I Want to Be a Better Person
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
11:48am Sunday 11Feb07

dreamt of my mother last night. dreamt that I was trying to get to Montreal to pay her a surprise visit. I was on a busy street that I thought was Newman Blvd but it turned out that I was still in Chomedy, Laval. A white family from Vancouver in an RV gave me a lift and we discussed the beauty of Quebec as we drove through.

I've been dreaming more about my mom again recently. I guess because I really want to see her and my dream world is my only option. Plus I seem to be really focused on life and death lately. There seems to be more action in my life lately as well that shakes things up. A girlfriend that I used to talk to every single day called me twice last week. The guy called me on Friday. Fredo gave me the best hug he's ever given me in the year that we've known each other (maybe he had to squish me to get through all the layers I was wearing). The hug actually threw me off. Ant called me on Friday and declared that I'd have to organize our next get together and that he expects me to divulge something personal - a problem, a confession, something. We're stepping up this friendship thing. Since he confides in me, he needs me to confide in him.

This active energy makes me want to propel myself forward. I want to start asking men out on dates, just for the heck of it. Just to know for sure who may or may not be an option. Turn things a little upside down. And it's still winter, it's not even spring yet.

Maybe I just want to live. I tell you something about Anna Nicole Smith's death has really affected me. Something about her self esteem issues and her ability to cope (persist, persevere), and the betrayals that won't end anytime soon and on and on. I wouldn't be surprised if she comes to see me in a dream, she's affected me so much.

I believe in dreams. I believe that souls on the other side can contact us through our dreams. That's why it's so important to me to see my mother in my dreams. It's the only way that I can see her. Although when I've meditated I have felt her presence. I want to finally have that dream where we sit down and talk about how things are on her side and how things are on my side.

I want to live each day as if it's my last and really enjoy my life. I want to touch Fredo's goatee to feel if his hair is soft or scruffy or wiry or what because I'm curious and he kept rubbing it on Wednesday. I want to know what's going on in the guy's life that would possess him, out of the blue, to call me especially since I'd dreamt about him a mere day before he called. I want to know where my man is, the one that will get me to soften my grip on freedom and open me up to the intimacy that I used to be so comfortable with. I want to stop being scared to take a chance on people, men. I want to have the patience to see someone through in order to create a long term romantic entanglement. I want to stop being so damn practical all the time and be a little impetuous.

I want to do something inspiring and life altering and fun all combined. I want to love someone who knows how to love and make slow sweet love to him as much as humanly possible. I want to laugh those kinds of laughs where no sound comes out anymore because it's all consuming. I want magic and psychic connections and spiritual dreams. I want to tell my story and cry at the painful parts and not feel the need to hold back the tears. I want to be open and funny and silly. I want to talk dirty and be mushy and express how long I've felt what I've felt and have it reciprocated.

I want the men who have broken my heart to tell me why they keep coming back to me. Is it because they think I'll take them back this time, when I've never taken them back every other time they've professed some wobbly emotion for me? Is it because they are bored and they figure the worst I can say is no, but it's worth a try? The romance is in the man who stays not the one that keeps coming back. I'd like to finally say that, in no uncertain terms, so they'd leave me the fuck alone already. Of course I could be more of a bitch about it myself.

I'd like to walk up to a man and ask, "Do you like me?"
"No or Yes." What ever his true answer may be.
And respond with a thank you. Now I finally know.

I'd like to have the option of staying or walking away with full knowledge instead of wondering if I walked away too soon or if I'm wasting my time sticking around for some guy that doesn't want anything more than tasting all the flavours of Baskin Robbins ice cream . At least if I know I'm dealing with a dog I can decide if I want to take him for a walk or leave him in the kennel. Sometimes a dog is fun to play with, if you know it's a dog. But if you have a dog disguised as a cat. Such needless frustration.

