Resist the urge to play music, to instead settle on silence, the only sound being the bristle of brush strokes on dollarstore canvas board (you buy paint supplies on a student budget, after all). You hope one day to be able to afford Series 3 colours like aquamarine. For now, you work with cobalt blue.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending my second Toronto Poetry Slam at the The Drake Hotel on Queen West West.
Castor oil is one of the best kept secrets of naturopathic medicine. Taken from the bean of the castor plant, this oil is rich in ricinoleic acid, an important active constituent that makes castor oil so special.
I’ve been struggling lately. The weather has gone back to its windy, cold and moody self, after playing mind games with us for a week or so. I’m back to taking my vitamin D, since the sun isn’t offering it up for free anymore. Maybe that’s why I feel cheated. It could very well be that we’re presented with so many flow charts it’s like I’ve died and gone to Flow Chart Hell – a special kind of hell where things break down into a series of isolated steps that are easier to understand, for some.
There’s something to be said for good company, sun and sand to bring you out of a dark, rainy slump. Last week was a particularly emotional one for me, which in part is due to my Reiki initiation, which can cause some energetic side effects, and some events happening on the home front.
I can’t really say that I’m a creature of habit. I easily tire of routine and consistency. Maybe it was for this reason that I felt the need to take off from Canada for a few years and travel, why I remain a perpetual student (no two days are the same and we get a 4-month summer of something radically different). The student life serves me well in breaking up the routine.
It doesn’t matter how many espresso shots I have before leaving the house in the morning, without fail, by mid-afternoon I am ready to hit the sack. Unfortunately for most of us with this problem, our day’s responsibilities don’t end at 3:00 pm.
When I was small I used to sit in a shopping cart, eating almonds off of the pile in the grocery store, while Nonna shopped for food. She would hand me shelled almonds to snack on, but she would buy them in bulk, with their shells, and we’d crack them at home.
One of the realities of human suffering is the sensation of time passing us by. It is one of the pains of being alive and aware of it. Oftentimes we live on autopilot, bored with our present circumstances and rushing through life to the next good thing we have scheduled. When times are good we can experience the anxious feeling of attachment, knowing that, like all good things, it can’t possibly last forever.