This is a question asked of me a long, long time ago. I kept wondering, “Well, how do you trust?” Really. How? A reader asked that and I never knew what to say. Maybe I never really understood it myself. Shrug. I’m no guru. Just a chick with some time on her hands. So, here’s my kick at the trust can.

Trust is everything. I learn this more and more with every year that passes by. But I’m learning it better after the age of 30 than I think I ever could have before. With age comes perspective, I guess.

I wrote last fall one time (I’d link to it, but I don’t recall which of my hundred or so posts had it, so) about how I believed I had become better at trusting people and able to do it faster. A reader asked me “how”.

There ain’t no “how” in trusting. It’s like breathing, walking, eating, talking. You do or you don’t. You trust or you don’t trust.

I don’t have the trusting thing down pat. Not by a long shot. I’m definitely on Fear’s Christmas card list, and maybe on Doubt’s too.

Therein lies the complexity, though. Every time I’m not trusting, those times when I’m scared or overcompensating, the one thing that the person on the receiving line can never know is the “why”. More often than not, they haven’t much to do with the “why”.

Each of us is the sum total of our experiences. If the worst breakup of your life happened on a pier, maybe you’d have something against piers in the future. A lover wants to take a walk down a pier with you, you snap that you don’t want to leave the promenade, and they think they’ve inadvertently angered you. Instead, what’s really happening is that you don’t want to go there because it’s a flood of bad memories. Maybe, just maybe, you tell them how you had a horrible break up on the pier. Instead of allowing you to walk away from it, they lead you down the centre of it, then plant an earth-quaking, boots-shaking kiss on your lips, and melt you then and there. Trust yields wonderful bounty.

Of COURSE there are times I don’t trust my friends and lovers. Often, it’s a result of baggage I’ve never unloaded from times long past. Hell, I’m just another stupid human. It’s what we do.

It’d be nice if we could get a big disconnect from our emotional receptors when it comes to tripping down memory lane, but that’s not going to happen without a lobotomy and a crack addiction, all right? So, we cope. We brush things off. We don’t allude to the story behind the story. We say “it’s nothing” and we move on.

Little shit like that’s what prevents trust from happening.

What causes it to reverse, though, is when you get into the story behind the story. Remember, then tell. Not only is it a catalyst for release, it’s a catalyst for relationship building, too.

Trust is a verb, man. You gotta just do it. Trust: Brought to you in part by Nike.

But seriously, whether it’s you lying there bound before your relatively new lover in a session of bondage, trying to trust that you’ve made the right choice and they’re going to bring you places you’re wanting to go rather than places you secretly fear, or it’s you trying to tell someone you love the real reason you have a deep and biding hatred for the holidays, it’s about taking that chance and leaping without looking too long.

There ain’t no science, no magical step, no keener’s quickie route to Trusting 101. Stop thinking about your fears and annoyances and uncertainties, and speak to them.

I found far more support than judgment, and those who break my trust are far outnumbered by those who almost seem to cherish it.

I look forwards to seeing what taking more of these chances might lead to. Life’s full of far more surprises than I had her penciled in for and this dance is nowhere near done.

Sigh.

I’m sorry, folks. I’ve really had very little to say this past week or two. Writing is problematic, to say the least. I’m taking a few minutes out before work to share with you as I eat my breakfast, though, in hopes that I’ll be able to crack the nut and figure out what’s goin’ on.

I’m not worried about it, but I certainly feel like Little Miss Bad Blogger, so the guilt’s a bitch.

As you may know, I have a new job. A good one, one I feel confident will be around for a little while. It has been a massive shift in lifestyle for me in so many ways. I’m just trying to find my footing in this new world of mine, and writing hasn’t exactly been helping as I’ve been trying to write for the wrong reasons. Which works out surprisingly often, actually, but just not this time.

Creatively, I’m on pause. I’ve been trying to change that lately. Normally, I’d just go out and take some photographs in the forest or something, but my camera’s been broken. Lately, I’ve been cooking a lot of interesting dishes, including the homemade bread I’m having as toast with my coffee right now.

But Saturday, finally, I took possession of my new camera.* I got home, unwrapped it, began looking at all the sensational specs (10 megapixels, programmable scenes, manual operations including manual focus, et al!) and, I shit you not, I got teary-eyed.

Yes, I almost cried as I looked over my new camera.

You’re probably thinking I’m nuts, or else you’re thinking you get emotional when people throw wicked new toys your way, too. It’s not like that, though.

