When I Write It In The Sand, There Is Something Wrong

Would you love someone if they didn't love the same things as you, or be attractted to them if they did not like the same things as you? The affinity we have for others is really nothing more than an accumulation of things that we have collected - it's not you i like, it's the things you like that i like.

And it is how we define ourselves, with our things. i understand you don't define your self worth by a sport utility vehicle or perhaps a new condo's hardwood floors - i can tell this by your muted scoffing. But you, like i, quietly pride yourself on the books you have read, the magazines you hunt and restlessly await each month, the obscure music you love, the vinyl that you still buy, the clothes you wear that makes you stand out so, and the trips you might have taken around the world. Maybe our jobs and the education we have recieved along the way might creep into the mix of things. We are a collection of things, of objects, of spent money.

So if there is a pulsing want for another person, don't disguise it with justifications on why you would get along without the attraction alone. We really would be more sincere if we all just admitted that we just want to fuck.

Go Downtown With The Drugs In My Body

Without notice, i have slithered away into month-long disappearances. i now hide in an old downtown house with blown speakers and mixers, packs of cigarettes, warm coffee in the rain, raspberries and blackberries, dark chocolate, and my mess of papersreportsjournalsfigurestables next to my my little white laptop (i ask her to sing to me Feist’s The Reminder, Kitsunè Maison Compilation4, some BBC Radio’s Essential Mixes, and Billie Holiday). Those are the innocuous dohickeys in my toolkit by which i attack proposals, progress reports, final projects, posters, presentations, and committee meetings. Sometimes, when he isn't around, i dance barefoot on the squeaky hardwood floors to Dragonette's I Get Around or whatever Klaxons remix happens to popup that day. i smoke by the large window and watch the rain fall from the roof edges onto the green leaves of the bush and tall trees outside. Then, back to my patiently waiting white laptop.

i haven't been to my digs in months. i haven't been at home with my family either. i just travel from the university laboratories and libraries to this abode, then back again.

i miss you. and my friends. and my family. and the hipsters and the shows (the latter i only hear about after they have passed by). and the sun. and how we used to have coffee and pots of tea. and how i used to have the capacity to daydream.

---

i got in yesterday from LA. i am tired. i am old and boring. i just want to wake up stretching slow on a Sunday with the sunshine pouring in the window, with orange juice, some dub soothing from the stereo, and rolling around in the sheets. Instead, i fly again to Québec City this Saturday. Québec City for the Canadian Society of Microbiologists Annual Conference, LA was for an extended family wedding and marathon reunion/first meetings.

And LA is surreal. Four days of familyfamilyfamily matted into the hazy humidity, backed-up crisscrossing freeways, mega- strip- and mini-malls, palm trees, diamond-encrusted Sidekicks, and shopping carts rattling alongside Beamers and Benzes. Between the family picnic in the hills, soy beverages in Chinatown, and dinners in Orange County, i made an expensive quick last minute escape to West Hollywood on a Sunday night, to finally dance and drink and smoke and hug a broad-shouldered man as we both ran across the then deserted Wilshire Boulevard.


family touristing

flowershop love

wine rounds the tables and corsages on lapels




first meetings and late night Long Beach breakfast



family reunion bar-b-q house in the hills



late night sneak away



nobody innocuous



happiness is...

Streets of Neon French Romance Blinking Sweat

Sleeplessness for months ended the March, red-eyed to Montreal on Friday morning, still sleepless like the rest of the hedonistic weekend into this new month of April.

The Ed Banger Records Party over left me with bruises all over my body, my tights ripped, sweaty, dirty, drunk with wine and gin, and smoking packs of cigarettes in a most beautiful fox dress and blood red nails. Liquourbottlesmix of water passed groping hands in a grimy, sweaty, stylish, beautiful mad decent in the Banger pit, as we stormed the stage - "We Are Your Friends." Picture photographs taken by party people, my fox dress slipping and hair matted from the sweat of mine and others float about now, amongst the captured stage diving and kissing and sticky moist air. i slept in the dress beside warm bottles of Fresca and water.

i had packed Vladimir Nabakov's Laughter in the Dark and two packages of Benson and Hedges Special Lights, along with new sharp sharpies and every intention of reading, writing, and daydreaming the short escape away. Instead, sensual excesses coddled me with vegan feasts, cigarettes without disdain in bed and on long walks, sexy fucking results, boutique hats and plaid trench coats, endless coffee and earl grey tea; warm and lasting for hours, records and books, Just Noodles, and a playmate with freckles. A sword necklace now hangs around my neck, and i love licorice.

