vein

i.

there's a vein in my nose, or so 

my mother says, that's only 

visible when i'm 

going through a growth spurt. i

look in the mirror and i

never see it. i wake up 

one day, every day, and everything 

is irreversibly different. 

 

ii.

my bras don't fit and my duvet 

is tattered and the backs 

of my knees don't hurt. 

they used to. 

i used to not sleep for 

the growing pain. inches in a year. inches 

on the miles i ran, 

drove, hiked. 

 

iii.

tonight it's raining. i used to sleep 

with only 3 walls around me and 

the rain would come right in. 

alessia

would read me a story every night. she bought bamboo 

curtains to keep the rain

out of her bed. mine was deep enough 

in the cabin it didn't matter.

both our books 

got damp all the same. jesse told me i was a 

carbon copy of her. 

none of us knew yet. 

my name's from her. 

 

iv.

when i was 6 we had a cat

named minerva and a cat named spike. 

i played dozens 

of games of euchre with our med student roommate. the

garden had a small gazebo and

our upstairs neighbor was eve. 

when i was 6 i had a 

cd player and i'd listen to bill frisell every night to fall 

asleep, through the pain 

of my knees, through the pain

of only getting half an ibuprofen, 

through the pain of not yet knowing.

the air

written saturday evening in blue pen waiting for a play to start.

there's something in the air in montreal that makes me want a cigarette.

i miss a lot of people. i'm happy to be in the city. i'm happy to be seeing the play my friend is directing. the main character is really afraid of getting cucked. the city is beautiful with its careful stonework, mixed colors, twiling metalwork, and tangled vines. i'm not comfortable in the city without a close companion, and while i have a companion i'm in the position of support. i'm unclear if i can or should venture out alone (my phone is broken) but it feels wasteful to stay in. i could get a drink here but it feels out of place. i'm going to get some water.

it's called cigarette smoke. it's called ghosts.

 

murphy's law

murphy's law: "anything that can go wrong will go wrong"

on saturday, i went on march break. i packed up my bags and closed down my room and loaded my car and picked up my friend. we drove three hours to my house. we mostly stayed there until this morning.

on sunday night, my phone broke. i was mid-phone call when it restarted. i made the call again, and again it restarted. i put it aside and continued the call on my laptop. later, i tried to figure out what was wrong. it was restarting in random increments. i did research, attempted a force restart, and had no success. i noticed it was getting hot, so i turned it off.

i had a very nice and restful break, and didn't really need a phone. i lost track of the time a lot, and it was good for me. i wasn't able to get in to brightspace, and that was also good for me, although maybe bad for my grades. probably fine. i almost burnt a couple things my mother texted me to take out of the oven, but all of them ended up perfectly cooked. ultimately, not having a phone allowed me to focus on what mattered over break.

i went to get my phone repaired, and the guy was being solidly misogynistic in the sort of way where he didn't believe i could know anything about what might be wrong with my phone. i walked in and told him it was probably a battery issue because it was rebooting and getting hot and he provided several other options before i repeated what i said and he agreed. he said he'd replace the battery and disconnect some other sensor but that didn't work, the phone wasn't worth fixing, so i paid $70 and left.

while waiting for my phone to get fixed, my friend and i were going to go to probably my favorite burger place for lunch. they were closed. this is the second time i've tried to go there and they've been inexplicably closed. we went to a different burger place and it was mediocre.

on thursday, i got a haircut and went to a local pottery studio that was having a sale on seconds. after acquiring beautiful pottery, my friend and i returned to the car and found a parking ticket. if you know me or my twitter, you know i don't stand for such things. no resolution to this one, i still need to pay it.

on friday, i was going to go to montreal to see a play a friend was directing and be in the city. on thursday night, i had finished cooking a very late (for nice reasons) dinner and sat down and realized i didn't have my passport. in the morning, i texted someone i know on my floor who was staying over break. she very kindly said she'd let me in to my room to get my passport.

after driving back to burlington, we were dropping stuff off at my friend's apartment and she left her keys inside and we got locked out. thankfully, the building staff were able to let us back in.

i picked up a different friend, made it to montreal, and tried to park. the formerly unattended lot i previously parked in now for a whole weekend had an attendant, and it seemed like i couldn't park there for more than an hour. his english wasn't the best, so we tried to find a different lot. this lot very clearly had an option to park for 24 hours, but the attendant didn't speak any english. we managed to make it work, but my bank decided i wasn't actually allowed to be in montreal so my card declined. thankfully, my friend's card worked and we parked and made it to the place we were staying.

walking into the apartment, i reached to close the door and gouged my hand on a nail poking out the back. it created two short cuts just below my pinky. i considered this my blood sacrifice, and nothing further went terribly wrong. i'm now safely back at school. much of this was my fault, and many wonderful things happened over break, but this was a string of ill events too significant to ignore. watch out.

 

catholics, snow, ropes

last month, my friends threw a catholic themed party as well as a rope bunnies themed party. we also made a snow bong. below are photos courtesy of @roseoddments and my roommate.