I’m a writer and a photographer. This is who I am, almost to the core, in that order. I AM a writer. I AM a photographer. I AM all about the details. I AM. When I walk around the world outside, I’m constantly looking for things I can photograph, or things that’ll inspire me with words. I am affected daily by the way things look, how they change in the light, the things people say in passing, the signs I drive by… all these things comprise minor parts in how my world unfolds day in and day out. You can’t shut that off, or if you do, it can be a pretty painful process.

I started working just over two weeks ago, and in a really cool ‘hood with some awesome heritage sites I’ve been dying to get it with a camera. But I’ve had none. (I didn’t know I was getting a new camera; I was told my warranty was rejected and the damage was my own fault, then suddenly, “Oh, you’ve been awarded a replacement” last Wednesday. Woo! Luck’s changing, babycakes. Boy, oh, BOY!)

I haven’t been able to take any pictures since early December. Somewhere in that mix, I stopped looking at the world around me. It seemed cruel to soak in the beauty and weirdness all around if I couldn’t snap a shot of it and record it in my own way. Something about photography feels like taking ownership of the beauty before you. It’s mine, and I’ll show it to you the way I like. By its very nature it’s an act of possession. It’s domineering. It’s me.

But it seems to me that any time we remove one of our loves from the picture, we lose a lot more than we’d like to admit. Tonight, I’m cancelling plans with a friend so I can stay out and take pictures. Oh, and buy a 2-gig memory card while I’m at it. (32MB? Get serious!) Can I tell you how excited I am? How little I care what anyone thinks of the pictures I’ll yield, save me? No. There are no words. Bubbly, giddy, goofy inside… that’s me on this fine morning.

Maybe taking some pictures will return me to my creative self. Maybe it won’t. Maybe I’ll continue doing what I’ve been doing: start writing time and time again, only to die a painful literary death after 400 squalid little words. I don’t know. But I’ll take some pictures and we’ll see where it goes. And then I hope to write about it later tonight.

After all, part of why I’m cancelling plans is because I hope it rekindles my passion for vocab. That’s supposing I’ve lost the passion. I don’t know that I have… but maybe. After all, every now and then it gets a little weird, writing for an audience I know exists. Every now and then I remember I’m just a girl of words and for some reason, you people like reading me. And when the hits start to go up (as they have in the last two weeks, quite a bit) I start getting all panicky about performance.

Then there’s the conundrum of being a girl of words about sex but living a sexless life. Ah, and that bites. I’ve had some dates, though. Only one seemed to be the kind with potential, but the guy in question seems to be going through things at this time and the timing’s the shits, so I’m looking elsewhere. Never denying the potential that something may happen at another time, but this is not that time. Still, my options are open and I’m considering them. And one of the options I’m considering is that sex seems to outrank relationships right now, and maybe the time is ripe to change the plan.

But getting shagged senseless really does seem like only a matter of time, as well. God knows getting laid could do a little good for me. Scratch that, a WORLD of good for me. I need me some lovin’. My timing’s been lousy, but it seems to be looking up.

And in the meantime, you get what you get, I guess. For now, I’m happy things are changing for the better. I wish I was writing more, I wish I felt more comfortable letting people into my head, but, right now, I’m just finding my footing. Stay tuned for MORE befuddling adventures of Steff.

*I am the QUEEN of the Extended Warranty. New couch, new DVD, new computer monitor, new camera, new blender… When they ask you if you want the extended warranty, ask how long theirs is. Hell, I keep getting new shit three years into owning things! Fuck the cynics and their “It’s a scam” musings. I’m proof! Play your cards right, and you too can get free shit three years later! 😉

So, being one of those 300+something-days-a-year scooter riders, it’s not really that often I opt for transit instead of taking my trusty scooter out into the world. (Think Vespa, not Razor.) Today, the weather was shit, it was rainy and windy, and I’d been drinking a little last night.

Decided to leave the scoot home and be a safety-first gal and take the bus for a change. For my conscientiousness I discover this route’s a dollar more than any I’ve ever had to ride, living in the core of the city and now working in a ‘burb. (So, that’s $6.50 to bus for a day, versus $4.50 for a tank of gas that’ll get me to and from work for five days (and insurance is $21 a month). No fucking wonder I ride, eh?)

THEN… tonight’s bus ride home? A speeding car came flying over the line and SMASHED into the bus. Large bits of the car were strewn about.* An hour and a half later, and I’m finally home from my convenient, safe, “dry”, 23-minute bus ride.

