Oh! How I nearly completed the nablopomo challenge and I was super planning on playing catch up today.

But it seems something dodge happened to my stomach, which has me farting like a trooper and running to the bathroom on very short notice, if you catch my drift (no pun intended). So sod it! I’ve chosen instead to stay in my bathrobe and have tea and toast and watch cartoons with the husband all day, under the duvet.

Sometimes, the body tells you what it needs when the mind is too bloody stubborn to listen.

I hope you are all having a relaxing Sunday wherever you are (sans le shits) and thank you all so much for stopping by and saying hello this past month. It means the world to me.

Big love,
xo

If I could record all the snippets of conversations I’ve had and overheard in my lifetime, it would make for a hell of a book.

Example: Summer of 2008, in the kitchen of a woman whose apartment I was renting. We called the apartment the boat because it kept us afloat whilst we recovered from tormenting breakups. It was a great apartment. I remember it was hot that night. The back door was open onto the back alley, people were walking by. Fabie. Short for Fabienne. But might as well be short for “fabulous french woman”. Bisexual. Switched on. Brilliant writer. Very liberal. The kind of woman who didn’t take no shit. The kind of woman who was involved in every community outreach program you could imagine. The following week, she’d be heading North to a small Inuit village to teach for nine months.

After 2 glasses of wine and too many cigarettes, she starts in with a monologue, out of the blue.

I remember in 1987 when I slept with an Algerian man in the toilet of an airplane from Paris to  Montreal. I looked at him after a couple of drinks and I said “I get the feeling you want to fuck me“. Let me tell ya, you really have to want to get laid to join the mile high club. The toilets are small, it stinks, you have people knocking on the door, feet up in the air. It’s awful.

And after all that, we landed, he asked for my number, I said no then jumped in a taxi and left and never saw him again.

Having never met Fabie, you might be judging her right now. Slut is one word that might come to mind. But she was so far from being a harlot. She was just a free spirit. She knew what she wanted and she went after it. And I have nothing but awe for her. I wonder what she’s up to these days? If she’s still smoking fags and sipping cheap wine on her back porch? If she’s found someone to love? If she’s still regaling the world with her crazy stories?

For you Frenchies, it sounded so much better in her mother tongue:

“Aye, je me rappelle en 1987 quand j’ai couché avec un algérien dans les toilettes d’un avion de Paris à Montreal.  Je l’ai regardé après une couple de drink et j’ai dit: “J”ai l’impression que t’as envie de baiser avec moi.”  Faut vraiment vouloir.  C’est petit, ça pu, t’as des gens qui cogne sur la porte, les pattes en l’air. Pis après tout ça, on a atterri, il voulait mon numéro, j’ai dit non pis j’ai sauté dans un taxi et je suis partie.“

i’ve had my head in the clouds lately. actually, scratch that. clouds imply airy, fluffy, feet not touching the ground, la la la trailing along.

no. my head has not been in the clouds lately. it has been a tornado, a hurricane, a tsunami. my head feels like a natural disaster. a constant little hum of angst. life is very busy and i am buzzing along with it and everything that i should be taking time for has fallen to the wayside.

as humans, i think we forget that we are, in essence, animals. vertebrates of the class mammalia of the order of primate. a-nim-als. and i do believe that our natural instinct wants to follow the rhythms of nature. but in an age when people can reach you any time of day (and night) and with the pressures of ‘i need this on my desk yesterday‘, my inner compass has spun itself out of control and is stuck on north. i’ve lost my bearings.

the winds have been fierce lately. joe and i watch the clouds in the morning and even they seem to be moving faster than usual. everything around me is quite literally swirling and falling and changing. for all its beauty, autumn is a time of flux and little deaths. if i follow my earlier rationale, i suppose it’s normal that i would feel… deconstructed too. my instinct wants to prepare for the long hibernation ahead. my reality is 10,000 times faster than the slumber of hibernation.

sigh.

all i know for certain is that this pace doesn’t feel right but i haven’t quite figured out what to do about it. so for now, i am simply going to escape to fantasy land, where it rains glitter and houses are made of lollipops and trees of popcorn and blue birds really do sing.

i’m going to escape to fictional places i wish existed:

1. wonderland
2. oz
3. narnia
4. the valley of the truffula trees (the lorax)
5. smurfland (mushroom houses in an enchanted forest? hello!)
6. the shire
7. amélie poulain’s apartment
8. any set from any of wes anderson’s movies
9. gingerbread houses (human size)
10. the little mermaid’s underwater kingdom
11. willy wonka’s chocolate factory
12. pippi longstocking’s house, horse on the porch and all
13. neverland
14. diagon alley (harry potter)
15. one-eyed willie’s pirate ship (the goonies)
16. the labyrinth in labyrinth
17. the forest and cottage in legend

where would you escape to?