Kat’s Pause 

Autumn, to me, is inescapably the end of summer and the beginning of winter — nothing more.

When the sky yawns a tired grey,
young voices gasp at the pretty colours
(no more than a small dismay
to the rest of us)
and eagerly bring forth the rakes
to try and grow up a little more this year.
(Just another tedious day-to-day
chore, to the rest of us.)

I find the cycle:
tiresome,
frightening,
terrible,
in its endlessness.

A time to exhale hopes;
they will hibernate for a few months
along with the sun’s cheerfulness.
A time to lay fun flightiness aside;
to curse the wind
and glare at the pitiful sun.
A time to hurry when we must be outside,
hunched and bitter,
and let lethargy seep in when shelter is reached.

A time to wait for it to be over.

A downward
flattening motion:
The beginning
of forgetting that there ever was summer.

There is a point at which Opportunity
becomes a laughable lie:
You can’t make a living that way.
Grow up. Be responsible.

Go bury your hopes in the crooked-teeth graveyards
housing gone-but-not-forgotten aspirations
while grey birds gawk at the rotting thoughts below.

Run along and play in the sprawling cemetery of dreams,
huge and putrid;
the stench of abandonment hangs sour in the air.
Old ideas float as bitter bubbles through the air,
could-have-beens crowded sullenly close and many,
leaving scarcely any room to navigate the paths of memory.

Remembering becomes futile;
better to just forget.

Because we all grow up
and the dreams remain behind, broken and dishevelled,
each its own epitaph,
warning us against getting stuck on a dream.

Written a few weeks ago.

We know we ought not drown
in memories, but when I faintly taste
the temptation of an experience
non-present—
indulging a smile, a thought—
I’m already slipping down
as the past rises
above my head and swallows me,
and I sink, tightly encased in Was.

The Could-haves flit by,
delighting in their dizzying
rainbow possibilities;
dark Should-haves shake their heads
in quiet maybe-accusation.
Ifs both splendid and horrible
start as insignificant seeds
but soon tower over my
ephemeral bubble of Now.

No need to fear;
this is a safe place to rest:
although the Whys may shriek,
they are nothing but noise, and
the sighing If-onlys with their banshee wails
are powerless to grasp me.
The only worry now is leaving
this paradise of inaction,
floating helplessly through time,
and wondering what Will.

I like this one best so far. It would be a reasonable upgrade from my daddy’s SD300.

I finished it after I gave up fighting the T2T Vizier for tonight. He’s not very hard, but I’m tired.

Enjoy.

This looks nice.

Nevermind, I want one with a rechargeable battery.

The longer I live here in Waterloo, the more I find myself missing certain things. I don’t mean things like my mother or home cooking or my “own” bed (yeah right); the things I pine for are a well-stocked kitchen that doesn’t stink of weeks’ worth of dirty dishes, a dollar store nearby, my dad’s digital camera, and Photoshop.

Something could perhaps be arranged for the camera, if nothing else. I was searching through my DA folder for tasty things to hang on my walls when I came across some shots I had taken this summer. Looking at the slight variations among the photos, I was reminded of how much fun I had then, up late at night taking pictures of my ring under the soft light of my bedside lamp. So, long story short, I’m in the market for a digicam of mine own — something small but decent. Thanks to the government of Ontario, I have the money for it, but I really don’t know where to begin looking for one. I know so little about them.

Another setback: I’m going to want PS for sure if I get a camera, and I don’t know if that will happen anytime soon. I’ll probably beg Chris to put it on my laptop when I come home for Thanksgiving. In the meantime, the camera search is on.

Dear reader, you are among the privileged few to know: Ning and I are engaged. He proposed on the 7th.

My floormates just found out a few nights ago, and there was much shrieking and excitement. A few of them asked me if I’m scared. The thing is, this decision feels so utterly natural to me that it barely registers as a significant event — and I think that’s a good thing. Ning and I have been talking about marriage for months, maybe even a year now. I’ve had a ring on my finger for so long that it feels as though it’s always been there.

So when are we getting married? When we graduate, unless I give in to my parents and marry him before next school year, when we’ll be living together (unlikely). A four-year-engagement sounds fine to me. I’m in no rush to get hitched; the times when I’ve felt that way, I’ve realized it was because of insecurity about our relationship, which has to be one of the worst possible reasons to marry someone, and plain old Adult Envy — wanting to feel older.