Fuck this shit. I’ll brave the elements and wrestle fate. I mean, irony on top of ironies is, when I ride my scooter through even the torrentialist (I’m coining a word!) of rains, I’m always 100% dry under my Goretex outterwear**. I arrived at work wetter today than I’d have done had I ridden there.

*Shockingly, the car waited a couple minutes, then drove away. Wethinks he was driving a stolen vehicle or something. It was a weird, weird fucking case. I should start drinking soon or something. What a headtrip of a day!

**Somebody get this chick an editor or somethin’! Flub of the day: “Outterware”. Doh!

I’m thinking a lot about time today. The right time, the wrong time, the in-between time, never enough time.

I’m about to head down to this little stretch of beach that only the true locals to Vancouver know about. One of the last bits of truly natural foreshore. It’s one of those places I retreat to at the best and worst times of life. Everything seems a little disconnected there.

I’m in an in-between time, but I’m at the curtains-almost-up stage of the right time. Things are on the verge.

But it’s gotten me thinking. See, I’m just a two-bit pop-philosopher. I watch my old DVDs with my lazy Sunday breakfasts and think there’s something divine to be found on the silly discs. You want to know the sad-ass truth of what I’m watching right now? Dirty Dancing. I know, I know. But I’m getting all philosophical because it’s just gotten to that point where Jennifer Grey blurts out, “But most of all, I’m scared of walking out that door and never again feeling in my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.”

So Patrick Swayze takes a deep breath and, in that I-actually-paid-for-acting-classes kind of way, emotes that he knows this is the wrong time with the right woman for the right reasons in the wrong setting. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t, he figures, and then decides to err on the side of the booty call. Ah, love.

But this is the story of my life. I have this wicked above-average likelihood of meeting the right guy at the wrong time. Hell, I’m the Queen of the Shady Timing. I’ve had so many relationships start that coulda been something phenomenal if only they’d happened when the timing was better. One of the two of us always falls into this rut of challenges in life, etc. It’s eerily common. The trouble is, I’ve allowed it to happen. I could have set the example and proved that it was a time worth overcoming. I doubt I ever managed to demonstrate that.

The older I get, though, the more I realize that seas tend to always have a little choppiness to the water. Glass-like surfaces of calm and stillness are truly few and far between. Life’s the same way. The great bits of peace and contented calm come intermittently. We want to believe that’s not the case, that all this struggle we’re going through is someday going to subside and things will get simpler, but we’re all living under delusions. It’s not about ending the struggle, it’s about learning to dance in time with the struggle, and seeing it for what it is… just another challenge to overcome, and a memory in the making.

Yet most of us still want to believe that there’s this magical time for when it’s right to get into a relationship. When it’s the right time to take that chance. I know I’ve been that way. I’m realizing, though, that change requires only one catalyst. Change one thing and you could domino your way to a whole new life.

Matters of the heart are scary. They tell us that the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t, but that’s supposing that all we’re being dealt is devils. Maybe, somewhere in that cosmic mix, we get dealt the card of bliss. Maybe we get dealt a chance that shouldn’t be missed.

If there’s anything I’ve come to love in this life, it’s the power of a maybe. Could be. Might be. So close to a “will be”. One little twist of fate, and who knows. But without a chance being taken, all that’s left will be “might’ve been”s.

I hate Valentine’s day. Always have. I have this cool Valentine’s day card from my nephew, though, from three or four years ago. It’s got all the X-Men on it and it says “You’re X-citing!” It’s a prized possession and is on my fridge, along with my magnetic poetry heroin poem I wrote. Yeah, a ball of sunshine, that’s me.

I’m x-citing!

Aside from that, I hate the day. Always hated it. Some personal shit happened with death and such around the day a few years back, and then there’s the whole spurned in love dealie and all. You’d think I’d be suckered into petty bitterness by way of those factors alone. But you know what? You’d be wrong.

See, what really pisses me off is this mandated romance thing. I’m hugely romantic. When you’re involved, isn’t it kind of in your interest to keep yourselves feeling confident and connected? Stay romantic. Do little things to keep it all alive. Buy small gifts – a favourite cigar, a tasters’ bottle of her favourite liqueur – and keep generosity cycling. Leave little dirty notes or tender professions of love lying around.

Have you done that? Take some nice paper – it has to be nice paper so that it stands out. Plain paper will get mixed up with pocket crap and get tossed. Some vibrant heavy bond paper will get noticed. Write quick little dirty notes. Keep it to, oh, 17 words or less.

