You Know You Work Too Much When... 1:32 p.m.

You propose to your partner a surprise date night tradition whereby each of you, every month, plans a surprise date for the other. You add that each surprise date should be evaluated using a set of criteria mutually agreed upon in advance and that all evaluations should be compiled so that the health of the relationship can be charted over time. Um, yeah. Vacation, anyone?

From April Holiday (France)

Friends + Chipmunk + Peanuts + Video Camera = 10:34 a.m.

Aw, A Heart-Shaped Potato! Or, How I Still Don't Get Irony 11:02 a.m.

So we were barbecuing the other day and my boyfriend Joe came across a heart-shaped potato. Then he surprised me with it. Then I took pictures because I thought it was so damn cute. Then I got excited about framing the picture. Then I realized that his t-shirt had a big swear word on it. Then I sighed because ALL of his t-shirts have swear words on them. Then I thought that the swear word might make the photo ironic instead of cheesy. Then I realized that I still don't get irony.

peaches in november 7:38 p.m.

The wind was brisk and cold, the way it always
Is after Hallowe’en, when the costumes have been
Tucked away between the shoe box containing

Receipts from 2004 and a relative’s wedding dress,
Air-sealed in a plastic zip-up container in the front hall.
I walked through the parking lot behind his building,

It’s worn down painted white lines introducing themselves
To me as I approached the electric sliding glass doors
Of the high-end grocery on his corner. It’s smallish

Feeling aisles, packed tightly with lovely containers
Of brightly-coloured jam and four dollar croissants
Were so inviting on a November morning north.

What a travesty, I thought, when the grocery manager
Told me that there were no peaches. That peaches
Didn’t come in with the shipments from September to May.

That you couldn’t get peaches in November anywhere
In Toronto. But I had such faith that this was a city that
Could produce anything I might desire, why on earth

Would I otherwise pay so much in rent. Why crowd
Into dirty subway cars and trudge through mucky, sad-filled
Streets unless to be able to part one’s hair behind and

Dare to each a peach. In November, even.

haiku for BR 8:30 p.m.

paint and wet snowflakes
pink smiles, unrequited stuff
summer sweatiness

plastic fingernails
keep others skin cells so close
that you can smell them

inboxes fill quick
outboxes fill quicker still
then you stop, say no

new undergarments
make you dream of sex and rings
still you sleep single

cigarettes and beer
are reminiscent of him
what do you do now?

monday august sixth otseven 10:32 a.m.

the man at the brulerie st-denis explained to me this morning that an americano is an americano in french and in english. americanos are bilingual.

had my first canadian hostel experience last night and the coffee was required. some poor soul who'd taken a bus all the way from vancouver (life is too short) stumbled into the women's "dormitory" at 815 this morning and woke me from my restless sleep. there had been thunder and lightning and i dreamt about all the terrible things that happen to women in hostels, until the poor soul stumbled through the door and brought light and noise with her. i didn't dream or sleep after that.

montreal is depressing on mondays when it rains. the streets are mostly empty and those left on them aren't smiling.

the berri-uqam metro smelled like pizza when i dragged my ass through it at 11, looking for a locker to stash my bags.

i bought a brass padlock in a dollar store from a man who spoke neither english nor french, but whose skin was the colour of coffee.

the security guards at the bibliotheque et archives nationales were very gentle with me and directed me to lockers.

there are no flights out of this city today

et

tu me manques.

unearthed 11:00 p.m.

i was moving and sorting through old journals, as i do when they're unearthed. i came across a particular entry and it struck me. hard.

Sept 6, 2003

I am at camp and I need to vent because he doesn't love me. My back is beginning to sweat. The wasps are flying aroudn the orange juice that I stole from the dining room. I feel like a wasp. I linger around him , hoping to smell his smell. Laundry detergent. But I know if I get too close he'll swat at me with a few looks and words and then I'll have to sting him and then I'll die. I don't want to be in love with him. I miss him desperately. I know he is a beautiful person.

The CD I'm listening to makes me think of walking to work in Ottawa. It reminds me of Josh and of parliament and of the heart and crown and of Graeme. I don't know if it was a summer that I would like to be reminded of.

Somebody hid diamonds under the waves and they're glistening now. I want to go swimming but it's not hot enough yet. My skin isn't melting yet.