I want to live in my imagination for a large portion of my days and write all the novels, short stories, poems, essays, plays, songs and whatever else I have inside me. I want to write children's books that impact children straight into their adult hood. I want to live in a world where we all discover our inner power and forget about our fears. I want to adopt a family of orphans from individuals that I find along the way. A child that needs a mother to love him or her. A woman that needs a daughter of 43. A father figure that I so sorely missed out on. Grand parents who've been married for a lifetime and still express their love. I want to know if I have black siblings despite loving my white siblings. I want to know if I have a sister who looks like me.

I want, just for today, to know what positive impact my life has had on someone else's. I want to reap the rewards of the person who has been there for so many for so long.

I want to be financially rich so I can buy that spot where I can have lots and lots of animals to care for. Give sanctuary to those who need it. Help people to get back on their feet. Teach people to love silence. Offer a retreat for all types of artists to create. Give us all the opportunity to rise up a spiritual level. Wave off the people who have learned how to love themselves unconditionally that are now ready to enter back into the world to teach others.


Because in the end I guess that's what it's all about, us being here. Learning to love ourselves unconditionally - the smelly shits, and the sense of humour, the saggy tits, and the beautiful eyes, the bad moods and the overwhelming capacity we all have to love someone else and everything that falls in between all of that.

I want to be a part of creating that miracle of raising the consciousness of myself and the world.

I want to be a better person.
EY

Characterization
Mood:  bright
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
5:13am Saturday 10Feb07

Zelda thinks her morning ritual of running up and down the apartment hallway includes weekends. She's been calling me to go over, open the door and let her out. Zelley, I'm not dressed yet!

I came home unable to fight the need for sleep last night. It had been a frustrating day. I guess the February blahs are hitting because people are creeping out of the woodwork and making definitive plans with me. Or maybe people are finally getting that I can't commit to vague. Pick a date, tell me where you want to meet, call it a day.

I flipped around the channels last night and shook my head over the coverage of Anna Nicole Smith. CNN has the last interview with Larry King or someone. Entertainment Tonight has the last interview that alludes to her not being able to go on after losing her son. 20/20 has a montage. Big fat mama is doing the interview circuit and Anna hasn't been dead 24 hours. Oh yes, and another man has come out of the woodwork to claim that he too could be the father of her daughter, as I predicted. Might as well portray her as a slut now that she can't speak up for herself. Ex-lawyers speak up against her, everyone must throw in their two cents.

It makes me think about characterization and motivation. How must a character behave when she feels like the world is against her? As my mother used to say, if you can't trust your family, who can you trust? I caught a snippet where Anna Nicole said, "all the closest people to me have stabbed me in the back in one way or another."
That actually made me cry. It's just so terribly sad!

How does a character react when she feels like she has no one that she can trust? Does she go into hiding or does she try to find a way to persevere despite them? She'd almost have no choice but to be larger than life.

Fuck, her story comes across to me like the teenage pregnancy misconception. When I was a teenager, I'd heard many a teenage girl say that they were keeping their baby because they were guaranteed that they'd always have someone who loved them. For Anna Nicole, that may have been true. Her son may have truly been the only person that she knew loved her. What does a character do when she loses the one person that she knows loves her?

Of course her death now has to go down in history with all the mixed messages. Mom says it was the drugs. One media outlet says there were no illegal drugs, the other says there were. Her preliminary autopsy confirms that there were no drugs in her system but that will be wiped out by speculations and the so-called knowledge from the estranged. Oh and the Marilyn Monroe angle. Her life wasn't her own so much so that it has to be a copy cat of Marilyn's?

If we can take anything away from Anna Nicole's cautionary tale is that you have to do what you want to do for your self. You have to find your centre, live your dreams, not look back.

And Miss Anna is now with her beloved son. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. Maybe that's the only peace she believed she would get. Twin souls, twin hearts. If life is energy as I believe it is, I think that we can create the energy that can cause our own death. And with a broken heart, the transition is easier.

