Snow can wait, I've forgot my mittens

I've done nothing today. Barely got my morning pages out, curled up on the desk chair and read some random slash fic and let the hours spill away, made some tea, ate some rice and green lentils, realized the sun had set and lit my electric candles, answered a couple of ads on Filmcafe, sent a couple of scripts to another production company, made more tea; I should go for a walk, or shower; no, I should write. But I don't like to write because I should, I only ever want to write because I have to, and not from some outward pressure of expectations or deadlines, but from inside, from a pressure of words that need to get out. You can't force it, you can't wait for it, so what do you do.

Oh, I also checked out some youtube links that Kajsa shared with me, feeling the need to educate me in must-knows of musical genius from the 60s, 70s and 80s, and now I've discovered Patti Smith. I've also listened to Exene Cervenka and Lydia Lunch, but Exene I already knew from before through Viggo Mortensen, and Lydia I discovered today, but on my own. I think I might like her the best. But it's Tori Amos who's stuck in my head, the fragile notes of "Winter" playing on repeat, reminding me I should be writing up the fifth draft of my feature screenplay, but as always, I'm procrastinating, because I'm resistant, because I'm self-sabotage-ing, because I'm scared. I need to do yoga. But my room is too small.

I'm back!

I went into the job office and got them to order my train tickets (and pay for them) for when I go to Stockholm. Meeting with that film guy does count as a job interview after all... I didn't tell them about the interview at the school though, or the looking at a room for rent, but it's not like I out-right lied to them, technically...

I was up all night painting as well, so perhaps (hopefully) I'm coming out of my energy and creativity hibernation. About time. Spring came and went and I've hardly done a damn thing. Well, apart from taking some pictures and making a couple of crappy quality shorts. It's just not the same. Because I know what it feels like when I give something my all as opposed to merely functioning on auto-pilot and that's what I've been doing ever since I got back to Sweden to be honest...

Early this morning before I went to bed I came together with my inspiration again and accessed that higher level of whatever, energy, I suppose, you know the state I mean when you're not thinking, and you're 100% there and alive and your skin tingles and you feel slightly feverish, your cheeks are kind of hot and you're kind of dizzy and it's like an out-of-body experience at the same time as you feel more in your skin than you usually are and it's like falling and soaring all at once? yeah, you know what I mean... anyways, I had that last night/this morning, and it only lasted for about a quarter of an hour, but it was a wake-up call (yet again) and that's how I want to live my life, (almost) every moment of it. Not quarter of an hour every six months, all the time! Most of the time I'm not even here. You can see me and touch me and talk to me but I'm not really here at all. I'm somewhere else. Hiding somewhere. Dreaming. Drifting. You know.. well, I've had enough of it, I want to be here, where my feet are, and I want to do stuff, stuff that matter, you know?

Trying something different (this is for Cesar!)

What do you know... two can play this game!
Okay, I'm not good at it... but I can play it! :)
/ from Hell with love,
Ida

And what have you done?

It's almost two in the morning. I was falling asleep in front of the TV a few hours ago and decided to go to bed but of course as soon as I lay down in the dark of my former bedroom I was wide awake again. So this is Christmas - I dread to face the inevitable question that follows that statement - I think I'm experiencing an assault of post-holiday gloom to my various senses, just wait until you see me around this time on New Year's Eve, must be all the fattening food and sugary sweets that have been force-fed to me by means of brainwashing and possibly red-suited telekinesis. It's so weird, I was having a staring contest with myself whilst brushing my teeth just now, yeah I'm weird too, but I barely recognize myself sometimes. Another year has gone by, still completely narcissistic. Well, almost completely. There are still some stray thoughts of interest directed at certain someones that are not part of the population of my own mind and on that note I think I am most definitely destined for a life of devoted celebacy. I'm here. The other day I was literally a wall away, when I was visiting Fredde who got an apartment in the same building, I was in the same building, and my being in said building was made known through text messages and telepathy, but nothing. I left the christmas gift with Fredde, figured you know, they're more likely to see each other first anyway...but anyway, I should get some sleep, or rest at least, or brooding even, done and yeah... wow, odd thought processes, i just thought of Lucy in the sky with diamonds and then on auto-pilot thought of an acronym for myself and came up with Ida in the desert with acorns, acorns of all things, I ask you,

yeah, the holidays are evil - but at least I got some nice pretty things, my family is still in one piece and I have not morphed into blue whale just yet...

