Spring comes in to Québec from the west. It is the warm Japan Current that brings the change of season to the west coast of Canada, and the the West Wind picks it up. It comes across the prairies in the breath of the Chinook, waking up the grain and caves of bears. It flows over Ontario like a dream of legislation, and it sneaks into Québec, into our villages, between our birch trees. In Montréal the cafés, like a bed of tulip bulbs, sprout from their cellars in a display of awnings and chairs. In Montréal, spring is like an autopsy. Every one wants to see the inside of the frozen mammoth. Girls rip off their sleeves and the flesh is sweet and white, like the wood under green bark. From the streets a sexual manifesto rises like an inflating tire, "The winter has not killed us again!" Spring comes into Québec from Japan, and like a prewar Crackerjack prize it breaks the first day because we play too hard with it. Spring comes into Montréal like an American movie of Riviera Romance, and everyone has to sleep with a foreigner, and suddenly the house lights flare and it's summer, but we don't mind because spring is really a little flashy for our taste, a little effeminate, like the furs of Hollywood lavatories. Spring is an exotic import, like rubber love equipment from Hong Kong, we only want it for a special afternoon, and vote tariffs tomorrow if necessary. Spring passes through our midst like a Swedish tourist co-ed visiting an Italian restaurant for mustache experience, and they assail her with ancient Valentino, of which she chooses one random cartoon. Spring comes to Montréal so briefly you can name the day and plan nothing for it.

- Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers.

Off they went, expensive, floppy cases. Bubble wrapped, anointed with hope, splattered in broad Sharpie strokes, addresses so carefully reviewed I soon knew them by memory. School applications. My part is now officially done, aside from some nail-biting and further existential ruminating.

Anyway, I'm on a reading blitz these days. There are times in my life where I've decided I can't possibly know enough about the world and feel a desperate hunger that can only be satiated by reading everything within my grasp. I'm especially interested in books about the environment or the wilderness or about our relationship to nature. It's an aspect of humanity I've rarely given much thought to and was never all that concerned about what havoc my existence was reaping on our seemingly fragile ecosystem. I would often balk at any activity beyond basic recycling (I grew up in a household where we not only kept the water running to wash dishes, my mom would actually leave the room, taps on full blast, convinced this was the only way to make grease budge).

I never really saw nature. I have never spent more than four or five days away from a major city. Dump me in some dusty vast metropolis where no one speaks a lick of English with a map and a cup of coffee and I'll be absolutely fine. Five minutes outside a city, at a truck stop (where concrete is still visible) and I feel utterly lost. I'm lost in, like, Longueuil. That's my wilderness.The closest I have come to camping invariably involves a cabin and a shower, or in one particularly interesting case a tower on the Great Wall. I fear butterflies because of their unpredictable flight trajectory.

And then, and please don't laugh, David Attenborough walked into my life. The first episode I saw was seasonal forests and I actually cried. I was particularly moved because these giant sentinels were older than the Rocky Mountains and right in my own fucking country (a place I often rolled my eyes at ever exploring. I could never understand spending $600 on a plane ticket to, sigh, Vancouver, when I could spend just as much and suffer an equally long flight to France.) The polar bear, the poster martyr for climate change, became far less a cliche when observed in action. Even locusts, whose 17-year long story, have a purpose, and they certainly provide more nourishment than we do.

So all that to say, I started with Walden's Pond and now I am simultaneously ploughing through Cradle to Cradle (an obviously much faster, smoother read). What I like about the former is an awakening to the uselessness of stuff and a reconceptualization of what we actually need and what we're lacking in modern society in terms of a relationship to nature. The latter is something everyone must read. I have only a few of its glossy, waterproof, tree-less pages left and it's already changed the way I look at the world. It's full of optimism. It sees the current state of economics and environmentalism as a challenge, not a hopeless stalemate. The authors, an architect and a chemist, both seek a collaborative approach and alternatives that aren't less-bad but actually provide nourishment to the environment, as well as for the people who use and inhabit the products and spaces they design. I like their light-hearted, pro-active, realistic, and (most importantly) guilt-free approach. I like the fact that I could read their book in the bathtub and it didn't get warped or moldy (though my bookmark met a far uglier fate).

