What can I tell you except that my heart breaks a little? But this has become. Unhealthy. So without (much) drama, but with the ceremony owed to seven years, I am saying farewell. Until we meet again.
I’m sure you’ve known something like this: the thing that didn’t become wrong, but somehow is no longer right. It sits inside that part of you with cowardice and inaction. Procrastination. Reluctance. Maybe tomorrow I won’t feel this way, you think. But you always do. Eventually, there must be an action.
I’m craving somewhere less safe, more permanent. I hope I find it. Until then, I won’t be putting anything new here. My Mental Milkcrate is full to the top.
And so I thank you. Friends, lovers, acquaintances, and passersby. The silent and the effusive. I found my voice in this space, and I’m grateful for all who witnessed, encouraged, and sympathized.
My email is jess(at)mymentalmilkcrate.ca, if you’d like to keep in touch. And I’m “milkcratejess” on Twitter.
Be well. I’ll miss you.
- Published:
- 21 January 2010
- Author:
- Jessica N. Coles
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Perhaps there is no start to this conversation. Roll the dial across every frequency from right to left and back again. The hiss and buzz of amplitude modulation with occasional focus on something intelligible. Four bars from an old song. The answer to an unknown question. An opinion offered to a midnight audience of five. Phonemes scattered on the speaker dancing secret messages into the passenger seat.
If, perhaps, there were more to say tonight, I would find myself curled around the steering wheel, resting on your wrist. And all the other secret places you never thought to lie about.
- Published:
- 6 January 2010
- Author:
- Jessica N. Coles
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Lydia dreams of being a housewife and carrying Paris in her veins. The way Paris seems to sink into the psyche and fill her heart with black-and-white romance. Grainy photos and uncertain colours line memory boxes stacked against the base of her skull. She believes and so she becomes a knee-length skirt and high-heeled shoes clicking over cobblestones. The whisper of a car three roads over at midnight. The shine on asphalt after rain. The misinterpreted wink from across the bar.
Lydia sighs into a pen and cups her palms around morphology that settles in elusively bold strokes on shards of used paper.
- Published:
- 5 January 2010
- Author:
- Jessica N. Coles
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I find myself succumbing and not succumbing to the gravity of reviewing the past ten years. I have no top 10s, no list of favourite moments. I have rediscovered the value of steeping in the past, but the record of my personal tastes is less than necessary. I see forward momentum in the clicking of the calendar.
Meditation, following meandering paths, seems appropriate now. Escaping the weight of city life and people. Finding a place for myself among silences and snowflakes. I wrap myself in solitude. Slip past midnight into this new year.
- Published:
- 30 December 2009
- Author:
- Jessica N. Coles
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It has been a hectic December. All leading up to tomorrow. I’m hosting my first Christmas dinner for both my family and my husband’s. Things that seemed very important when I first took on the job have slowly been dropping down the scale of importance. So the day before my big debut, I am calm. Ready for whatever is going to happen tomorrow. And however the day plays out, everyone will have more than enough to eat and far more than enough to drink. I’m looking forward to it. I am breaking from tradition and, I hope, beginning a couple of new ones.
This season is always both contemplative and chaotic. Something about the preparations and the people creates swirls and eddies in my thought patterns but leaves a kind of stillness in the centre. I’ve watched the sunrise this morning. Gradients of orange and yellow to purple-gray clouds. I haven’t actually seen the sun yet. Such a slow process at this latitude at this time of year.
There are some few last minute tasks. But they won’t take much time. As my dad would say, “It’s time to slip into dawdle.”
- Published:
- 24 December 2009
- Author:
- Jessica N. Coles
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