The second letter

When I was eleven or so and I had one friend I remember telling her about my dream boyfriend. He had brown hair and green eyes. His favourite band was Metallica. I guess I still thought maybe there was a smidge of a hope for me to turn out normal, desiring the house and the lab and the 2,5 children and the valium, not just desiring to have the desire. Instead, here I am. I'm not perfect, in fact I'm quite fucked up. I'm in no position to be making any promises. What you see is what you get, if even. But I can tell you one thing, amidst the quirks and the phobias that fit into that one term "fucked up", including fear of intimacy, commitment and even conversations at times, an unhealthy view of sex and a cynical outlook on life, and the emotional capacity of the twelve-year-old I was when things went wrong, I have felt something akin to normal, healthy, sweet infatuation that could quite possibly lead to the real thing, once, for one person, and I don't mean to scare you but that's you, baby. That's what I have to offer. Take it or leave it. A piece of advice would be, leave it. Run for the hills. Because this girl's got a ton of baggage.

That's it.

The first letter

It’s one o’clock in the morning. As usual, I can’t sleep. I had this image in my head just now, in the bathroom, glancing at my own reflection as I turned back to the door, okay staring at my own reflection as I mapped out my distinctive features, and as I was looking into my own face in the dirty mirror glass, I gradually began to see past it, past myself, or past a layer of myself,
my vision sort of blurred but I could see myself more clearly.

I won’t take any Tylenols again, I promise. Trust me, I learned my lesson last time.

Something made me think of you, though.

Not just hearing your voice reason with the otherwise luring insanity of the back of my mind, but something else. A thought, maybe. An image most likely. I don’t even think in words anymore, I think in images and they’re not exactly clear either, they’re all overlapping, and morphing, and constantly moving. I find it hard to focus. I think I was remembering something about you,
a look you gave me or a secret smile.

I think about you a lot lately.

Especially when I can’t sleep. I know, it’s unhealthy. Most likely I am becoming obsessive again. But it’s not like before, when I was younger and I would lose track of time, or my grasp on reality; it’s different this time, now I can have my head in the clouds and keep my feet on the ground. It’s like what I was telling you about the mirror, I see past the first layer,
reality,

and I can gaze beyond it without it actually disappearing or changing, it’s still there, still very much real, just toned down.

Transparent.

Someone once told me that if I you run into a bear in the woods, the best thing to do is to drop down on the ground and play dead, in which case the bear will most likely leave you alone as opposed to if you start running. If you start running the bear’s instincts will kick in and she will take up chase. And they might seem like big, clumsy teddy bears, but they will catch you and one swat to your head with one of those paws could kill you in a second.

I quickly discovered that the technique worked with people as well, or situations.

Later on in life the two bled together.

Playing dead became a way of running. And as long as I was running away, I was dead to the world, just like Juliet. Recently, I can’t help but think it’s Romeo I’m running away from. You know, maybe it’s easier to just stay dead. Maybe I don’t want to wake up again and face the tedious cruelties that await me. Maybe I have good instincts and know what’s best for me… or maybe I’m a terrified little ferret.

I’ll wait for you, that’s what you said.

Well, you wrote it on a wall. We were such kids. Am I still a kid to you? Do you even know me, really know me? No, of course not, what a stupid question, how could you possibly? I don’t know you either. I think I’ve been too afraid to get to know you. I think I’ve been running away. This is no surprise to you, I’m sure. Do you even care?

I keep imagining that you share my thoughts about this and my memories of us, but you probably remember things a lot differently and it all probably means something altogether different to you, if it means anything at all.

It’s almost been five years since the first time I saw you.

It was infatuation at first sight and also the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced. I’m exaggerating. You were beautiful. I was speechless, worse, I spoke,

are you with someone,

and everyone thought it was a joke, even you, although the way you looked at me, the rest of the night you kept looking at me and smiling shyly, I’m probably inventing these memories as we speak, but it was New Year’s Eve and by right all our lives could be perceived magical if only for that one night and they did and the night lasted for ever until it was light outside and since it was the first of January and we were in the North of Sweden we had already missed half the day when the sun came up.

The next New Year’s Eve I was on an aeroplane going across the Atlantic Ocean.

I’ve yet to come back.

Do you think it’s possible that you are the reason I’ve lingered here, do you think maybe I’m avoiding you?

Other things have happened, to both of us, it’s not as black and white as that, why haven’t you asked me to come back, why haven’t you missed me enough to tell me to come back, do you even think about me at all? Nothing ever happened between us, so why does it feel like everything happened between us, and it was all that one night, that one night when something could have and was supposed to have happened and nothing most certainly did and that was my fault I pretended to be asleep by the way, I was scared, I ran away, and I kept running, it’s true, but if nothing happened why can’t I forget about you, why do I still lie awake at night and think about the way you looked at me, that first night and every night since it, and even that one morning,

you were framed in the light bouncing off the snow on the ground,

you had snowflakes in your hair, and your eyes were burning,

I’m not trying to be poet, I’m trying to be honest, but I think I’ve forgotten how.