“I want to devour you.”
“I’ve been very, very naughty. You must discipline me immediately.”
“You. Me. Long, long night. Anything you desire.”

Hide them everywhere. Pocket of favourite jeans. In with their credit card. In their business card holder. Replace their bookmark with one. (Which is great if you know they’re going to read near you at bedtime.) Inside the toe of a shoe, balled up.

Thing is, you do it all at once. A blitzkrieg of notes. It’ll take a couple weeks for them all to get found if you’re stealthy enough about it. It’s titillating, it’s fun, it’s a surprise for both of you, ‘cos hey, maybe you’ll be off your guard enough by the time it’s found. Quel fun.

But you have to stay romantic and passionate. It’s such a wonderful addition to your quality of life. Good food, sex, conversation, low maintenance nights in. What’s not to love?

Some people don’t like sex. Some people have some hormonal asexuality thing. Whatever. Good on them. They don’t want to fuck? Great, don’t. But don’t make like sex is some kind of fucking chore you’re obligated to do. The usual perception of a relationship is that there be a physical and emotional connection. That there’ll be sex. It’s not whack to expect you’re going to get laid. Should come with the territory. If you’re not on page, you’re the no sex type, you should be obligated to fess up off the top, or something.

But I do digress. I don’t think people should have sex on Valentine’s because it’s Valentine’s. Nope. I think you should have sex because you can. And because it’s good exercise.

Here’s the deal. I’m lazy. Very. When I get active, I go, go, go. I can cycle pretty long distances and tend to be strong. I’m just lazy. Sedentary. Like silt or barnacles; perfectly content to just lie there.

Yet I want to be active. See, it so happens I’m both a dominant yet submissive woman. And when it comes to gravity, I’m totally submissive.

But I like sex. I’m strong. And I have endurance. Plus, I yield well to gravity and all things horizontal. Therefore, I’m wanting to pass on the gym membership in favour of sex. All the time. I need me an Energizer Bunny. Fuck our way to buff. There’s a gameplan a girl can get behind. Well, this girl.

Yet I’m not wild about Valentine’s Day. I dunno. Kinda a fuck Hallmark moment, don’t you thing? Yes, I love you, now can I stop buying you these fucking cards? Jesus Christ.

The fuckin’ coffee shop down the street was doing pink whipped cream on their mochas. Great, can we have some friggin’ sparkles with that, Bubbles? Gosh, thanks! That’s not romantic. It’s goddamned puffery! Romance should be so much more rich, fun, and rewarding than that. And who needs pink whipped cream?! We’re in it for the taste, not the colour, you fools. (It’s like those twats who tint their Guinness green. Guinness! What the fuck are you thinking! No self-respecting Irishman would tint god’s own nectar with food colouring. Fucking travesty, that!)

Why, why, why do we have to be party to a society that tends to believe romance can be ignored for 11.5 months of the year, yet we can play bloody catch-up on one damned day? What’s so bad about thinking that sex deserves to be an important weekly, if not daily, activity?

The Surgeon General recommends you get 30 minutes of exercise a day. One half of all working people claim to suffer back pain at least once a year. Sex is good for the back, particularly the lower bit. If you do it right, you should take 30 minutes. There’s 150 calories burned off (including 10 minutes foreplay and 20 minutes of sex) and you haven’t even left the bed. I’m not the first to think of the all-sex diet, but dammit, I wanna be a devotee! I wanna get me on a program!

Yet still I hate Valentine’s. 24 hours and a lot of Bauer-esque dekeing and diving, and I should make it through the day unscathed. I might crumple thought and buy one of those Starbucks “for Valentine’s” cupcakes. Jesus. Yum. But I’m in it for the chocolate, not the sap. None the less, I love you all, my smutty little Valentines. Have a good one.

(And, yeah, I shit you not, you can buy your own Love Letter Creator for just one low payment of $24.95. For a limited time only you can flatter and bewitch the love of your life who’s too stupid to realize you’ve never said the word “halcyon” in your life, let alone would know what a “halcyon eventide with you by my side” might be. Don’t wait — buy them for your whole family! Click here!)

Want more of me? This was last year’s Valentine’s posting. (Says the 15th, but it was written on the 14th. Pfft.)

I currently have no fewer than a half dozen open/opened/started/unfinished documents on my desktop. I’m flummoxed, at a loss for words, of late.

