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I love my pencil. I love to write but even more, draw. I would always write my essays and projects. I always doodled. I did so until age 13 but after that I stopped using my pencil. At age 13 I entered high school and in this high school we don't write, we type. For 4 years i typed. I typed everything from essays and journals. I did not draw. I hated it. I remember looking down at the criterias for my english essay- 'must be typed, 12 font, arial, double space'. This is the regulation. I hated it. I hated it so much that I became depressed. I need my pencil.

Left open for interpretation is my heart at present. How challenging can it be to know what your heart is feeling? I’ve spent 6 months trying to analyze my own, with its fickle back and forth foolery of ‘do I stay or do I go?’

‘The heart wants what the heart wants’. Not only is this a ridiculous self righteous cop out for saying ‘tough luck I’m leaving’ but its just not that easy to read at times.

My heart encompasses a multitude of completely contradictory emotions right now. 1-My heart it sad -deep and blundering in thick and senseless sadness. 2-My heart loves one man more than any other in the world. 3-That same heart wants to leave this man without a thorough explanation or any sight of something better on the horizon. 4-My heart doesn’t know how to fix things, just make it all one jumble of confusion.

In 1986 my best friend was a girl named Gwyneth. We lived in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Our mothers were both Kindergarten teachers and our fathers both elementary school principals. At some point during this year, tragedy struck .... Gwyneth moved away with her family to Kingston, Ontario. I was very very sad and wanted to stay in touch. Being that I was only 6 years old and she was 5, we weren't yet able to read and write very well. Luckily, we had matching brown Fisher-Price portable tape recorders which we cleverly used to make audio letters for one another. We would mail our tapes back and forth to eachother, usually taping over each other's tapes. Our recordings were funny mish-mashes of a kindergartener's world. Lots of starts and stops, rambling on tangents and simple distractions typical of the short attention span of little kids. Several years ago while moving house I come across a tape from Gweyneth and was reminded of how great it was to be a kid and to get such joy from the little things. Here a section of Gwyneth's tape "Hi Shannon, guess what! It's almost Christmas and it's a very merry Christmas and we might get whatever our hearts desire .... EVEN A BEACH BALL!!!". Had we been more literate the content of our correspondence would have been much much different. That section of Gwyneth's tape always makes me smile :)

Christmas Carp Haiku #8

fish out of water.

always a funny story -

unless you're a fish

Amy-I Wish you would of thought before you killed yourself. I miss you.

I believe that at the root of the human beings' existence is creativity. It is the urge to create and to communicate ideas and thoughts through our creations. I believe that there is no difference between life and art because both are creative endeavors and in constant flux all around us! To create something, is to create the purity of life. Pulling forth from ones own sub-conscious to create something outside of ones own being is one of the most honest and truthfull experiences on this planet. As a people we need to reclaim the honest and truthfull creative impulses of our beings. We need to rejoice at this amazing gift we have been endowed with. We need to speak openly and positively about the importance of creativity, of art, and, most importantly life!