So what's next? I've thought about Silent Spring but I'm not sure if I have the stomach for it yet. Rather, I think I want to explore some Canadian literature that uses our wilderness as the backdrop to a fictional story. I want to transport myself to the natural spaces here, at least, conceptually, because for now I'm stuck in a beige cubicle, with a beige telephone, and a beige computer. At least we have broad windows and a lot of natural light.

Finished another brutal day at work with a Yoga class to ease the stiffness in my muscles and the aches in my bones. Ventured to a (not so) distant part of town for fine Indian cuisine and lovely company with a friend that I realize no longer fits into the "new" category. Chilled for a bit in one of the cutest apartments I've ever seen, she fits in the "new" category but that in no way detracts from her company. Came home to warmth and found myself listening to some laid back beats. I am not my job. My intensively prolific reading period is waning a bit, but I think it's more because of being busy than a lack of interest. I just want to devour stacks of books. My life plans these days rarely coalesce into anything remotely coherent and can range from the sublime (let's fuck off to the himalayas and breath thin, snowy air) to the ridiculous (I want to be a housewife when I grow up).

Anyway, I'm developing a really profound relationship with food. Before it was kind of like new lovers suddenly excited to sniff each other behind the ears and spend entire weekends just tangled in sheets and sweat. And now we're like a wedded powerhouse, partners that finish each other's sentences, tangling our weathered fingertips in a union so profoundly understood we don't have to say a word. Food, I love you, you give me purpose in being. And I'm coming to a point where I really want to start giving thanks before a meal, because I really am grateful to be able to eat all the mindblowingly delicious things that I do. Why not? We should look at each meal like an experience, something to savor and to be thankful to have.

I'm also getting a bit curious about hunting, which is hilarious. If anyone knows me, slender, itsy-bitsy me, and my lack of wilderness expertise, I am sure you would find it quite hysterical to image me silently skulking through a forest with nothing but a shotgun, my wits, and an empty stomach. But I think that there's something almost necessary about killing a living thing by your own hand and then consuming it. Now that is eating. That is developing respect. The meat industry has completely removed me from the whole process of understanding where your food comes from.

I toy with the idea of vegetarianism. I do. But it's the bacon. It's always the bacon.

Anyway, I'll leave you with some videos for your perusal. Good things. Good beats. Something to warm the most frigid cockles of the iciest hearts.

I am secretly grateful to Ortega Cartel for reminding me why I love Montreal. In my desperation to leave, it's something that I so very quickly forget.

I was up all hours last night attempting to subdue recent anxieties. I know I've always had a taste for the melodramatic. And I've often attempted to defy routine living and working hours. (There's something about being caught in the shuffle and sway of the throbbing 9 to 5 masses, duped into weekend deals and elbowing through the metro like a hoard of mindless, ravenous zombies that I've always found particularly discomfiting). But last night, I funneled most of my stress into Facebook's virtual bookshelf. I have no idea why. Maybe it's the bookclub my roommate started. Maybe it's the fact that I've been tearing through novels lately and I feel an even further sense of completion upon selecting the "read" icon. Maybe I hope to seduce like-minded individuals into thinking I'm an "interesting person" with "fabulous literary tastes". Who the fuck knows? Maybe it just occupied my time in that oh-so-elegant Facebook sort of way that is both equal parts narcissism and voyeurism, a deadly cocktail I find absolutely irresistible during some of my darkest, post-midnight existential battles.

Dare I even pretend to notice that maybe, perhaps there's about 2 minutes more sunlight per day than there was about 2 weeks ago? Hm. Even if I'm wrong, 2 minutes more daylight is almost as good as a hot cup of coffee to warm fingertips stiffened from the January chill. Almost. Holy shit, my exaltation of the fair trade Peruvian blend c/o Treats is becoming almost pathological.

I put a copy of "On Photography" by Susan Sontag on hold at Chapters. I'm barely able to contain myself until tomorrow to pick it up.

"Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood."

I feel that most students well versed in photography or art history or possibly even something similar to my background in anthropology have already read this or something like it. My one-track minded experience in university blinded me from Sontag's work and I wasn't all that focused on understanding photography within a theoretical or cultural context until recently. I'm dashing back to basics and reveling in the reinforcement of postmodern ideas that have already been floating around my head for a while. Next on the reading list is Liz Wells' "The Photography Reader". It appears to be a massive tome, revealing photography from start to finish in its glossy pages and I can't wait to get my fingers on it. Library card, Liz, don't forget the library card.