I guess writing is sort of like playing the piano. I'm out of practice. Who has time for this kind of thing anyway? Maybe I'm senile. Maybe that's not the right word. Maybe I'm fat and unattractive. Maybe I imagined that I was thin and beautiful and desirable and all of sudden, thanks to that asshole, I hate myself.

that was the last entry in the diary (the only one I recall using for any lenght of time) i bought the day after we first slept together, the so-called asshole and me. he's not an asshole at all, actually. his only sin was honesty. sin enough, i guess, at our age. for symmetry, here an excerpt from the first:

18 December 2002

Today I bought a journal. I have so much to write, I do not know what to say. I saw a book in Coles of Kurt Cobain's diaries and maybe one day someone will publish this because I will be famous and they will care. Claire says that she wouldn't write most of what she does in her journal if she knew someone would read it. I am not sure I care. I slept with ... last night. No, I've slept with him before. I had sex with him last night...

he is a good man and a gentle man 6:44 p.m.

and i am crying now, to the sound of an old song, because we won't speak anymore. i'm quite sure he meant it when he said it. what i remember: his toothy smile, his clammy hands, his blue eyes, his manner. the way he said, "ooohhh, girl..." i swear that he knew the name of every foreign dignitary ever born to this earth. he spoke as though he'd been born in the slums of kingston but was whiter than sudbury snow. and he knew it, too. and didn't care.

he watched me while i was slept, he said, more than once. i watched him sleeping many times, too. he was a cute sleeper. made me a picnic once at runnymede station. drank vodka with me in high park. sat next to me at matriculation and made me melt. he hurt me tonight, though, walking away without parting words. fair enough he didn't give them to me. i probably didn't deserve them.

he is a good man and a gentle man. i will not be angry because it is not best. i will be sad, instead.

microsoft paint says, "pride is coming!" 3:22 p.m.

it's too hot to walk to the mail box 1:19 p.m.

and so here, with sincere apologies, is my letter:

monsieur benjamin,

ça va? je suis contente de savoir que tes tableaux vont bien. je suis certaine que tu réussiras tes examens. est-ce qu'il fait chaud dans ton coin du monde? 31 degrés ici aujourd'hui. je crois avoir déja (je n'arrive pas a trouver l'accent grave) mentionné que mon apart n'est pas climatisé. je n'ai pas dormi hier soir, même qu'il y avait un peu de pluie. en plus, il commence a être difficile a respirer. l'air est très épaisse a toronto durant l'été. la job va bien, par contre.

c'est drôle, j'avais sincèrement l'intention de t'écrire une vraie lettre en blogue, mais je n'y arrive pas. il me faut une plume et un papier.

a bientôt. bises.

kate.

i wonder if you'll read this and... 1:12 p.m.

resent me my words, breathe hatred into the lonely parts of sunday and fill the night like a balloon with all of my shortcomings until the week bursts and splatters among the years leaving us to contemplate the hours we spent with him, each in our own way. i assure you that i am no great damsel. on the contrary, my person is riddled with cracks and pounds begging to be filled and lost, respectively. he loved you first and for longer. and though we could spend ages of energy sorting out the complicated scheme of memory the fact remains, i am no enemy.

let's dance 8:11 p.m.

your naked body lanky limbs tangled
with mine in a song of sweat humming
the melody soundtrack of a hundred nights
soothing your fingers wet your breath
heavy your penis erect and quiet always
quiet my boy the runoff from my dreams
reduced to puddles on a pillowcase sprawled
across the sheets the two of us ensconced in
some nocturnal waltz and on that starlit
stage accompanied by the sound of sirens
and the crinkling of a certain plastic bag
you forgave me my faults loved them even
i have not forgotten

excavations 11:43 a.m.

the three hundred yard walk to the subway in silence highlighted in pink our patterns of restraint, tight-lipped and stubborn we marched and i would normally have expected a toothpaste flavoured meeting of lips as we turned the corner to greet hayden street, his eyes wide and mine lowered. but not today. we marched on, instead, toward the mouth of a crowded cave guarding our words like unspeakable secrets, waiting to be swallowed.

the three hundred yard walk to the subway in silence weighed heavily on my heart as i travelled through the tunnels alone, forbidding anyone to share my bench. having made of my briefcase a wall i huddled, pretending to read, but truthfully watching the lights, from the corner of my eye, speed by in a frenzy of distance. i wondered if we would emerge, and when.

the three hundred yard walk to the subway in silence offered me a few solid breaths of reflection in exchange for the pained sigh of my conclusion: it would have been best if we had loved only in the echoes of sex. we are young, i thought, knowing us to be too deeply involved for such deus ex machina statements. too deep and still digging.

j'ai trouvé benjamin rodger - en cachette! 10:40 a.m.