RIP Anna Nicole Smith RIP

EY

Dreaming about the Guy
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
6:15pm Thursday 8Feb07

I had a dream about the guy last night. The one that I don't discuss anymore because he was full of shit. I haven't mentioned him nor even thought about his existence in two months. He was one of the members of the opposite sex who made me decide to swear off men for the time being. Somehow the dream makes me want to rephrase that. I'm swearing off the jive ass men instead, not all men. Swearing off all men seems a tad extreme especially given that I love men, the good ones that is.

I've decided to believe that there are plenty of good men out there and I'm going to attract one of them, for a change.

Ant came around last week and because I wasn't in the office when he'd first arrived he left me a note... "Shelley, Will You Marry Me? xoxo Ant"
I taped the note up beside my desk. When we spoke I said," I know you don't mean it but it still made me feel good and now I can say someone proposed to me." ha ha! And it wasn't a woman!

My guys want to know what's going on between us and neither of us can be bothered to tell them that we are genuinely just friends. Ant is my reminder that there are good men out there. No matter what turmoil he has to contend with, he still remains a good man and I respect him for it. Plus he's a really good friend to lean on just by virtue of his height alone, all 6'7 of him.

I went to the bar last night and although it was conducive to writing back in January, last night the writing was a write off. Too many funny stories were being bandied about. I did a lot of laughing, wrote a paragraph and that was it. But socializing is always a great treat there.

Fredo, the bartender, dropped a few amusing comments to add to the mix of laughter. He may just have a sick mind after all. The married couple regaled us with their tales of early marriage and drunken fights which made me laugh and scared me. Lord knows I'm a relationship chicken. And the parents told their stories of their young kids dropping sex words in front of them which brought us to the "C" word. Yeah you know the one! The discussion went into how it hurts the ears and the senses. I said it was the only swear word left. Fuck doesn't make anyone cringe anymore but the "C" word? Now that's a word you can shock people with. Use that in front of a man and his arms will fly up in the air. Call a woman that and she may cry.

The count down to Shellmas begins. My new year is three weeks away and it just might be a month long celebration as I threaten every year. Of course with my new year it means I've got to get cracking on the goals that I've been playing at doing. By March 1st, I'd really like to get disciplined about what I want to do.

The good thing about Mercury being in retrograde during my birthday is that it's a good time to revisit projects you've begun, and see people you haven't seen in awhile and both are plans that I have made and want to realize.

Mercury goes retrograde February 13th although we're starting to feel the effects of it now with miscommunication, blasts from the past reappearing in our lives, machinery malfunctions and the like. It's not a good time to buy electronics or a new car, nor is it a good time to start a job unless you are going back to a job you worked in the past. Also not a good time to start a new romance but rekindling a romance or flirtation that didn't quite work out...

I remembered today that all of my Mercury retrogrades of last year (all in water signs like this year) were about timing. I should have gone in on my birthday when he'd told me to wait last year but I didn't because I was too chicken. I knew my back up wasn't going to show and maybe that would have been a good thing. But by the time I got home and realized the err of my ways I couldn't go back without being obvious. I don't do obvious. Maybe that's why I feel like we have unfinished business. We'll see if that will resurface for the first retrograde of the year, maybe we'll be given an opportunity for a do over, the big second chance.

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose...

We still haven't gotten over the image of the naked Sundays (at the gym in the Netherlands) at work. Today we discussed a Naked maintenance day with the boys wearing nothing but a tool belt climbing their ladders with everything flapping against skin. Which guys will be requested by which tenants. Me, sitting in my office with my boobs resting on my desk. Yes folks, there are still some politically incorrect places in this world and I'm proud to work at one of them. If it wasn't for the laughter.

EY

Anna Nicole Smith
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Thursday 5:47pm 7Feb07

I was actually saddened to hear today that Anna Nicole Smith passed away at 39 years old. I only know the bits and bobs that I've caught on commercials for the tabloidy shows. I know that she lost her son mere months ago almost while giving birth to her daughter. Like that hasn't been a tragedy enough. Actually her story was the reason why I'd stopped catching any of the entertainment shows like Entertainment tonight and all.

