Wherefore Art Thou, Toronto?

Somewhere in the heart of the city, I lost a portion of the butterflies that Toronto used to fill me with. I used to dream of residing in the midst of it, surrounded by chaos and the bad-asses that roam the streets at lunch hour, and then once again at five'o'clock. I would leave my glamourous apartment in a polka-dotted outfit and round Armani shades, and I would make some trips to cute little boutiques, and bakeries, and breakfast bars, and book stores. Occasionally, I would gather the girls, and while sipping martinis just briefly past lunch hour, we would exchange disturbing details of our love lives that range between the plots of a hardcore porno, and an intense thriller with moments of comedic romance. Just kidding. Sort of. 

I would embark on some solo adventures, smile at strangers, and have long Starbucks dates, just gazing out the window and watching the stylish but pretentious folks on Yonge street, who I'm probably no different from by now. I would splurge on expensive chandeliers and blouses, and on the occasion that I decided to stay in, I would drink champagne accompanied by truffles, before I dived into my white platform bed with the subtle spring breeze greeting my skin. My sheets would smell of lavender as always, and the tender grey walls would make napping feel divine, even if a sleep during the day could never find shelter in my heart. Then I'd awake an hour later and spend the remaining hours of daylight lounging in the prettiest panties ever, and pulling Pascal off my book shelf for a tender mind massage over a glass of wine. 

When my hedonist alter-ego made her way out of the shadows each night, I would spend my energy on my lover and we'd get lost in gently tugging at each other's egos on long walks in the cemetery, and many other things that I don't dare mention. He'd be an escape from my chaotic life as I balanced university, a job at a rehab hospital, and the newly developed anxiety over grown up life. But despite being in a momentary and euphoric love, the future would be out of our hands, and my only concern would be how he'd creep up behind me next, and what tactics he'd use to make me his proverbial b****. The beauty of it all is at the core of our conscience, we would genuinely care for each other. 

What made it so lovely is I'd awake on Sunday morning, visiting my parents as per usual, and the darkness of what I created would blur to the splendid Sunday afternoons of coffee, and lunch, and shopping trips, and conversations with my two fluffy dogs. Then Monday would come at me, wrapping me into a familiar cycle of important meetings, and research papers, and ladies' nights, and fancy lounges, and a very steamy love affair, that, combined with everything else, was exactly what I craved. So that was that - the picture I painted in the centre of my eccentric mind came to life in the heart of the city. It was like Toronto transformed me into a single thirty-year-old with a glimpse of what life is like in Sex and the City. And despite all of this, it seems as though the spark has been missing, leading me to fantasize about a German countryside. 

The chaos has spread over me like an infection, poisoning my desire for some laid back days on which I continue lounging in panties, but the expensive, silky bath robes do not matter for a moment. I chill out on my oversized chocolate brown sofa, watching seven episodes of Lost in a row, and thinking of how awakening it would be to live on an island for awhile. Well, not that extreme. Sunshine doesn't do so well in the sand, but I'd be lying if I told you that I haven't been dreaming of a German countryside, in a cottage-like home, surrounded by complete quietness, except when the birds decide to chirp. I wouldn't be in and out of meetings constantly, I would just sit in a sun chair in my adorable backyard, writing to the world of whatever came to mind. 

I'd spend months at a time there, freeing my worry-filled mind with thoughts of nothingness combined with serenity, and if the day happened to come where boredom finally captured me, I'd hop on the next plane back to the heart of the city, to begin my hunt for chaos once again. But before I'd catch a flight to Toronto, I'd hop on an old school train and observe the countrysides of a foreign land. I'd make impromptu stops in small villages and have authentic cappuccinos in the cutest German cafés. I'd also befriend an old person who happened to speak English and we'd exchange stories for awhile. I would listen more actively than speak, and then I'd make my way to home sweet home, somehow discovering that my love for Toronto has been rekindled. 

I would realize in that instant that Toronto is my one and only, and we'd live happily ever after, until chaos whispered filthy things to me and stole me away for awhile. And even if I was stolen away, Toronto would take me back with open arms each time, because my presence in its heart would be vital to its existence. The chaos whispering in my ear would lure me away into distant lands that vary from Germany to Dubai, but Toronto would be the only unchanging variable. Toronto would always be my one and only. 