I don’t even remember a single conversation I’ve had with you. All I have of you are images and I probably made half of them up. How sad is that? I’m beginning to think this has absolutely nothing to do with you, actually. I think this is about me. I think I’m avoiding myself, not you, or at least what you see in me, my own reflection in your eyes

as cheesy as that sounds, the way you look at me. No-one looks at me the way you do.

Or I don’t see it. Or I don’t care enough to take notice. It’s not black and white. Nothing is, not even my images of you.

The other night I actually got some sleep, but do you want to hear something ironic?

I had a dream and you were in it.

I was back home and you were there and I worshipped you as always and hid it as always and you, you were back together with your bastard of a boyfriend and completely oblivious to anything having ever been going on between us, so oblivious in fact that I started to doubt it myself, I started to think maybe I made it all up, and then I woke up, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. It wasn’t even real. It was a dream. And I’m losing sleep over it.
I’m thinking maybe going home for the holidays wasn’t the best idea, but I can’t wait to see you, to I don’t know, I don’t even know what we do, do we talk?

Do we touch each other or hug or make toasts or tell jokes or avoid or what?

I don’t even know anymore. In fact I think we’ve only been completely alone with each other twice. And there was nothing to say.

How can there be so much between us that it can fill up five years worth of sleepless nights and not words enough to fill five minutes?

I have to get up early in the morning, I’ve got errands, got to go check out this school, this art school down on Granville Island that I really want to apply to for next year, and then I’ve work in the afternoon, lots of markdowns to advertise and lots of retail fake Christmas cheer to spread with Rudolph, so I should probably go back to bed and at least try and get some sleep. But I really need to sit down an re-evaluate my life situation.

I’ll see you soon anyways.
Take care until then. Bye.
Yours, Ida.

Forget Me Not

How's that for a new title for the film? "Forget me not" as in the flower... too cheesy? Fuck, I'm so cheesy lately... Well, I guess it's only fitting, since I was whiney already, haahaahaa... no.

collecting myself

Back home. The light filtered through the clouds outside and the plastic blinds covering the windows is a mixture of brass and amber. Cesar is watching the first season of "Will and Grace" on DVD and I am collecting myself. Nearly done. For a moment I thought I was going insane and I was set on getting an appointment with a psychiatrist the minute I got back to Vancouver, but another ride through Hell (the flight over here) and a night in "my own bed" (read: Cesar's bed) I feel a bit better. I rang that director guy, Nathaniel Geary, this afternoon and he said he was going to email me with a time and place for us to meet tomorrow. I'm kind of nervous. But it's good to be back in business at least, I think that's the only way I can keep depression and insanity off my door step, work work work; keep that inspiration and creativty flowing.

2008, stained with red wine and anxiety and excitement, as always,

So, this is 2008. Looks rather the same to me.

We finally got some snow over here, and by some I mean the tiniest layer you could possibly imagine before it classifies as frost, just in time for the new year. I went into town and celebrated the event with a few friends of mine, and by friends i mean my one best friend and friends of his plus my darling girlfriend, and by girlfriend I unfortunately mean a friend who happens to be of the female persuasion. Every "living" soul in town, with exception for me and Fredde, felt the need to gather at the town square to listen to some wanker sing and then recite the new year speech. (I use the term "living" very loosely here, because the sight of this mass of people streaming toward the square from all directions, at a steady pace as though in a trans, hypnotized by the music, it really reminded us of a zombie movie.) They all then stare up into the sky at the fireworks financed by the very same gathering's tax money. Me and Fredde accompanied our friends to the square but decided to remain on the other side of the small river running through the town and, lounging against a streetlamp, chain smoked and mocked before-mentioned gathering like there was no tomorrow. The gathering proceeded to bombard us with fireworks by paying their taxes a year or so in advance, but our sarcasm and the fact that there was almost no tomorrow spurred us on and we prevailed.

When our, and by our I mean mostly Fredde's, friends decided to throw tradition to the wind and leave the square and go and get properly smashed in one of our local pubs, our spirits rose considerably. I stuck to red wine all night and stayed romantically tipsy and it went no further than that.

I don't know what part of me is the biggest right now and if the future year or the future in general frightens or excites me, possibly both at the same time with me being quite self-destructive in nature and a bit of a closet adrenaline junkie, but I suppose it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, because the future keeps looming over me either way and I can either try and hide from it, follow its flow, or try and create it as I go along.