When they had those slew of interviews with her mom and aunt and ex discussing some sort of family skeleton left me sick. What is our society coming to that we're being bombarded with some close family member dredging up our family shit for all to hear? Well, you're making money so I might as well make some cashish riding off you by telling all your business. sigh!

"Oh but I love her and I'm only telling you this because she needs help." Right!

Since when is that a way to motivate someone to get help?
It just seems like her life was such a waste. Marriage to an octogenarian (who even knows how to spell that?) and the implication that it was for the money, her mistake but boy has she gone through an emotional roller coaster for her deal with the devil. Everyone of the players in that case is dead now. The octogenarian's son who contested Anna Nicole getting anything. Anna Nicole herself. It all seems really sad and how worth it was all that?

Now Anna Nicole's laughing stock of a life will be dissected for the next several weeks. More family members will peek their heads out of the trailer for their 15 minutes and the bucks that can be had. There will probably be three more men that will claim the baby is theirs. And this poor 5 month old baby who now doesn't have an older brother nor a mother and two men who claim to be her father. What does the future hold for her given her back story? Hopefully who ever ultimately cares for her will shelter her from the fuckery that she was born into. Hopefully, but what are the chances?

In this age of communication we're using cavemen techniques as a society for something that needs to be at a spiritual level.

I found this great quote today...
It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had. (Elizabeth Kubler-Ross)

EY

Stef Penney
Topic: Writers in the News
It makes me laugh that the focus on Stef Penney is that she wrote a novel based in the Canadian wilderness when she has never been to Canada. I saw another article on her today that went on and on about it. When did we become so focused on a person being there? The whole point of fiction is that it's from our imagination. If I'm writing an historical novel I can't go to whatever historical period I'm writing about. If I can't go there I can't write about it? If I'm not a man, I can't have male characters? It's bizarre to me.
EY

Cured agoraphobic lands top UK literary prize
By Paul MajendieWed Feb 7, 6:21 PM ET

Debut novelist Stef Penney, once an agoraphobic too terrified to travel, landed one of Britain's top literary awards on Wednesday for a haunting novel about the Canadian wilderness she has never visited.

Penney, a screenwriter who now has her fear of open spaces under control, landed the Costa Award for "The Tenderness of Wolves," which literary critics hailed as an astonishingly assured debut.

Utterly astounded by her surprise win, Penney told reporters afterwards: "I am still shaking. I am supposed to be a writer but I don't know how to describe that."

Penney said of her agoraphobia: "It isn't a distant memory. I don't think it ever goes away completely. I can now fly which is great."

Asked what message she had to offer to agoraphobics after her personal journey of the imagination, she said: "Don't give up. It might take a long time, you might not know how you are going to get over it, but you can."

Comedy writer and director Armando Iannucci, who chaired the judges, said "Within 50 pages, I was completely in love with it."

The 37-year-old British writer took the coveted award after a close fought tussle with novelist William Boyd for his spy drama "Restless" and Brian Thompson for his quirky wartime autobiography "Keeping Mum," Iannucci said.

It was only the fourth time that a debut novelist had landed the book of the year award since 1985.

Agoraphobia often confines sufferers to their homes. Penney conquered hers after a two-and-a-half-year battle before going out to research the book in the British Library in London.

She told Reuters at the ceremony: "I was fascinated about Canada because I couldn't go there."

"It made me want to armchair travel," she said. "Something did eventually cure me. Whether it was part of that, I don't know but perhaps it was."

"The more I researched, the more fascinated I got and the bigger the canvas got," she said of the novel that starts with a brutal murder and the sudden disappearance of a teenage boy in a remote corner of 1860s northern Ontario.

The Costa, formerly known as the Whitbread, is split into five categories -- for best novel, first novel, poetry, children's book and biography -- with 5,000 pounds ($9,856) going to each winner and 25,000 pounds to the overall winner.

Poets Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney and children's writer Philip Pullman are among previous book of the year winners.

The prize, selected this year from a record 580 entries, is designed to reward the most enjoyable read of last year, whereas winners of the prestigious Booker Prize are picked above all for their literary prowess.

Copyright ? 2007 Reuters