Red eyes to and from, Montreal's super sexy vibes.


a sign of mad ascension by cy




Busy P and Justice making Ed Rec by Reid




SebastiAn whispering Busy Justice by cy




dj Mehdi avant the jump via thecobrasnake.com




"we are your friends..." via thecobrasnake.com




"...you'll never be alone again" via friendattack.com




fucking fox grime via friendattack.com

Stochastic Reverse Engineering, Or The Sensing Of Stress

The month of February was a quick blink - a flutter of my thickly smudged and mascara-coated eyelashes in the large melty flakes of snow that made the University grounds look like a cold and absurdly utilitarian ski lodge complex. Also, i had lost two pairs of mittens this February month. i suppose it was really hard to smoke with clumsy mittens anyway. Goodbye to you then, Sir February, and our quick fling together; when you made the days piercingly cold to soothe my raging anticipation propelled by my seminar to my Faculty cluster, and when we danced all the gin-soaked night to a C'est Dangereux anti-Valentine's party, and when you spun me into a panic attack in a big bed at 4am one of your nights, so all i could do was cry out for someone to lie close to me.

March hides the spring and protects her from our city's eagerness (as the last snow is always during the May long weekend, preferably when our flimsy tents collapse from the snowfall accumulated overnight onto our ever-optimistic selves, every time we decide to inaugurate camping season). But today, i believed in the coming of spring, in a borrowed and worn-in badass tshirt and a black yarny sweater, as i walked along the melted streets in the sunshine with a large coffee and a soft package of cigarettes with an accomplice. i am still sick, and i know that no amount of orange juice or Neocitran could possibly make up for the way i have been careless with caring for myself. But i try in vain to suppress the chronically surfacing illness with vitamin C, throat drops, and a few less cigarettes. Spring comes with fever, right?

Which brings me to a colloquium a few days ago, held by the Physics department of the University i attend, hosted by a charmingly eloquent Dr. Stanislas Leibler, the head of the Laboratory for living matter at The Rockefeller University. i quite greedily drank in his nimble hour and forty minute talk on "Fluctuations, Informations and Survival: Lessons From Bacteria." He gets one thinking with his slides n' slides of formulas and clever collections of variables, about some sort of intertwined world where even stochastic variations can be accounted for in an elegant model. These stochastic effects of course, are multiplied together - not additive.

Multiplying the poor things i have decided for and done to myself is a limit fast approaching infinity at an exponential rate. i am quietly screaming all the way, like one might down a waterslide.

Kisses On My Arm When I Look Away, And That Tear Your Lips Becasue I Want It So Badly

January is always the most painful of months. There is no sense of renewal; just the expectation. We are left making the same mistakes, but far more indulgent and ridiculous. i hate January. And i am at ill ease becasue i have left many things to rot and oxidize in their hiding places, until they are poisonous through their pores.

Bows And A Blanket Of Weeds

i tilt my head, eyes wide and watering.

It is January again. The last bit of December was especially bleak, and a new year finds me lorn and all alone sitting on the steps of the science buildings as the sun sets, a package of cigarettes beside my black mittens. Many abstractions have left me for the coming of this year, and i have abandoned many of the fancies i had carved with care into wooden tables. Time will take it all and my head will fall between my knees.

Right now, i want kind pleasures like staying up late to the night by myself and daydreaming or reading thick Russian novels. i want to starve myself until all i can do is love so calmly and deliberately, to all those i know and have to meet.

Another one, yes?

With Wooden Buttons And An Apple Core

i dreamt i traveled and found you there,
in the woods one Christmas Eve,
waiting
by Hayato Nagao
...

Nights before Christmas found me coldly reconciled at a dance party soothed with whiskey, cigarettes, and beautiful young people. Then, waking up in a big old house to a blinking VCR clock telling me that i was to be in the lab in mere minutes, and i was in the same clothes as the night before. Blurry contacts and disoriented, i shake the boy on the couch next to me and we stumble out into the twilight to bundled-up schoolchildren crossing the street and on the playground in the winter morning, our breath frozen before us. i had parked my little red car in a school zone the night before.

Hurry along, all...

