Today I watched a flower the size of my hand tumble off its treebranch.

I dislike Lil’ Wayne.
There. I said it.

Every time Community does an episode about Abed’s family I want to die. It hurts, so much. Somebody make them stop.

Favourite text of the last week:
“Im texting you from on a horse”
– mirasar, March 7 12.11PM.

I’d forgotten what it feels like to feel passionate about what you do. And he keeps reminding me. This has the effect of making me sad. I’d forgotten what purpose feels like, how it gives form to intelligence, making it a little less smug, a little less self-serving. Is this what people like him do — make the rest of us sad, just by being?

I actually enjoy running. But you wouldn’t know this if you were to judge by the death wheeze I get after 30 seconds of spirited jogging.

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

– David Copperfield, Charles Dickens (1917)

I saw a brown uncle in a tweed jacket as I walked home this afternoon. I gave him a tired smile as we passed each other, but I guess after almost twelve hours straight of jail support, I get that hooligan look — unwashed mussed hair and red eyes. He gave me a dirty look.

My parents moved into a new house 2 weeks ago. They’re still meeting their neighbours, one of whom came over today to meet us. I hear my mother coming down the hallway, introducing her to my siblings as she encounters them, and then saying something about how I’m home on break from school in BC. She calls me out of the kitchen where I am having elevenses at 3PM.

- Assalamu alaikum, Aunty.
- Wa alikummus salam. It’s nice to meet you.
- It’s nice to meet you, too.
- How old are you?
- Uh … 24.
- My daugher is 23. She lives at [X] and [X]. She got married two years ago. She comes home nearly everyday.

My mother’s face stiffens.

February, and the sun is out, so all the blinds are up, and the windows and the front door open. The kitchen is chaos. I wash dishes under its angled roof, hemmed by bright yellow walls, hot water breathing up steam and clouding up the tiny window. I have a cold, and I’ve taken out my nosering to making sneezing less of a production. There’s a wad of tissue in each of the pockets of my jeans, the thin denim grimy from the previous night spent under a tarp in the rain in the tent village. Tomorrow is for laundry, for fresh underwear and crushed sweaters. There’s a pot of lentils and potatoes simmering on the splattered stove. It smells incredible; I have come to believe in the transformative power of coconut milk. There’s a carton of overpriced orange juice in the fridge, and there’s ginger to brew into sweet tea. There are cheap strawberry wafers on the counter and figs in the cupboard, and I’m feeling just a little lightheaded.

Sade’s singing about a Long Hard Road, and I sing along, scratchy-voiced and sniffling. Outside the landlord’s kids are playing, one four-year-old and one two.

And these are good days, this combination of dirt and sharp light.