Knowledge

I went to the bookshop today. Walking past Waterstones on the way to use the internet, I said to my compadre, "Can we just step in here for a sec.?". Two hours later, we stepped back out on the sidewalk with a jolt back from the written world to the real thing.

We wandered down aisle apon aisle of classics, and "too new to be classics". "Have you read this?" "I've heard about this one". The most repeted line from me being "This is an awesome book...but I don't think I ever finished it. It was really really good though..."

What is it that compells us to read? What is it that sucks us into books and won't let us out until the last page, when it throws you hard on the ground with a jolt? There's something so intriguing about reading through someone elses life. About reading through their problems and being glad that you don't have to deal with them. About reading about their fairy tale exsistance and wishing you had the perfect house, the perfect boyfriend, the perfect car. Something about reading the true tales about the fabulous exsistance of torture and triumph of the less fortunate. Something that makes us read them and then say "My god. It's so horrible that people have to go through life like that.". But, without these people and without those experiences, where would to stories be? There wouldn't be any.

Then there's the fantasies. Stories that are so fantastic, we could only wish they were true. What compelled J.R. Tolkein to write The Lord of The Rings, or Roald Dahl, Danny Champion of the World? Where they on acid like the Lewis Carols and Ken Keseys? Or were they just little children in adults bodies with imaginations big enough for us all? (My theory is that all the best books were written while the authors were on drugs. The mothers and fathers who fight for the drug dealers on the corners to be thrown in jail are the same ones who then read their children bed time stories like Alice in Wonderland and tell them that it's one of the classics of our time.).

I left the book store with these questions in my head. Being in there made me feel like how I feel when in a record shop. I want to own everything in there. Bad or good, it all has some sort of artistic value. I want to own the entire Roald Dahl collection. I want to own CDs of every type of music in the world. I want to travel. I want to discover. I want to be a better person.

I want to go to school. I want to learn. I want to sit and read books and escape from reality in the same way I do when I'm asleep. I want to learn more about reality. I want to kill my ignorance with written word. I want to know things like, who is Virginia Woolf and want to know about the Life of Pi. Knowledge is endless.

Curiosity killed the Cat, But I'm willing to risk it.

Self pity

When is it okay for you to officially label yourself desperate? Is it when you stand in the stairwell when you know when the object of your desire will be walking by (when you know when he's off work), hoping for a "How ya goin'?", or just a little glimps of the back of his head? Or is that just when your stalker tendancies rear it's nasty head? I don't know the answer to this question. But I'm starting to scare myself.

When do you know you've been forgotten? Is it when you're friends no longer send you forwards? Is it when your invitation to Sally's "big birthday bash", gets "lost" in the "mail" (or is this when you are no longer liked? A different category entirely...)? Or is it when you travel halfway around the world, leaving everything you've ever known and loved behind, and the only person you hear from is your mother who calls twice a week like clockwork to ask if you've eaten your greens? I've been gone for over three months, and the number of emails/phone calls from my nearestand dearest would have fallen well below the decade line if it weren't for my mother (bless her cotton socks), and call me selfish, call me high maitenance, call me bitch if you like, but this just isn't good enough.

When do you know you're a border-line alcoholic? Is it when you have to have a drink every night even if you're by yourself? Or is it when you go to the pub downstairs every night and spend the last money you have in your pocket on countless drinks for yourself, when you know very well that you're not going to be able to pay your rent on Tuesday, and your parents have no money left to lend you? The bouncers and bar staff at the Walkabout pub know me well as the Canadian girl who went upstairs with the manager on her third night at the hostel. I seem to have become nameless since I arrived here, known simply as "Canada".

When do you know that you are no longer one of the best looking girls staying at the hostel? Is it when you know you never were in the first place? Or is it when your friends move out of your room, ony to have their places taken by two 19 yr old Swedish beauties. The boys are all seeing blonde hair and blue eyes and that seems to be it. I am no longer being invited out by my previously good friends, and am no longer being put on the guest list at clubs. They seem to have taken my place.

So this is me. wallowing in self-pity, feeling forgotten and lonely, wondering what I'm doing here. Looking for myself in all the wrong places.