I play music for only the most utilitarian of purposes, and when I am presented with creative opportunities, I freeze. I write, but generally only as a means of expelling myself of overwhelmingly irrational thoughts. I bicycle everywhere, I read constantly but distractedly, I cook the same dishes over and over and forget to bother with combing my hair or plucking my eyebrows. I haven't worn makeup in months. I've mostly given up on drinking and recreational drug use, instead I go on long walks in the forest with my roommates until I'm covered with dozens of mosquito bites, swollen and pink. Interacting with other people feels like pulling teeth but I force myself to do it because I'm afraid of getting out of the habit and becoming more inert than I already feel. I wake up next to a person I love every morning, our toes curled together and eyelashes brushing the other's face, but I still can't convince myself that I'm totally deserving or worthy of him.

I've had my snapshot taken by thousands of tourists, protested in a turtle costume and danced barefoot in the street but I still feel like it's not me who's really doing those things, like I stumbled into a play and managed to fumble over the lines adeptly enough to convince everyone I'm meant to be here.

I'm happy, mostly, but I have trouble figuring out just what I've been doing since I finished school. I have formed a serious of vague, half-realized plans for travel over the next 8 months. I plan with the hope that travel will provide me with some kind of illumination as to what my next course is, who I'm meant to become, what I'm really meant to spend my time doing. Although I have to remind myself, in the meantime, that this process of becoming is important, is actually the most important thing. What does where I'm going matter if I can't tell where I am? I know that I will soon look upon these days with intense nostalgia, but at the moment I want to disappear in a crowded bus on a rocky uncertain road in Africa with only my backpack and my journal.

In some ways I have never felt better.

I didn't know that stability was like this. It is dull, it is thrilling, it is unnerving, worrisome. I feel trapped, I feel vulnerable, I feel elated. The difference between this and the whirlwind of adolescent emotions, I guess, is that at the end of it all I know who I will be going to sleep next to at night. My jags are unified, subdued by one overruling sensation.

Oh, love love love love, blah blah blah. I can come off so one-dimensional. It's easier to talk about a relationship than to begin contemplating where my life is headed. I will be somewhere in Tanzania about a month from tomorrow. Two months from tomorrow I'll probably be staying at an orphanage/farm near the coast of Tanzania. Three months from now, London.

I can't even begin to imagine these scenarios so I get hung up on the banal little details of the day-to-day instead.

Things always start lining up, it seems, at the precise moment I stop needing them to.

I've received more good news about my tromboning abilities, more requests for gigs and the like, in the last three weeks than ever before. Now that it doesn't matter to me, it seems that I'm sounding better than ever. Life's funny that way.

I'm in the process of getting packed up and prepared to leave for Ontario this Sunday. It has all, oh-so-characteristically, happened too quickly this last month, and I know that when I land in Toronto on Sunday night my head will be spinning from the impact.

No aspect of my life has any clear direction at this moment, and for once I am ok with the overwhelming sensation of absolute uncertainty.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms,
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.
Thanks to your love a certain fragrance,
risen darkly from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride,
so I love you because I know no other way than this

where I does not exist, nor you,
So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
So close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda

My life is a series of gratifying, awe-inspiring moments punctuated with painfully humbling ones.

So I'm on this antibiotic for a mild kidney infection and out of curiousity I googled it.

Apparently, side effects may include:
- feelings of not trusting others or feelings that others are going to hurt you
- nightmares or abnormal dreams
- hallucinations (seeing things or hearing voices)
- double vision
- thoughts about dying or killing yourself

and about TWENTY-FIVE other mild to incredibly ridiculous others. I realize that they're probably just covering all possible bases for the sake of legality, but I find this hilarious.

Somehow I think having it burn when I pee might be preferable to the unshakeable suspicion that my friends are trying to kill me.

Lesson learned. Just take the damned pills like the pharmacist says and remain blissfully ignorant.

I have to play a grad recital in 7 weeks, don't I?

It's very cold here and I speak roughly 15 words of French, but I'm having a great time. I'm staying with my lovely friend Genevieve. We've been drinking excessive amounts of french beer, playing trombone and pretending that we can speak spanish. Tonight we're going to make crafts and watch shitty TV in high definition. I guess that sounds boring if you're accustomed to FAST LIVING, but this is exactly what I need right now. Tomorrow, I have trombone lessons with two McGill teachers. I went to the school yesterday and was blown away by how aesthetically stunning the outside of the school and the new music building were. Then we went inside and I discovered that the interior, or at least the portions actually used by paying music students, was horrifyingly low-par. McGill practice rooms are possibly even worse than Uvic music rooms. The building they're housed in is certainly dingier, older, and has walls that are covered in suspect substances which resemble snot.

I found this comforting, on some level. At least we know music students are fucked over universally, regardless of the degree of prestige attributed to their particular schools.

Anyways, snotty walls aside, I think it's enchanting here. Not in a clean, safe way. The city wraps you up in its liveliness, in its grime and diversity, bright lights, caffes and strip clubs. Also, I love the cadence of the French language. I like listening to people speak here. I like the beer and the food. I think I could live here some day, provided I don't give up on trombone. Whatever happens, I'll definitely be back.

The more places I see, the more aggravated my travel lust seems to become. I'm hungry to see the world.

I went to a career fair today.

Apparently my degree in music performance has equipped me with the versatile skills required to teach english in Asia, be an RCMP officer, or to be a hospital chambermaid.

What's that distant flushing sound I hear? Could it be $20 000 dollars worth of tuition swishing down the toilet?

Actually I find my apparent lack of career options quite comforting, since I was planning to be a hobo anyways. I guess I should try my stint with the RCMP first, before I go on my spree of petty crime and rail-riding.

Academic arrogance deflated.