I’m new. That’s the problem. I’m popping the employment cherry at a new place of business and it’s taken the cocky surety from my swagger. Heck, I’ve even broke out in a few “but I’m 33!” stress pimples!

But I have the distinction of being a completely different kind of person than all my coworkers. We’re all artistic, to be sure, but I’m that intellectual, cerebral artist with a keen eye for analysis. I’ve been a bookkeeper in the past, is what I’m saying, and can finagle my way through computer applications of all sorts. They’re all the less-linear types. It’s making me think a lot about learning styles, because, hey, I’m at an art school every day now.

So, learning styles. I learn by doing. I’m one of those girls who buys the cookbooks with the pretty pictures. The only recipe book without pictures that gets used is The Daily Soup Cookbook and that’s because, well, how could I not use it? But I learn very visually. I also learn by being given great detail. If I understand why something works as it does, I’ll be able to do it better. It’s not merely a follow-the-technique thing for me. I’m all about reason, cause, and effect.

I’ve been leafing through the really great Susan Craine Bakos’ book, The Sex Bible, thinking how disappointed I am that it’s not the perfect sex book. Damned good, I’ll give it that. But not perfect.

Perfect would mean it’d be at the very least a compendium. But a compendium is often a concise form of a more exhaustive work. Kind of like the Oxford Pocket English Dictionary versus the all-powerful true 26-volume OED. (If you’ve never read Simon Winchester’s brilliant look at the birth of the OED, you should.)

No, what I think would really be perfect is a sex book that’s encyclopedic with a thesaurus-like “concept” index.

Concept 110 Bondage: The practice of being physically restrained, as with cords or handcuffs, as a means of attaining sexual gratification. See sadism, masochism, leather, restraint, submissive, dominant, slave, et al.

Yeah, see, what we need is a reference geek to go and make the uber-sex book. There are some great fucking books out there (literally), like The Guide to Getting it On and this, the new Bakos’ burst of brilliance, The Sex Bible, but there’s no be-all, end-all to the good word of sex, is there?

What we really, really need is a sex encyclopedia with a concept index, thorough annotation, and comprehensive cross-reference capacity. We need the ghost of Kinsey to rise up and inspire a new kind of sex book.

Yes, yes, yes, all the information is out there. Yes, one could have a nice little section of their bookshelf piled with everything from Games for Lovers to Play through to Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask, but in this day and age of the 550-square-foot apartments, who has the space? And books are better than computers when it comes to sex savvy because it’s a more organic, physical experience. There’s something sadly disconnected about learning about sexuality through this medium (but you should keep reading me!) while there’s something pretty hot about lying naked in bed and letting a finger trace down the gorgeous colour photo pages in The Sex Bible. And it’s hotter to have a book in bed with a lover, over which you scheme and plot your future antics, than to be tabbing through webpages at a boring desk. Now maybe you’re on the desk, and that’s another story altogether.

But the sex encyclopedia would probably not be a hot read. Or would it? Ah, have I ever got an idea or two about that. That’s for another day, another story.

My little lit-chick writer-girl fantasies, though, have it as an anthology spearheaded by Alfred C. Kinsey about sex, to which sex writers of all kinds contribute bits on different sexual moves, techniques, positions, fantasies, all that, and there are glossy photo prints all over the place, with an assortment of real bodies photographed in beautiful ways. There’d be comprehensive indexes, definitions, explicit basics, and everything from beginners’ need-to-know through to advanced savvy. It’d be published in conjunction with Taschen or Phaidon and would be hundreds of pages. It’d be a discussion of sexuality, a look at the psychology behind the physiology, a look at the sociology of it, too. It’d be every aspect of sex all wrapped up in one package. It’d be expensive, a monolith. A status symbol in better bedrooms everywhere.

Fat fucking chance that’ll come about, but a book geek of a girl can dream, can’t she?

You tell me, what are sex guides missing?

And for tomorrow, probably a redux treatment on my two cents about why Valentine’s day is the biggest fucking joke ever. I’m not wild about the day. Commercial propaganda, yada, yada. Or maybe I’ll surprise myself and write something entirely different. Tune in and find out.

Photo’s from The Sex Bible.

