On weekdays I set my alarm for 6:30 but I usually wake up before 6:00 and as soon as I wake my mind floods with thoughts that prevent me from being able to go back to sleep.  On Friday morning I was thinking about people and how they relate to each other, and how they create and maintain and close the spaces between themselves.  I was looking for a pattern that would tell me what all people do, but all people -- at least all the people I know -- do not behave the same ways.  I included dogs in my measurements because I spend a lot of time with dogs.

Mirrors are people like me.  They are largely reactive.  When someone moves closer to me this is a signal I should move closer too, and likewise when someone pulls back I do the same.  So this has a doubling effect which can probably be disconcerting.  (Imagine you only wanted to come three steps closer, but suddenly now you are six.  Or the opposite, you just wanted a little space and suddenly I am gone.)

Satellites, I know lots of satellites.  Maybe they are the most common?  I am choosing Palmer as my case example.  He's a dog.  He was meant to be a foster dog, just here for a few weeks while the rescue agency found him a home, but he made such funny obscene sounds when I rubbed his belly that I couldn't let him go.  Satellites need the distance between themselves and the other person to stay the same.  They like consistency, like a foster dog that has been starved sometimes, ignored, and also sometimes smacked around.  He wants love but not too much, he wants distance but not too much.  So when you move toward a satellite they back up to maintain the right distance.  When you move away they come forward.  Satellite is the wrong word I chose -- because satellites should orbit.  I forget why I picked the word satellite.

Suns.  They stay in the same place no matter what.  My father is like that.  He's just exactly as close as he means to be, and it doesn't matter, the push-you pull-me stuff does nothing to him.    The sun does not move, he cannot be drawn in closer than he should be, and he cannot be pushed away, not even if you write off his car.  

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Rose Wallace Goldeline just moves her mouth over anything

Closeness and Distance:

1.  Mirror  ---> l <---    <---  l  --->

2.  Satellite  ---> l --->      <---  l <---

3.  Sun  ---> l X    <--- l  X

(I do sort out important things when I should be asleep.)

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croquer la pomme

Are you a teacher of the heart? (Soft she answered no)

J is fourteen years old.  We keep her computer in the living room so we can see what she is up to.  I can see for myself that she isn't up to anything particularly interesting.  The bad part is that I have to overhear all the aggravating little videos she finds so hilarious.  The good part is that listening to her laugh makes me laugh.

She is going to be taller than me.  We're eye to eye now, and she's wearing my jeans.  She has no intention of stopping growing any time soon.  Her mother was only 5'1''.  I wonder who her father was, if he would have been interested to know her.  He's missing out.  Shawn is good for her.  He gave her a diamond ring and asked her to be his daughter.  She said yes.


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A grade ten boy called me babe today.  I should have destroyed him but I was too tired.  Instead I told him to get real so his friends could make fun of him.  But really, I should have destroyed him.  I am having a bad week.


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I am counselling a seventeen year old girl who has OCD.  She cannot sleep because she keeps herself awake with worries about the world ending in 2012.  She finds it difficult to walk past garbage cans and recycling bins because she wants to stop and fold all the paper inside them.  When I talk to her I feel my own tendency toward obsessive compulsive thoughts start to break the surface.  I keep myself awake thinking about work instead of the end of the world, and I would rather pick my cuticles than fold garbage, but it's all the same.  Sometimes I have to suppress a snort because talking with her, I imagine that I will catch her obsessions and she will catch mine and we will sit together in that little office and tick at each other until we both blow up.


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Integration is a beautiful thing.  Just like the real world, my theatre class is home to gifted geniuses and morons alike. Today I punted a kid with a full scale IQ of 70 because he was (repeatedly) making animal noises for no apparent reason.  I even remembered I had kicked him out which is where this usually falls apart for me, and came up with the brilliant idea of having him write out his plan to be successful in my class in the future.  When I went back to check on him fifteen minutes later he had come up with two words which I asked him to read aloud to me because I was fairly sure he had written wank harder.  Turned out it said work harder and I'm not buying it.  Wanking harder is a far more plausible game plan.



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I may make you feel but I can't make you think (your sperm's in the gutter, your love's in the sink)

(This was painted by CC's husband.)

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Press yourself against whatever you find to be beautiful and trembling with life

(and don't forget to keep breathing).

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