Garden Wall Of Eden, Full Of Spiderbites And All Your Lovers

There is not anytime to breathe when the semester's end sneaks up on me - i am so tired and rusty. But i let out my first sigh of breath along this stretch on a Friday, when the term paper left my hands for the professor's, and i decided for my sanity to consciously avoid any later indulgences in my studies for things eukaryotic.

i thought, on the dark and cold Friday night leaving the lab that i would congratulate myself with the best coffee in the little city with a stack of papers to mark by my side. Alone at last...not to last. Because Thursday and me and boy from a long time ago chanced upon each other and by Friday, we didn't mean to meet but did. He left the OR and found me in my snuggery, heavy with the smell of espresso. i took him to another, heavy with the smell of cigarettes and martinis, and by 4am, when the alcohol had cleared out of our systems, we said goodbye.

i woke to an empty house Saturday, but sleepy phonecalls catching back and forth from a lady i love woke me up at last - tea is what ladies have Saturday afternoons. And then they serve and have angry drinks with boys and friends when it gets darker in posh niches, and by midnight, they are hungry and drink Chinese beers in Chinatown and eat vegetarian noodles with burley men. By 2am, they drive to a hotel by the railroad tracks with a divebar for off-sales liquor and drink with the men back at the house until the morning.

Mourning Sunday morning because another boy in the house starts his cold lazy day off with waterfalls of pot, opening and closing the backdoor where i try to sleep - the fireplace is off in the morning. i rub my eyes and can taste the night before, but i ignore the blurry vision and hangover, and careful not to wake any other sleeping bodies, i take out the papers to mark until the house is bustling with hunger.

Vegan brunch to be had on a busy avenue, and i buy a small stack of cds that will dream me pretty dreams before we make it to the restaurant, and a pirate scarf after the pumpkin pesto tofu and yam hashbrowns. Somewhere in between, my cheeks blushing and anticipating, i saw the beautiful boy with whom i don't get to spend my Tuesdays or weekends with these days, to uncomfortable delight.

My weekplanner covered in cd stickers and i had agreed that i was not to see high jinx and hedonism until mid-December. But now, my brain works better after the coaxing from good and bad drinks, packs of cigarettes, and the wonderful people i get to be with. This week's end was a long and marvelous fuck up.

One More Tired Thing, The Grey Moon On The Rise

There is snow on the ground now. And there are less stubbed cigarettes littered around my white boots where i stand with my coffee, outside the grey university buildings. Strangely, the coldness of winter soon approaching has initiated a convulsive heat through my body and flickers of vitriolic discomfort rising in my rib cage and into my breaths. i am choler, in black mittens and a young girl's old dress-up jacket. i bite my lip hard, just like i can feel my hands crack to bleed into the dry air and the floating flurries.

...

i have been baking a lot. Baking is like doing an experiment in the lab, except more delicious. And usually, the results are tangibly better.

The Film Has A Story, But It’s Of Little Importance

These days are so different from the ones i used to have. i feel like there is no coherence and i just wander along, falling into one dysphoric situation and then on to the next - it's like some Lynchian feeling of awestruck confusion mixed with absurdity and ultimately, utmost fear. My old daydreams are now replaced by visions of myself violently crashing my scientific caravan into a hypothetical dusty and hostile territory. And i find myself often thinking about a robot-loving boy, and how his robots will stare blankly at me from his desk in the blue glow of the computer screen as i lie there.

There is something very unsettling lurking about. i am not sure what it is. But i have unlimited faith in a secret weapon to calm myself: a Norwegian duo strumming placid musical modulations over large headphones.

Free-Fucking Radicals

Back from Montreal with a newfound hatred for Air Canada. Fuck the national airline - it should have gone under years ago, and it seems to have no problem carrying that mentality as the insignia of the corporation.

*Punches the unused boarding pass*

But then i digress...

Montreal was a wonderful way to cap off the summer, with a multifunctional media pass used often to blow my mind to little melted bits, and a groovy/crazy magazine posse to cover an amazing festival named after how ridiculous Jacques Cartier must have looked to the Mohawks. On the second day of the fête, when Nick Diamonds mentioned that summer was indeed over, i felt very inclined to believe him. It was curiously astounding to fully realize the season had passed me by so quickly, a terrifyingly breakneck giant humming and spinning whirl since the rainy Norwegian spring. It did make me want to throw up a little.

Strangely, summer has never been an issue, although with such a short one where i live, i have always understood why the townsfolk worship and celebrate the two months with all glee and jubulance. However, this year is the first time i have felt any kin to the season. Maybe every summer for the last three years has presented itself to me without consequence because there was nothing to end it. The summer would turn into the fall slowly and the days would get shorter with the trees becoming yellow and red. Then there is the first cold that leaves frost on the windowpanes and then the snowstorms become more frequent. Warmer days then seem to creep through the darkness and you realize that the snow is turning to rain, and it's almost summer again.