Euphoria

There’s this habit you possess that feeds on the taste of your bitter conscience. Your flaws lay under a scolding gaze, overcome by the sound of your voice that rapidly shifts from sanity to nothingness. Someone will be coming soon.

I am not always what you think I am. I do not possess your habits and my conscience is in constant flux, but every now and then, when you tenderly manipulate me, my mind gives into you, craving your soul in entirety. I enjoy the ways that you feed on my weakness, but that particular day, it was like boredom abruptly captured me, waiting for a dead-ended conclusion that you, or I, or anyone else could not come to rational terms with. 

...so there I was, gripping the midday glass of cranberry and vodka, wondering what had compelled in me the sudden burst of inspiration to spit some words out. My slightly crooked fingers danced along the keyboard before the next sip of poison could trickle down my throat, and so there it was - somewhere along the spectrum of a quarter-life crisis combined with absolute boredom, my words began to dance again. 

I do not dance. But when my thoughts are seduced by the art of conversation, my words move to the melody, interrupting your rhythm, occasionally causing you to trip over your own two feet. It is not strategic - I am never a maker of concrete plans and for this reason, I spent that Saturday afternoon thinking, learning, and strategizing on my road to becoming a mastermind of some sort - either that, or a hot mess of strange concepts as my best friend glares at me in clear bewilderment. I never claimed to be typical and assure you I am not. 

Earlier that day, I picked up a book in search of a semi-logical epiphany. As the seventh sip of vodka entered my bloodstream, my words began to crave their canvas in the centre of your beautiful mind.I've always been compelled by the steamy love affair that my words built with your mind, but somewhere on my blank canvas, I painted some poetry without any words that cost me well over a fraction of my soul. That day had little to do with you, but somehow, you crossed my eccentric mind as if a spot right there was always reserved for you. 

While briefly glancing at the dining table of my one bedroom apartment, the notion greeted me that you are my substance and I am your abuser - we alternate these roles and get disturbingly tangled in what we call a deeply intriguing yet fucked up situation. 

Before I recycled the thought of your addictive nature, I peered at the now empty glass before me, shifting my thoughts to what I crave to become. There is something charming about the concept of uncertainty; I am not who I was and not who I will be. This is the in between of a morbid tale and euphoria, and I rest at the centre; recklessly behaved. 

Someone is here now. She stumbles on my every move, watching with persistence, and sometimes when the world cannot see, her child-like eyes wait for me to speak. But words do not form and a teardrop escapes from one of her hazellish eyes - half of her reasons with me, but the other half scolds. 

"What's it like?" she whispers. 

"Euphoria," I whisper back. 

Sweet, Sweet Child

There is an absurd intuition forming from within, screaming louder and louder with the seconds that pass. You glance up at me with innocent eyes, begging and pleading with me to save you at last, yet I can't hear your desperate cry beyond the doses of adrenaline that temporarily free me. I only hear the echoes that are lost in translation, deafening me with the sounds of chaos. You are imprisoned within a fragment of my mind which seeks to enslave you, but you tug at the remainder of my free will, begging me to come to your rescue. 

You are my child and I jump in fright at the sound of your cry, yet I consciously neglect you until you beg and plead with tearful eyes once more, screaming, and shouting until the disrupted echoes make their way to me, outbeaten by euphoria. How do you manage to love me when I willingly damage your radiant soul? 

I take the tiny palm of your hand into mine, and watch your eyes fill with curiosity; with hope that I take your side today as I pick you up and whisper that nothing will come between us. But as I place you on my lap and brush a fingertip across your cheek, I glare at your helpless eyes, equally vulnerable; equally perplexed. You translate my gestures as a sign of indifference, but indifference outwardly fails to describe it - I'm trying so hard to find the right words, but they're clouded by delusion and the words that you eagerly await are not heard. 

I watch you walk into the layers of fog that invisibly suffocate you. There is nothing I will not do to free you. You are everything to me and I have not forgotten your radiant soul that acts as my source of light. 

Lessons Of 2012

Well, the countdown to the apocalypse has officially begun, so I figured I'd do an end of the year post before I transform into particles of nothingness. Some of these items will contradict, but guess what, I don't care because LIFE is contradictory. 

I am going to add more as I reflect on the year...