 

i don't think i did the best job of posing but i'm quite proud of my wounds

 

 

 

god bless

 

snong night begins

 

 i did in fact eat some of it

 

 

 

that was a really lovely night
 

how i bought an electric guitar

about a month ago, i decided to buy an electric guitar. i had been wanting one for a bit, and had occasionally played a guitar belonging to a friend as well as a few others. while a lot of what i listen to is folk and i love my acoustic dearly, i wanted more versatility in sound. i want to sing that rock and roll.

friends had told me of the power of facebook marketplace, so, having avoided it for many years, i made a facebook account. i opened the electric guitar tab and realized that i had no clue what i was looking for, so i closed it and opened youtube. i spent a great many hours watching videos on a variety of guitars and how to buy a guitar and learned a lot. i only have one video still saved.

i learned a great many things, and i'll recount some of them to you here. i am by no means an expert on this topic, but i think it's neat.

first, there are various shapes of guitars. two very popular shapes, both originated by fender, are the stratocaster (strat) and telecaster (tele). there are a lot of other shapes and models and other brands as well, such as the gibson les paul and various shapes manufactured by ibanez. this is remaining in solid-body electrics as well, not even looking into semi-hollow-body guitars.

one key thing for me to think about was pickups. there are two main types of guitar pickups: single-coil pickups and humbuckers. there are also active pickups, but those are expensive and only for playing really loud music, which is not my thing. single coil pickups tend to have a bright sound, while humbuckers are often a lot warmer. sometimes, humbuckers look a lot like two single-coil pickups stacked on top of each other. they're called humbuckers because they're designed to buck the hum (random extra noise) of single coil pickups to allow for louder sounds with more distortion. one thing that was recommended to me was to get an HSS guitar, which stands for humbucker-single-single. such a guitar has three pickups, with a humbucker at the bridge and single-coil pickups at the middle and neck. this allows for a really versatile sound.

to choose between a fender or a strat or some other type of guitar, i decided to look at the types of guitars some of my favorite artists play. i began with courtney barnett, because i love her music and she has a very versatile sound. from my research, i discovered she has three main guitars: a fender telecaster, a fender jaguar (jag), and a harmony rocket (semi-hollow body). she also plays a fender jazzmaster sometimes, and can also be seen with a strat. the tele and the jag seemed like the main things to consider, but we'll come back to the rocket. her jag has only humbuckers, and i like the sound, but i want more versatility. the tele is a solid possibility. haley heynderickx has a tele and a couple of semi-hollow body guitars. big thief plays a very wide variety of guitars, and sidney gish has a strat.

with my research done, i returned to facebook marketplace and began to browse. i'm of the philosophy that my gear being beautiful and me being in love with it is a little more important than it perfectly suiting  the sound i hypothetically want to play. my sound can evolve, but i don't want to spend a lot of money on something i feel lukewarm about. with this in mind, i plunged into the depths of facebook marketplace.

a lot of facebook marketplace is pretty bland. a lot of weird stains, odd shapes, and cheap guitars. a lot of black and white fender strats and yamaha pacificas that would be find but just don't grab me. one day, however, i found a strat with some character. it had an hss configuration and pickups with a golden color. it was subtle and a little damaged, but beautiful. it did have hot pickups, meaning the coils were wound tighter resulting in a more intense sound. perhaps not exactly what i wanted, and i deliberated for a while sadly, i eventually realized it had already been sold before i had even seen it, as the seller had double-listed it.

while i was hunting for a guitar, i also hunted for an amp. i didn't really know much about amps, but i didn't need to. the moment i saw an orange crush 12 i knew i wanted one. orange amps are a beautiful shade of orange, and the crush 12 is kind of the perfect amp for where i'm at. i did some research to make sure the sound was what i wanted, and after a friend of a friend confirmed it was a good amp, i bought one. i was a little late to the meetup, but it didn't matter. she was mine.

 

 

a picture from the first day, plugged into my friend's electric.

 

after buying an amp, i continued my search for a guitar. rather an odd order to do things in, but i was certain i wanted this amp and i wasn't certain about a guitar yet. i kept searching, and was really considering getting a cheaper guitar i'd like less, but i'm very glad i didn't.

before i get to the guitar i eventually ended up getting, i want to return to courtney barnett's harmony rocket. you can see her play it in her tiny desk concert, or in this performance of avant gardener. this guitar intrigued me a lot, so i decided to look into the company that made it.

that is how i found the harmony h62 rocket reissue, my dream guitar. she's so so beautiful, elegant, and has a gorgeous sound. really go watch that video i know there are a lot of links in this post but i promise that one's the most worth it. i hope to get one someday, but we'll see. i think between a semi-hollow body with humbuckers and a solid-body with single-coil pickups i will cover everything i could ever want an electric guitar to do.

back to my guitar. one day, i saw her. she was just the one for me. a fender strat, 3 single-coil pickups, and a limited-edition color that fit me well. billiard ball blue. i messaged the seller, she was still available, and i went to get her. the seller runs a small shop packed with guitars in a nearby town. when i got there, he realized he didn't actually have it in the store and very apologetically told me if i came back tomorrow he'd go get it and throw in a free bag and strap. he also taught me a lot about guitars, and let me play a couple of other beautiful guitars in his shop. the next day i went back, got the guitar, and the rest is history. videos of me playing her coming sometime, but for now here's a picture.