August 30, 2018

So the question, as always, is, what is the cross section between what my brain needs to say,
and what you might want to hear.


on this Thursday, payday, every Thursday is payday. Payday for an ENTJ means I can clear out one section of my brain.
do people have sections of their brains they need to clear out? It’s a massive slate, my brain, constantly calculating,
evaluating, organizing, and planning. Planning what? Planning the need to have a clear brain, that’s what. The brain
has sections, it manages itself, it compartmentalizes, and I have no control (anymore) over which sections cause the
other sections grief. So I have to ensure that as many sections are organized as possible.

I watched a video of 19-year old girl with multiple personality disorder last week.
since then, her videos seem to pop up on my feed every time I open youtube on my phone.
the videos are always recently uploaded, and they have massive numbers of views, like six-hundred thousand
in a matter of days.  I’m not the only one obsessed with it, clearly. Even though I am fairly able to be different person
in different settings and to suit my needs, JUST the IDEA of having multiple personalities in my brain which I could
not CONTROL, gives me fairly anxiety.

payday is a good day.
I can wipe one section of my alters, clean.
I can fold one section like the folds in my cerebellum.
I can scratch things off the budget,
I can flip the bills over in the pouch,
I can count the pennies remaining,
I can plan for next Thursday,
when payday rolls around again.


 

 

 

August 27

my mind bounces from the sensors walking down the street, to how generations change, and in this mep I often force myself to sense.
it’s a hardish brain this morning, a bit sore, as the banging upstairs continues, children run around, yes, life-giving, it’s important to remember.

between level-8 chewing and level-7 ringing, I try to get in as many sips as I can. I didn’t drink any wine last night but I also did not eat much dinner.
let’s explore how much we can say here. Let’s explore.


 

 

 

 

 

 

August 26,

Another birthday come and gone, another Meetup, another sweet 16, another sleepover, another corn roast, another pot of chilli,
another conversation about neonatology, another Turkish dinner, another walk along the Verdun waterfront, another finding his eyeglasses,
another lost pair of sunglasses, another conversation with my mother, another facebook argument, another half day in the office just to
pretend I was there all day, another useful face-to-face meeting, another late night hunting down my kid, another internal debate about
what to do about it, and another night of actually sleeping well enough to get up and write in the mep.


 

It’s a very, very, strange thing to realize that your children are not growing up valuing the same

 

 

 

 

Aug. 22,

Dear word. I did not want your capitals. I did not want your years. Tomorrow is another one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 21



to the rhythm of the sound of the beeping trucks and the humm of the morning traffic, I wake. Slowly.
children are sleeping in two other bedrooms: these are not all my children, and they are larger than you think.
the swiss man seems to be awol momentarily, his unusual demeanor is often no longer endearing; only worrying.
we move about this shabby old flat, mostly intuitives, down the long hallway past the guinea pigs, we greet them because
we feel sorry for them, yet the difference between them and us, is not as great as one would like to believe.

so here I am, madame guinea, typing into this box, trying to shout of of my cave, to anyone who will listen,
passerbys who may also be bored in this cave, wanting to know if anyone else is thinking the same shit they are.
well, here I am.




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 20th 2018

07:49

doesn’t leave me a ton of time to get to my desk for 9:30, once the coffee is done and I’m back to the laptop.
in order to get meaningrul things done in this life, you have to avoid looking at the clock.
meaningful things take time that no one has.

It’s pretty noisy for a Monday morning, circular saws and snoring, one of these amplified by the two buildings behind this one, and all of a sudden I’m drawing a blank.
these noises obsess me, and, are against municipal bylaws. The combination of these two things normally makes me enraged, but, since I need to be at my desk downtown to pick up my phone when it rings at 9:30, I’m not too annoyed this morning. I’m also not really awake yet. This coffee has a stale taste, it happens once in a while, well, it is the last grains of the bag, so perhaps that’s why. This mug weighs a metric ton this morning and there’s another small stabbing pain in my left breast.

Last night we picked chloe up at the airport. It seems the trip went overall swimmingly, which is really fantastic news for everyone. Apparently her father did not have one drink.
that’s a very strange thing to type out, on many levels, and I’m proud of him and happy for her. Within an hour, things were back to usual, with her running off to a Sweet in high heels, and then me waking up every hour in a mini panic wondering what time it was, and was she home yet.

alt-tabbed to the work schedule and looks like I have meetings this morning with vendors, would be interesting if I cared.
sadly, I cannot come up with any reasons to care other than getting my paycheque every second Thursday.
I guess the challenge of getting there on time is a major micro-goal. There’s certainly nothing else challenging about it.
only the pain of tolerating the consensus-based stupidity is more challenging.

 

 




 



 

 

 

 

 

 

August 19th

Sunday.

It’s a magic Sunday before an unmagical week : but thinking about others in more pain than me helps : isn’t that cruel :

Knowing that people are suffering at the hands of a person who only cares for herself, is comforting to me.
I can always dream that that person herself suffers: but I know she doesn’t, and that is something I rarely think about.
there are many, who are learning the truth about bad planning, about incompetence, and well, that is liberating to me
and makes me a tad happy. Shadenfreude be damned.

mostly I also push thoughts out of my head: all the thoughts I will never write down:

I dreamed about climbing a peaceful mountain today but that time has passed.
I lament the waste of a perfect day but that time, too, has passed.


 

 

 

August 17th

I grew up singing in church.  Kinda like lots of famous people, only the other people I was with weren’t nearly as excited as I was.
Getting to sing as part of mass was very exciting for me, it was part concert, part fame, part singing. Don’t get me wrong, I was
not always confident, I often had to talk myself into feeling confident. The root of my cognitive dissonance perhaps started there.