I have to say it kind of feels auspicious to be fascinated by two authors (within fields I hold rather close to me) to be called Liz. The other one is Gilbert. "Eat Pray Love" is possibly one of the best gifts I've ever gotten myself, though her lesser-known TED lecture is fully worth a gander as well.

Though for the next three weeks or so I will be compelled to almost entirely talk about school applications, portfolio updates, recommendation letters, existential trauma, tearing my hair out, and surviving on just coffee and peanut butter sandwiches (ok maybe it's not that bad), I might as well enlighten you, dear readers (all one and only of you), of the musical stylings that are the soundtrack to this process as of late.

My boyfriend, giver of fantastic breakfasts and many other early morning joys, has also quite pleasantly introduced me to Kraftwerk -- covered by a string quartet. It's perfect work music. Epic. Cinematic. Replete with drama and enough repetition to gently ease you into focus. He also reminded me why I love Chet Baker. I can only hope his soft, melodic voice can provide me with the kind of vision necessary to give my creations the style and mood I'm after. And if I feel distracted or sleepy, the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble can more than easily make up for it.

I feel weird seeing acquaintances and facebook nobodies I happen to spot in my daily stalkings in print. Many of whom are blessed with the social networking abilities necessary to find themselves in local ads and magazines. So what if it's free shit on every record store newsstand? Their images are reproduced on ink and paper, tactile, real. And mine are still solely for me.

Really, what is the process? Can someone tell me how to get from nowhere to somewhere? What does it take? I leap into my work every day forcing myself to believe that with enough elbow grease something will come of it. But if you often find yourself asking "am I good enough?" doesn't that question simply answer itself? I've been breezing through Eat Pray Love in search of inspiration? Solace? But it just makes me hungry -- and not only for hazelnut gelato but, really, to live out of a suitcase again.

It's 7:39, exactly 6 minutes until I need to ply on the layers and face the week. I went to bed early last night and gave myself plenty of time to get ready this morning. (I even laid out today's outfit on a chair the night before). And oh, despite all of my provisions, I'm left still feeling somewhat foul - Monday, you vile beast.

Still. The holiday break was good. It mostly involved eating epic meals at various dinner parties. The most interesting items on the menu? Spanakopita: a Greek filo pastry filled with feta, dill, and spinach. Boeuf Bourguignon (lovingly prepared by me). Chicken broiled with beer. And some sort of tofu stuffed ragu with roast potatoes and butternut squash soup. I love eating. My next love is talking about eating. And here I sit with toast and coffee (well the coffee's decent) and sigh.

Less than one month before school applications are due. I must quote my friend, Puffy Coates, "Snuff the quarterlife crisis let's go supernova."

I think I'm looking forward to my 30s. Way less existential bullshit, no?

So, I tend to wake up every day rather early in the morning. The 9 to 5 existence has proven my circadian rhythm, despite past abuses, has remained firmly and quite stubbornly in tact so that even on weekends with ample blocks of time open to evening tomfoolery, I find myself with drooping eyes and waning concentration at the pitifully early hour of, well, 9:30ish. And this of course means that at around 6:45 every morning, I awake, fully ready to conquer the day, despite the fact that many of my friends are, well, just on their way to bed. But I think it's more than a really efficient internal clock, I think it's this existential restlessness. I know once I wake up, I can tackle my plans and school applications anew and it takes a degree of willpower to tell myself to just fucking relax for a minute. But, as I mentioned to a friend of mine, you must be doing something right when the minute you wake up you just want to dive head first into your work, no?

The plan? Seek my fortunes elsewhere. Montreal, though beautiful, with perfectly cheap apartments (wood floors, crown moulding, balconies and all) and her shish taouk joints and her gourmet coffee houses and her laid back party lifestyle has worn thin. There's nothing to do here. At least not for me. And though every Montrealer I speak to simply balks at any speak of Toronto... shh... I love our Ontarian sister city. No absurd linguistic tensions, better thrift stores, and, what really draws me? That tantalizing, elusive, pristine fresh start. Fresh start no.1 involved running away to Asia for a brief stint. This one, however, feels quite different and far more serious because it's a planned beginning, not an escape, and it's longterm. I hope this sticks.