1. Treat others as they treat you. 

None of this golden rule bulsh**. We are not children anymore, and it is delusional to think that everyone has good intentions. Some people are motivated by poison and will eat away at your conscience, slowly but surely. There is no moral obligation to be nice to people who don't deserve it. Know when to be fierce, and know when to be indifferent. And when dealing with poison, walk away - walk away for good before you are infected. Poison is contagious. 

2. Living alone is more complex than it seems. 

I'm not talking about the struggle to balance university, a job, and the countless amount of house chores. I'm talking about something that is only felt when alone. It is only when we're alone that we learn who we are; when no one is watching and you're entitled to your freedom; to think, to act, to grow, to question, to say, to feel, to reflect. You learn who you are when no one is around, because you're not performing a social role that is deemed appropriate in any given setting of people. This makes your actions and choices genuine, therefore they are a clearer reflection of who you are as a person. 

3. Your intuition knows the answer to everything. 

You just disregard its red flags, because somewhere and somehow, there is an ounce of hope left in you that life will do a total 180 and maybe, just maybe, your intuition is wrong. But you and I both know that we know the answer to the question that keeps reproducing itself at the core of our very conscience.

4. Sometimes it is better to be feared than it is to be loved. 

Love is fantastic and insane and indescribable, but more often than not, it is responsible for the weakness we face in vulnerable times. I hope that you fall in love at least three times, but never gamble away your dignity and know when to wear your poker face. Both good people and bad people can pick up on signs of weakness to feed off of - do not consume so much of it that love becomes the end of you. 

5. Opinions are enormous nothings. 

Do not succumb to pressure from others. You are perfectly capable of making decisions - who is anyone to tell you how you should live your life? Everything is temporary. If something makes you happy, then f*** the sweet nothings that are whispered in your ear time and time again - opinions don't mean anything but personal projections of what life should be. Same concept with advice - stop asking for advice; you already know the answer. 

6. Education does not equal wisdom. 

Knowledge is power, but knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is abstract and intangible and it is earned through a combination of adversity and delving into the mind of another with nothing but pure empathy. It is also ever-changing and can never be pursued as a fixed quality, because wisdom has no limit; therefore wisdom never stops learning, empathizing, or exploring. Perhaps it follows that wisdom does not exist as a quality. 

Give Me Something

I'm stuck - stuck in the middle of the sentence I was writing and the words refuse to come to me. Your eyes greet me in silence as I glance up toward you - the same eyes that gave me their undivided attention since the first word that escaped me. Your ankle is crossed over your knee as you hold a cup of tea, slouching neatly. Almost careless, with that drowsy look you're wearing, except anything but careless is what you are. You stare at me poetically, stealing a fraction of my soul. 

The loose tie around your neck catches my attention. We speak with the eyes as the energy multiplies between us, revealing each bit of lust in our silent dialogue that glistens, yet neither of us act on it. The atmosphere remains silent and tender, and the only thing that makes a sound is the fireplace as it crackles. Your teeth dance across your lower lip, melting me slowly but surely. Then you take a sip from the warm cup in front of you and a smirk unfolds along my lips.

A towel is wrapped around me, yet my flesh is not revealed - I rest beneath your harmless gaze, and as you watch me write, sitting right across from me, intensity builds and the angle that your neck rests on calls for me. We are stuck in a glare that is ruled by passion, yet you don't lay a finger on me, and I don't reach out to touch you. I embrace the scent of your skin and the cold look on your face, as a layer of warmth betrays it. One touch to break the silence - that is all it takes to unveil me. But a battle forms between this very tender moment and the darker side of our conscience that screams for dirty filthy passion. I watch as a smile makes its way across your lips, and in the timeframe it takes to catch your eyes once again, we both choose the moment, recognizing its incomparable value as we sit there in silence, prolonging each second that passes. 

…so you continue to watch me write each word. And as my fingertips reach the final letter, I glance up at you with a genuine smile on my face, and finally you reach me. You are tender and gentle, placing a kiss on my forehead, and I come into your arms, holding onto you tightly, with lips slowly running down your cheek. The lust still exists between us, but it transforms into a calm atmosphere filled with compassion, your fingertips playing along the back of my neck. I touch your lips, and there are kisses in between, but the remainder of the night belongs to a dialogue of silence - it is really quite beautiful. 