There was a home-made banner near the choir pews, which read “he who sings prays twice”, so that was all I needed to know.
I was covered, in case someone was watching. It was the only time in my life that I ever really felt a  part of something bigger than me.
it was the only real “team” I was ever on. I still miss it.

it’s 9:30 and I slept in a bit later than normal today. What a treat for me, to sleep. The world is an hour ahead of me, part of me has
trepidation, and the other part is awash in the luxurious feeling of oversleeping. It’s Friday as well, so the entire day is merely an excuse
to wait for the weekend. Not everyone at work hates it as much as I do, but for sure the number is growing. This will sound psychotic
but when my brain randomly remembers little things about my workplace which sheds even a tiny light on the incompetence or suffering
of those responsible for my demise, tiny amounts of dopamine are released in my brain and for a few brief seconds, I feel joy.

don’t get me wrong, I know they are not capable of feeling fault, or guilt. Doesn’t matter.

book title: “intuitives and work”




 

 

 

 

August 16, 2018
7:18

Some mornings I wake with a sense of doom. With a deep understanding of the pointlessness of life.
Those are the mornings when I have slept well. Luckily, that doesn’t happen very often.
When I feel that way, the first thing I wonder is if that’s how everyone else feels. Since so many people seem so unenthused wth life, I figure that must be
their default thoughts. Then I remember that they don’t think much at all. And perhaps that’s exactly why.
The second thing I think on these mornings is that I hope my daughter hasn’t had it yet.
I really wish I could remember exactly how large my thoughts were at her age. The summer of grade 10. Her father was working with his uncle in Calgary,
learning about printing, wearing cowboy hats, and smoking cigars for the first time. The cigars were thicker than he was. My how things change.
Endless love was playing on the radio, I was riding my bike in rainstorms with a new crowd, and winning at Ms Pacman at the local ice cream shoppe.
It was an odd summer indeed. The pattern continues…

Once the doom is gone and the coffee is ready, however, I usually quickly distract myself with a life goal or a task or a reminder or more coffee.
Ultimately my thoughts are not that much different from grade ten. Except for the number of years that have passed since Elvis died.

oh, and it’s payday.



August 15 2018
morning

So here I am, coffee in hand. Behind a large screen. Butt naked in this sweltering heat. My mug is from Prague.

My body doesn’t look bad in the pinkish morning glow breaking through the humidity in the poplars. I can almost sense a breeze coming in the window. It rained.

I preferred the previous position I was in but every time I brought the mug to my mouth, I hit my elbox on the arm of the chair.

It’s amazing how the smallest things perturb me. Greatly.

So I’ve been doing this a long time. Doing what, you ask, writing the first thoughts my brain coalesces whilst I’m drinking coffee. I only drink one coffee a day but it’s strong.

For many years I woke up around 7 am, dripped a small pot of espresso; ah, I remember the Heritage years; I used to drive across town to buy my Italian espresso beans;

One day, while I was pregnant, they stopped selling them. That was shocking to me; it had been about 17 years at that time, that I had been buying those beans and grinding them myself in the little grinder I used to flip upside down and back, to ensure that the beans were evenly ground. I dropped my hand held grocery basket and stared wide-eyed at the garbage product they had replaced them with: Brulerie St Denis. No offense to a local company, but there seems to be something magical in Italian roast espresso. It’s got just the right amount of “blood moves to my cerebellum” without any of that “kick me in the face”. Anyways. I asked the manager what was the name of the wholesaler, and I called 911 on my blackberry from my car in the parking lot and begged the gentlemen at that local small company to sell me some beans. For about 4 years, once a month, I called to ask for my pre-packaged 4 pounds, a teeny amount for them, and they kindly airlocked 4 plastic pouches of beans for me which were always ready in the warehouse when I arrived with my 20 dollars. One year, they even gave me an Acadian wreath for Christmas, as it turns out one of the owners was from the small French part of the Canadian maritime provinces that I am from. His name was Brian, and that’s all I can recall about that.

It’s a very warm summer in Montreal, as it is across large swaths of American, and Europe. It may well be hot elsewhere, but the news from Asia doesn’t seem to make it to our airwaves, or our twitter feeds. I suppose, if Asia was also burning, we would probably hear, but then again, maybe not. I would normally say I like warm summers, and in fact, the gripping heat doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it does most. The heat makes me feel alive, connected, and I’m desperate to feel connected and alive, so I mostly embrace it. But this summer, something feels quite different. My spidey senses (and my physicist husband) tell me that this heat is not random; it’s not luck; it’s not good weather. It’s change. And not the good kind. I think the weather has everyone (except the whackjobs in Washington) sorta wincing their eyebrows, that expression that shows your brain is actually confused by two opposing thoughts, and then quickly pushing the reality of weather Armageddon quickly out of their little preoccupied minds, and going back to their Styrofoam Starbucks.

So ya, that’s about what I think, in actually about a millionth of the amount of time it took me to write.

Epiphany! Maybe my morning writing doesn’t filter nor sift my thoughts at all: perhaps it simply slows them down.

Whao. That might have been enough for today.

And it’s only 8:09.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 14 2018
I’m back.

 

This brain needs to talk more. In a silent place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 13 2018
I’m back.

 

In summer, I am often woken by the sounds of people working outside

And I lay in bed wondering how people could get out of bed so early.

 

Is this because I seek comfort all all times or because I don’t like to be told what do do

Or just because I’m a 7