This year, i am heading back to school, wet behind the ears. Hence my obsession with the ominous end of summer - an obsession leaving me with a weathered face, little sleep, charred brain and decreased liver function.

Indulge me.


a mind melting and Dinosaur Jr. in the wind by cy



in the Salon des Arts by jesse



dusk with James Chance & the Contortions by cy



how sad Clap Your Hands Say Yeah makes me... by cy




Sonic (fucking!) Youth by cy



waking up to interpretive dance and Islands by cy



up close and personal with Tokyo Police Club by jesse




Wolf Parade after soundcheck... by cy



sheet music standing by The Hidden Cameras by cy



beer o'clock at osheaga by cy



Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley makes my heart by cy



Kid Koala spinning for his mum by cy






The Flaming Lips and the massive explosions in the rain by cy



the posse by cy

It's The Ticking Of The Clock When You Wake Up Alone At 7am

Insomnia is my summer lover every night.

Quiet music floats from my stereo to hold my dreamy stream of consciousness, until i start dreaming to believe that i am in a haze of weary abstraction, folding onto the day's dreams, daydreams and preoccupations, and then i begin muttering nonsensical responses to the eventide. My eyes are closed, but i can see shadows dancing from my musings and from my candles on my dresser, so i curl up tighter. My dusty window lets in cool night time breezes as i am tossing and tangled in my little pink worn-thin blanket.

And then, the twilight is overtaken by violent punches of pink in the sky, making way for the dawn over the parade of cookie cutter houses along the horizon.

Fucking insomnia.

Wet Wet Wet

Tonight found me soaked and screaming while running to my little red car in the severe thumderstorms. Last night was dance floor sweat and spilled drinks in the electronic steam of the hifi.

So now, i have to do some laundry.

Wir Jagen der Monotonie

It feels like the days are stretching longer and longer. i am waiting for something to happen. It feels like i am just waiting for the days to end.

i busy myself with long nights on the rooftop patio of Broken City and in the bizzare amusement park that happens to be in town for a while with my media passes and magazine buttons. i daydream with Hayato in the afternoon at work and chain smoke with my editor all night until the wee hours of the morning to his favorite records. i watch Alicja and Anne splash around at the lake while i take pictures. i watch old movies with my boyfriend while we eat vegan Chinese takeout, and drag him down to hipster hangouts when i need to smoke. i am busy, but i always feel like i am waiting.

We are chasing monotony. With cigarettes and whiskey.

Honey Kisses Clouds Of Fluff

This beautiful long weekend of Canada Day saw none of me, as i was bedridden with a bad allergic reaction to a still yet to be known substance. Falling in and out of sleep for 3 days in the heat of the house lead me to the realization that summer is really almost over. So i dragged my sorry and swollen self out today, grabbed my dear friend and headed downtown to Prince's Island Park with slurpees in one hand and kites in the other, Wilco blasting out of the speakers of his old Ford Topaz.

We photoboothed, sucked down our "mix" slurpees, flew kites in the grass with no wind, laughed a lot, met up with friends for sushi and video games, and then had fries and brownies at the Denny's before we said goodbye at midnight.

Gosh Ryan, i am gonna miss you when you go.

Two Extra Weeks? Here and There? One Then Two?

enemies like this?

Amsterdam was rainy and soaked my clothes and journals with its endless downpours. i stood in the cold to try to get my clammy hands on tickets the night of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show, which was sold out months prior, joining the many other beautiful and polite locals with the same idea. No Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but something even better was the Radio4 show at the same venue, which is delightfully an old converted Dutch milk factory. Radio fucking 4. Fuck the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Anthony Roman: So the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are coming here in a few days.
Crowd: [cheers]
Anthony Roman: Did you guys know that they have four members now? They're touring with an extra guitarist.
Guy from crowd: [screams] Yeah! Four!
Anthony Roman: [speech about the Brooklyn scene and New York music]
Guy from crowd: [interrupting, screams] CGBG's!
Anthony Roman: Uh, are you just gonna scream out every New York landmark now?
Dave Milone: [screams] Yeah! Empire state building!

associé de crime?