Found deep in the rubble of Italy’s northern city Mantova were the remains of a couple who’ve spent the last five millenium locked in a passionate embrace.
Look at how their legs are intertwined, and their eyes still locked on each other after all these thousands of years.
Writers and artisans everywhere will be lost in wondering just what the circumstances behind this remarkable archeological find might have been.
The couple walked the earth at the birth of what would become Egypt’s three-millenium domination of Africa. Far removed from Egypt, they were living more than 2,000 years before the Roman Empire would rise from that city-state of the 9th century BC.
There are those who will tell you that love/marriage, as we know it, didn’t really come to be until just a couple centuries ago, during the Victorian era, when people began to marry for love and not for dowries nor for empires.
And this would seem to suggest that, no, love, in fact, is as old as civilization itself.
Or at least that’s what I’m choosing to believe. What a sensational archaeological find, and only a week before Valentine’s Day. Top that, Hallmark, you prissy bitches.
(Other stories now report that this couple is being referred to as “The Lovers of Valdaro”, and a day has passed since I wrote this, despite only posting it this morning, and my mind keeps wandering back to it. This story gave an interesting guess as to how the couple came to meet the afterlife in this pose.)
Original story was here.

So a reader sent me a left hook in the ol’ email bag recently.

You used the quote “Love is full of stupidity” and said how true that was but in many of your postings – I can’t say all since I haven’t read them all – I don’t see any references to, or definitions of, love. There is sex and dating, friendship and loving yourself, although predominantly the difficulties with that, but there is never a clear understanding of love. So I would be indebted to know how you are using that word and how you are consistent with applying that definition to sex, dating, friends, yourself.

Oy vey. What, you trying to make me work for a living?

Unthinkable.

You know, I don’t write about love. You’re correct. Je n’écris pas au sujet de l’amour. That’s the easy part. It’s the why that I’m not wanting to get into, but fuck it, here goes.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been in love. Some days I wonder if I’ve ever experienced it. Lust and deep caring, yeah. Double-yeah on the lust bit. Love? I don’t know that anyone has ever truly laid claim to this ol’ heart o’ mine. I haven’t really even had unrequited love love in god knows how long, either.

My social wheels are back on track and dating really actually looms again, but whether any will connect on that level’s really dubious. Trust has always been a challenge for me, the giving of it. I’ve been burned far too many times in this life of mine, but I keep thinking how playing with fire’s just too damned fun not to give it another go, sooner or later. I’m better at trusting now, but I’m still highly skeptical of… I don’t know. Life? Fate? Destiny? Yeah. Them.

I’ve come close to love, though. I know what to expect. I’m positive I’ll find it. I’m optimistic it’s out there, I’m just not entirely sure now’s the time of my life it’s going to get found in, you know? I’m not in the biggest hurry, but I’m beginning to be impatient.

What’s my take on love, then?

Usually, when I’m using the word, I tend to mean in a general sense. Matters of love. Affairs of the heart. Elements of lust. All of that. It’s not a weighty word for me. Perhaps it ought to be. Contrarily, it’s a very weighty word for me in relationships. I’ve used it with one man. Ever.

Part of me believes in the love of a lifetime, that one person who makes you swoon and falter with a mere part of their lips. The other part of me believes it’s more a biological and psychological pairing than it is that of any profound happening. Meaning, we’re all bound to latch to someone for whatever psycho-social reasoning, that it’s not some cosmic clicking of our tickers that’s making our hearts beat and pulses race. I’d rather believe in the once-a-lifetime love of no compare, though. I’m a passionate woman and I want my choices to be governed as much as a matter of the heart as it is of the mind.

Sometimes it feels like relationships are like jeans. You keep tryin’ ‘em until there’s one that fits oh so right.

Still, I’m looking for love. I’m looking for earth-quaking, knees-shaking, heart-aching love that hair bands sing about. I’m sure that if anyone can find it, I can.

Y’know, I was watching a rather bad movie and saw one good scene. The guy says to the girl something to the effect of, “When you love someone, when is enough finally enough?”

She sputters some long-winded blah-blah and he tells her she’s wrong. The answer, he says, is “Never. It’s never enough.” I’ve been thinking of that lately, and how every guy I was ever really serious about made me put a shelf-life stamp on how long I’d let it go bad before enough was enough. Those shelf-life expiration dates were never very far off for me. Looks like my threshold is low. Or maybe they were just not of the never-enough variety in the world of Steff.

When I tell a man “I love you” again, it’ll be said with a world of different emotion, I suspect. I’ll be keeping that phrase to myself until I really feel it to be true. When I think of “love” love, I think of Johnny and June Carter Cash. I think of Catherine the Great and Potemkin. I think of Casablanca. I think of Tristan and Isolde. I think of looking in someone’s eyes one day and knowing without asking that he’d do anything for me, and I’d do the same, as cliché as it sounds.