Next question: when will we tell our parents? To be honest, I haven’t decided yet. Maybe I’ll tell my mother the next time she calls, or maybe I’ll announce it to my family the next time I’m home, or maybe I’ll wait three years. As for Ning, I think first his parents should know that we’ve been dating for longer than eight months.

Ning is a funny fellow; when I told him I have to switch antibiotics for my kidney infection because my body has developed an attachment to its bacteria:

[07:52:48 PM] Ning: Are you going to die?
[07:52:53 PM] Ning: I want hotdogs.

So loveable. Anyway, I go on new pills today, and they should work for reals this time. So no, I’m not going to die. I will probably even escape hospitalization and (and!) permanent kidney damage. Hurrah.

In other news: I’m now a writer for The Cord Weekly, Laurier’s student newspaper, and I got my first assignment last night. (Sign thefts by students, exciting stuff.) Should be fun!

I can’t stop listening to Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap.

Some real news: I, in my eternal healthiness, recovered from a cold just to develop a urinary tract infection last week (while on my period… yay). After about four days it spread to my kidneys, but the antibiotics seem to have licked it, because nothing hurts today. Three cheers for modern medicine: the last time I had a kidney infection, I resisted antiobiotics and didn’t gain weight for a year — undesirable in four-year-olds.

On a more pleasant note, my psychology professor is the coolest man alive. He must be 80 years old, and he sounds like a wise rambling novel - and yet the man possesses so much humility. The phrase “eminently reasonable” comes to mind. I’ve been trying to decide whether a similar 80-year-old woman could be as immediately respected and well-liked.

More good news: I finally got past the part in T2T where I was stuck, and partly thanks to Ning! He expressed an interest in playing it when he was over a couple days ago, and after the initial griping about it being too hard (read: he sucks at platformers) he quickly became addicted.

[07:16:19 PM] Ning: I want to play PoP :P
[07:16:24 PM] Ning: But I’ll settle for some WoW
Me: SQUEE

And thus fun times were had by all.

Lastly: I’m currently writing chapter 8 of Lost Time — about 1.5 pages so far.

At last I return from Orientation Week! (Technically it was over last night, but I spent today shopping and running errands and sorting out my courses.) I barely touched my computer all week. Here is my obligatory now-I’m-a-university-student post.

As expected, I love it here. I am anything but homesick and just about everyone is ridiculously nice. Laurier students are amazing people. My dorm room is bigger than my bedroom at home, and I am exorbitantly glad I have a single room so that I can have overnight guests (read: Ning) whenever, and be introverted when I want to, and share nothing unwillingly, and have full control over the door.

Also as expected, it’s great being so close to Ning. He’s just down the street from me and it’s the closest we’ve ever lived together. I skipped some O-Week activities to spend time with him, and he provides an excuse from underaged-drinking parties. I have no problem with alcohol, but I lack the fake IDs so many others have and I’m terrified of getting in trouble. It’s safer to drink with Ning when I feel the need.

Another thing I was looking forward to: making new female friends. They are wonderful and I don’t ever feel awkward or fake or too careful; they laugh at my silly antics and tell me I’m cute and they have nicknamed me Nobi because there are four Sarahs on our 25-girl-floor.

Unexpected: whoever knew I possessed so much untapped school spirit? Blue Samurai ALL THE WAY, BABY. I won the rock-paper-scissors tournament for the Blue Team, making me the winner among all the first-years. I bet no one will believe me when I say there’s some strategy to that game, but hey, this is the second RPS competition I’ve won, and now I have a trophy to prove it. I’d take a picture if my daddy’s digital camera wasn’t too far away to steal, so you’ll just have to take my word that the pink safety scissors and taped-on rock (among other treasures) are a sight to behold.

Further Waterloo decorations gracing my lovely room include a Mario energy drink (!) I found today, as well as some Nintendo mints I bought at the same candy shop months ago, both on a trip with Ning. (Apologies for the borrowed pictures; I sorely miss having access to a camera.)

Now I really ought to get some sleep. With so much going on, it’s easy to foget I’m actually here to learn. Happily, my first university class doesn’t start until 11:30, and I already know where to find it, but I should get back into the habit of sleeping earlier.

So I thought I’d do what the cool kids were doing and upload my picture online to see what celebrity I look like. I got a bunch of matches with various photos at ~85%, including Kyoko Fukada several times, and then on the fourth one, I got a 97% match to Ashton Kutcher.

…wtf?