ce matin, in our mailbox. stuffed into a standard number ten wearing gaudy white glasses and a button-down print shirt. he didn't smile, hasn't been sleeping well. neither have i. tells me things have been hard at work. gossip. i can relate. this side of the atlantic, his letter finds me sick with anger, nails bitten to the quick, wondering what i could've done differently. envisioning, the gavel having silenced the whispering room, a procession of preachy syllables emerging from the judge's mouth: "tem-pest-u-ous, but not en-ti-re-ly un-sym-pa-the-tic, en-ig-ma-tic some might say... ." i resist a full accounting of our crooked days and ways, remembering instead the hours we painted, cried, were naked, broken, beautiful, reckless, drunk. details enough, i say. details enough. what's that i hear? you'd like something more? a confession, so as to properly condemn me before my peers? have it, then: i am unabashedly promiscuous, incorrigibly filthy, an unapologetic lush. i dominate conversations, leave dishes unwashed, fall asleep without undressing. i am fat, unworthy of sympathy, arrogant but easily wounded. more? i am incapable of frugality, essentially unreachable by phone, prone to rants and sudden changes in mood. i am not and have never been an honest vegetarian. or an honest socialist. i am weak-willed and easily flustered. i am completely out of touch with popular culture. i have yet to recover from childhood. satisfied? shall i go on?

ou est benjamin rodger? 6:54 p.m.

::: perhaps he has been swallowed by the azur tides of the mediterranean, clinging a blank canvas, images of a canadian capital city in chartreuse swimming between strokes ivory-capped waves and a vengeful european sun his companions ::: perhaps he is painting with violet mittens, in the cold closets of a french art school looking to his well-bred compatriots in red woolen scarves for inspiration ::: perhaps he is collapsed grey drunk on the blonde floorboards of a month-to-month rental waiting for a dark-orange dawn to disturb his deep sleep ::: perhaps he is tired of correpsondence in blue ink with this black disaster and prefers the salmon smiles of more functional versions of the female form ::: perhaps he's given up on this dark-orchid life and has left us for olive dead instead :::

clumsy man, you've grown 3:15 p.m.

since that young summer. across the table, taller,
in your collared shirt. and you remembered! the evening
we spent drunk, collapsed and flirtatious on a patch of grass.
what self-assured little soldiers we were in those bright
and blue-skied days ... i miss our uniforms, sunday soccer
(although i never played) and that subsidized salad bar
in the basement cafeteria. as we walked, yesterday, having
not seen eachother for years, i was concerned.
i'd forgotten how you gesture when you speak,
had forgotten your smile and many of the warm faces of those
fateful months. i'd forgotten that first of many days when we spoke,
nervously, about western alienation. do you remember, graeme,
i thought it had something to do with hemispheres! what
a silly girl i was then. what a happy girl. it was wonderful to see you.

french social philosopher (5 letters) 10:54 a.m.

we stumble can't seem to remember despite our rhinestone educations (or at least his, mine he would say) when we finally throw our hands up in defeat google offers sorel and we snicker, coyly between kisses, making jokes about the boots we'd worn in those pink years before puberty. played in seperate cities, different snow. what terrible boots and how heavy! but warm, he offers, and canadian.

misquoting marx 8:04 p.m.

there is something very calming
about a gaggle of middle-aged men
feeding their addictions together
misquoting marx over value-brand cigarettes
and pints of draught. i'm beginning
to know them, to recognize their rants
although they know not mine, this room
full of fathers white and tired with hearts
warmed by habit. some of us just have
a harder time of it. but we understand
eachother, i think, we solitary social bunch.
it is, whether you'll take my word for it
or not, a very honest enterprise: alcoholism.

deep and still digging 9:46 p.m.

in a basement somewhere in west toronto
past the big park and before the river
you are twenty-three years deep and still digging
(pace is such a difficult beast to tame)
the day is four nights gone, the cake
has been eaten, the pan cleaned, those
colourful worms skewered by cocktail swords
(some dirty metaphor, i'm sure) have made
their peace with the material world and retired
to a darker den where you speak loudly, with
intent, slow to wake and quick to love (just as i
remembered you) beneath the many layers
which you'll soon begin to shed because winter
is six nights gone and nakedness is easier
than ever and as you slip on your shoes
with a casual confidence that has taken
seasons to acquire, leaning on the wooden
frame of a childhood doorway, eyeing the distance
before you, the rank stench of work-to-come
hanging heavily in the air -- you are not alone.
somewhere in east toronto between university
and a great valley, i am twenty-one years old
deep and still digging, pen in hand, heart on sleeve,
warm beneath your sweater and smiling.

i was hoping you might 6:55 p.m.

she worries about his punctuation
use of question marks escalating
adverbs are so tiresome but he's
got something and it's not news
patience perhaps or that boyish
smile an ability that he developed
with the guidance of a good father
to listen and care softly with a quiet
calm about him biting his lip and
sniffling stubbled chin up and capable
of much more than she suspected
from her solitary corner she wishes
that she’d thought more carefully about
the bag the conversation the outcome
wishes that she had special combinations
of moments and time to offer him
as tokens of her good will but she
doesn’t instead some vague sense
of promise inhabits her stomach sick
with anger and uncertainty visited
by the look of those boyish eyes
and that all-forgiving smile thick with
intricate grey webs of thought and
bright simple blossoms as though in film
bundled, finally, with the brown string satisfaction
that it’s enough, that it’s always been enough…