Because I believe in that.

I don’t think I’ve never found a guy I could love, though. I’m sure I’ve had a few. What I never had then that I have now was this self-love that comes only through certain self-defining moments in each of our lives. I’ve had a lot of them in the last five years and I feel down inside that I have a hell of a lot to offer as a person. I finally know my value. I think that, when we don’t know our value, when we don’t truly love ourselves, our relationships are untrue as a result. Who we think we love when we don’t love ourselves is an entirely different calibre of person than those we fall for when we’re at our personal best.

I dunno that I’m at my personal best yet. I’m pretty sure I’m far from it. But I’m closer to it than I’ve ever been, and I know I’ve got some road before I get there, but at least I know GPS system’s finally tracking again and my destination’s on my horizon.

These days, I know I deserve love. What’s more is, I finally have it in me to give. Before, I never thought I was worthy. Now I believe I shouldn’t settle for anything less. Hell, I know I’ve earned it.

I’m not sure that I’ve answered your question, but feel free to kick the can again if you want me to try another take on this.

[Photo’s by Alexia Berry, found here.]

Not too long ago, I rearranged my bedroom. For the first time in the seven years that I’ve lived here, the layout really, really works. I’d been hesitant to move my 7.5’ long self-designed writing desk from the window, as I always enjoyed looking out at the world when writing. Finally I realized it wouldn’t ever allow for a good bedroom layout, because it meant my bed had to be positioned in the centre of the room, taking up too much space.
So, much to my chagrin, I moved the desk against my south wall, a chocolate-brown accent wall. I moved my beautiful antique window-frame/mirror over top the desk, and figured it was just an aesthetically superior choice and nothing more.
The strange thing is, though, that now whenever I’m stuck, I either stare into the chocolateyness of the wall or I tend to stare into my eyes in the mirror.
I was sitting there just now, staring, and thought that if there’s one thing I dislike about my eyes, it’s my short little eyebrows.
I then remembered that there’s some alternative theory that you can tell about a person by their facial features. So, I looked it up. According to Chinese face-reading theory, my short eyebrows tell you I have few siblings (1) and that my life would enter a period of extended personal and professional grief from the ages of 31 to 34. I’m 33 now. I’d say that’s pretty dang bang-on. The fact that they’re straight eyebrows apparently reveals that I am a person with incredibly strong convictions, and a tendency to argue fiercely for them. No, you think?
That they’re low-arching/straight tells you that, one, I’m impulsive, and two, that I have both an aesthetic and sensitive temperament.
Other eye-reading beliefs say that because my eyes are exactly one eye-length apart, it means that I have a clear and fair perception of the world, and balanced judgment. Hmm!
If the extension of the eyebrow is the indicator, then I have deep-set eyes. Apparently this is common with many writers, and also often means the person is “romantic to the core”. My relatively square-ish chin apparently dictates that I’ll be a more pragmatic romantic than a fluffy, skittish one. This is kind of creepy it’s so accurate. I mean I would NEVER scatter rose petals on the bed! There is no so-called “romantic” bit of décor I think is more idiotic than scattered rose petals. Christ, a flower had to die for that. A dozen of ‘em! And I don’t want them stuck in the crack of my ass. Really. Who wants to stop to pick that out, eh? “Pardon me while I… Okay, carry on.”
My shade of green in my eyes apparently conveys that I’m a very inventive and enthusiastic person. Hmm. Somewhat.
My full lips tell you I’m caring and sensitive, and I have rather luxurious tastes in life. That my upper and lower lips are relatively the same in thickness indicates that I have a well-meaning, communicative personality. My cut of jaw belies my stubborness and my pragmatism.
My cheeks state I am “a forceful individual who is combative by nature. [I am] reactive to the circumstances and people around [me] and am learning the lessons of graciously living and letting live.” Okay, I’m learning the lessons, I don’t actually know ‘em yet, all right? Work In Progress should be my middle name.
My nose, now, it tells you I’m cordial, I’m empathetic with others, and I set high standards for myself and I’m both well-mannered and warm. Hmm!
My very thick hair apparently speaks to my physical prowess (heh heh) and my natural resilience. Ooh!
Who knew it was all in your face? Gotta love the internet. Remember back in the day, if you wanted to know something, you either had to go to the library, or look it up in your encyclopedia. (I still have my complete 1986 set of Funk & Wagnalls.)
Now I’ll stop fretting about my short eyebrows. 🙂
(Here’s where I found the neatest stuff.)