Note To My Readers

I’d like to be absolutely serious right now and have a proper moment of silence for the year that just passed. I’ve had tons of fun starting up this little blog, and in spite of its light-hearted and psychopathic nature, the year has been very hardcore both in hardships, happiness, and of course, shopping sprees.

To those of you that read my stuff, [admittedly, or secretly] I want to thank you for joining me in my daily adventures, mishaps, love stories, and splurging events. You may not know this, but your clicks mean a lot to me, and even though I don’t know ninety-percent of my readers, I do have a rough idea of the number of hits thanks to the STATS section of blogger – so THANK YOU!

May 2012 bring you luck, and love, and shopping sprees. I hope that you’ll join me on my adventures in the year to come, and while it looks like a busy and eventful year for me already, I do promise that I’ll have entertainful, (See SYSTEMATIC GLOSSARY) preposterous, and of course bad-ass stories for you.

XOX

NEE-KOH-LEH-TAH

It's Not You, It's Me

Dear 2011,

It brings me great sadness to kiss you goodbye as the final week or so of your presence, crumbles in my little hands. Actually that’s a filthy lie. I’m happy to get rid of your unproductive, procrastinating, money-spending ass. Nonetheless, I’d like to thank you for the things you had to offer in our relationship, such as:

-The arrival of my bad-ass German wheelchair after its X-month delivery process.

-The electronic-sticky-notes that brought me back to sanity after a post-apocalyptic state. (See ‘Variable Ex’ in Story-Time.)

-The dumping of my psychology program for Communications.

-The super-cute clothing items in my drawers that still contain price-tags.

-All the stupid sh** I bought like fancily-decorated-boxes, piles of sticky-notes, polka-dotted aprons, fancy wooden spoons, organic baby powder, and so on.

-All of the useful stuff I bought, like my white fur coat, fairy-tale mirror, extra drawers for my clothes, leopard bedding from Hong Kong, strapless tops in X colors, apple-flavored-laptop, blackberry, and much more.

-The finality of my artificial black hair after a seven-hour encounter with hydrogen-peroxide.

-The opportunity to live downtown in bad-ass central!

-The super-power to detect poisonous people in my life.

-A very special encounter with someone quite spectacular. 

-The X dollars I dropped at the mall this summer, amounting to X times my tuition fee.

-The new fluffy sugarplum that moved into my house and ruined precisely X pairs of shoes, one purse, and two Givenchy lipsticks.

-The twelve pairs of sunglasses which now reside in my drawer.

-The job and bank account that made all the splurging possible, in partnership with the company of my friends and other loved ones.

Anyhow, it’s not you it’s ME. And I happen to have my eyes on something new, who goes by the name of ‘2012’. Oh, the things I’m gonna do to it! 

Frigidly Detached

Mood: Curiously excited.

Time of Day: 8: 50 p.m.

Word/Phrase of the Day: "Not all those that wander are lost."

I haven’t posted anything silly as of late, I know. In case you should wonder, it is because I’m going through some life-changing experiences that are altering my view point of everything around me.

For the first time in my life, I feel like things are as they should be, and everything is happening for a reason. I seem to be in tune with all of my surroundings in spite of the fact that I may appear frigidly detached.

It took a long time for me to achieve this, and I have every intention to rest at this spot for awhile. I have everything I need to reach my destination and I’m not going to stop in between.

Don’t worry, some things haven’t changed. The other day, I ordered twelve pairs of sunglasses.

XOX

Paradox

MOOD: Connected

TIME OF DAY: 10:01 P.M. 

WORD/PHRASE OF THE DAY: Found

Never be too sure of me. I’m farther than you think. I can say one thing right now, and do something else in X. Call me inconsistent. I am what you call a paradox and I can spark the questions in your mind that you never saw coming.

You'll never understand me - I am much more complex than that and I like it that way.

I’m reserved and shifty, and if I give you access to my thoughts, you’re really something else. Promise.

By the way, I can instinctively pick up on your bullsh**. It’s a gift. And when I let you get away with it, consider my indifference a reflection of your zero-importance.

I know what I'm here for and I'm going to stand my ground. I’ve planted my venom and now I’m going to watch it spread.

Don’t let me into your thoughts. I’ll master your game and play it better than you.