Paris is supposed to be a romantic city, so on my third visit, i bring a companion. After a month of reclusive Norwegian bliss and talking to only myself, it felt vaguely unsettling to have a whole person with me on my junkets, or a human response to the mindless blatherings i would expulse. It felt slightly better after a week, and sharing my umbrella became a more romantic affair. The days passed with kissing, fighting, smoking, and wandering. Sustained on continual cups of coffee, we turn out to be the biggest goofs and watched The Da Vinci Code on the Champs Elysees late at night, then ran to the Louvre the next day. A few days later, we watched Marie Antoinette a few theaters down the avenue and caught the morning train to Versailles.

Weaving Sunlight Threads In His Hands

Seven hours on a train from Oslo to Bergen.

Velkommen ombord. I Toget Til Bergen.

Then Bergen, along the wharf and in the cafes, in the sunshine and then in the cold winds. i am drinking the strongest coffees i have ever had the pleasure of drinking while warm and light Bergen dialects of Norwegian are spoken around me in soft sing-songy tones by beautiful hipsters. And the steep cobblestone streets lead down to Bryggen along the harbor one way, and paths to pretty houses in the lush green mountains the other. Bicycles everywhere, especially near the university buildings which are scattered along the main streets and museums, where beautiful students step outside to smoke cigarettes between classes.

i spend all my money on postcards and stamps, coffee and organic fresh baked bread. And my shoes are worn thin and breaking apart, because i have walked the charming town so much, over and over again.

i am in love.

the juniper bends, as if you were listening by cynthia yip


Last night, walking alone in the cold and rain that are the Oslo spring streets, i wandered into the darkness of Rockefeller. Inside, i was serenaded into a warm haze by the beautiful Mr. Beam, and then made to dance by Joey Burns and his culprits.

Oh, will it ever stop raining here?

Scandinavian Anxiety Syndrome

Plane ticket printed on a university computer. Passport no longer to collect dust.

Currency conversions and blowdryers, adaptors and tylenol, antibacterial soap and sunglasses, five cameras and hundreds of packs of chewing gum, insurance card and cigarettes, ipod and huge headphones, notebooks and my killer boots, cds and Journal of Bacteriology papers, vitamins and sharpies, lovely sandals and powdered ginseng, ziplock bags and ripped converses, delightfully thick books and water bottle, clean sheets and AA batteries, shower footwear and pretty dresses, hoodies and a little suitcase too, a bar of dark chocolate and kisses from the peeps i love.

And all the stuff i am forgetting...

Into my backcountry backpack.

Part Of Something Bigger Than Just On Our Own

So much admiration and ovation and love.





My funny valentine has been accepted into the University of Calgary Faculty of Law today.






Congratulations and kudos to mon petit ami...

dusk blossoms by Cynthia Yip


Vancouver again. Mais nous n'étions pas dans l'amour.

Misty

There is still drifting snow in the late nights and early mornings. The skies are grey and crisp, and my skin cracks to reveal blood that stains. i can't feel warm. i just sit by my window and watch the snow drift some mornings, feeling bleak and fading away.

i feel so defeated and overwhelmed - i am abashed and listless, until i manage to let out a pathetic scream of lament as quietly as i can.

i just want to abandon my life and run away to a warm abode where i can draw the curtains and chain smoke cigarettes until i can't cry anymore. And no one would find me.

lighten up, baby


Here is the stress and abandonment that i thought i had ditched a few years ago - it is a cigarette, and a whiskey is not far away...

akron/family keeps you warm on a cold monday night by cynthia yip

Footloose

When it rains, it pours.

Things can all add up after a quiet and severley uneventful three years. And then you find that in the next few months, you can be all broke, no plane ticket back, no home, and no grad school will want you.

And that boy you loved...yeah, he'll be gone too.

Spike Jonze On The Wall

This Saturday was the first time that i had actually lost something that i always feared losing - my keys. i walked all the way to my car in the -20.3 degree Celsius weather, only to discover that my keys were not in my bag. So i proceeded to fondle myself through my big red mittens, hoping that they were misplaced somewhere on my body - this was not the case. Becoming increasingly cold, i retraced my snowy steps of the day outside on the avenue and inside vegan restaurants and tea houses, finding no keys.

Disheartened and a bit worried at this point, there was only one thing to do: call my mums. She didn't like this, as she was at work.

Strangely, it was my editor who came to rescue me, and with a ring to my cellphone, he was whisking me from the record store which i was seeking warmth from and driving me to the hifi where he was the dj. He fed me coffee and kahlua as i sat in the dj booth with his crates of records. When he broke the mixing board, i ran away because my mum called to say that she was somewhere downtown, looking for me.

Thanks Glenn.

homecooked vegan celebration by cynthia yip on 04 february, 2006