I’ve had a story opened up in a tab on my browser for two days. I’ve been trying to figure out where I stand on it. I think I sort of know, but I can’t decide if it makes me a bigot.

The gist of it is this, in Quebec (Eastern Canada’s French province), the powers that be in a small town called Herouxville have put laws in place that are essentially aimed at immigrants.

The new laws decree that it is legal for boys and girls to exercise together, that women are allowed to both read and vote, that women may not be stoned or killed in “honour” killings as a matter of law.

Then it starts going further and says people should only be allowed to cover their faces at Halloween. (This is likely to stem the more orthodox Islamic tradition of obscuring women’s faces with veils or whatnot. I suspect our Charter of Rights might be cause for dispute.)

I support some of what this town’s trying to do, though they’re probably morons to tack this tact, and think some of it is going too far.

I understand people’s hesitation to accept veiled faces, especially in this modern culture of fear and face, where we think a person’s face is their most important attribute, and we believe that what we can’t see is what we need to be afraid of. As if there’s some sort of bogeyman behind that veil.

I admit, I have troubling getting behind a religious conviction that inspires women to completely hide themselves, but then I don’t get the fuss about why widows, nuns, or brides wear veils, either. And I’m not religious. But if these women believe that modesty and selflessness helps live up to their convictions, then so be it.

I get the sense that this town’s not exactly too concerned with respecting the Charter of Rights, though. I suspect they’re just carrying on the stubborn Quebec tradition of trying to protect their culture from incoming hordes of barbarians. It’s not like France is all that friendly with its Islamic contingent anyhow. Maybe it’s a French thing. Down with the Moorish hordes or something. Maybe they don’t understand that Islamic women aren’t as oppressed as we’d like to think.

There’s a funny new series on Canada’s CBC that’s pretty timely, considering this brouhaha, called Little Mosque on the Prairie. It’s about the Islamic community in a small prairie town, and it’s busting open guts and stereotypes. It opened with the new young Imam (the leader of a mosque), a 30-something cute Islamic guy, standing in the airport, talking about his decision to his urban Toronto world for the Prairie life.

He’s in line, and we cut to this out-of-context statement, “I’ve been planning this for months, it’s not like I dropped a bomb on him. If Dad thinks it’s suicide, then so be it. This is Allah’s plan for me.” Naturally, the woman behind him’s gaping, and quickly he’s escorted off by a guard who claims today’s not his day to meet his maker.

I’ve known some pretty cool Muslims in my time, so I’m happy to see this show coming out and showing that this veiled, mysterious faith is a lot less extreme than most of us think it is. Pity about the extremist factions, but hey.

A town like this, you know, passing some of these laws, I can’t really argue with. Some of the laws are obvious. No burning to death of women. Kids can exercise in co-ed environments. All right, sure. Does it need to be said? I mean, the people who are going to be truly the kind of people the laws are trying to confront, they’re likely not going to give a shit that a bunch of white people in a French town passed these namby-pamby laws.

I haven’t had a look at the law books to see what it de facto states in regards to domestic abuse and other things like that, so I don’t know if they’re being duplicitous by highlighting the cultural differences of some more extreme immigrants. What I do know is, it can’t really hurt to have what are essentially very, very big tenets of our society put in ink in our law books.

I’m a big fan of multiculturalism. I like the fact that I live in a city with incredible Asian and Indian food. I like the contrasting cultures in my world around me. But make no mistake about it, I live in Canada. Land of the free, land that I love. It’s a place known around the world as being the kind of friend you can count on in harder times. We’re humanitarian. We talk, we solve problems, we broker peace. It’s what we do. And we take great pride in our constitution and rights.

I figure, you choose to move here, you have to abide by the moral code that is the code of this nation. If you wish to add to it, please do so. But don’t contravene it. That’s all.

But Herouxville is certainly insulting the average immigrant. To believe that these more extreme things, like honour killings and stoning and death by immolation, are widespread in the Muslim world is like suggesting we have Branch Davidians, radical Mormons, and self-flagellating Opus Dei/Jesuits on every corner. They’re around, but they’re not exactly mainstream.

What do you people think? Had you heard about this already? You want to see more of this happening? I admit, the feminist in me supports it, the open-minded Canadian is a little taken aback, tho.