Olga's Poetry & Thoughts

There's a well known psychological phenomenon known as the "spotlight effect," which claims, basically, that people are selfish, and that no one really cares about our perceived flaws as much as we ourselves do. Every person is in the centre of his or her tiny universe, so of course, any rupture to the tranquility of one's world results in [perceived] chaos. For example, there have been studies that prove that we overestimate how much other people really care about us. In the Thomas Gilovich study, researchers asked participants to walk into a crowded lecture hall wearing an embarrassing shirt. Every participant highly overestimated the amount of people who even noticed their shirt, missing the mark by as much as 500%! What does this mean, and why am I writing about this during my 3 am blogging rambles? I guess I've been highlighted in a lot of photographs recently. As I've written in some previous posts, I'm quite self-conscious of my appearance (as man...

I woke up, again, with sweat drenching my back, gluing my night shirt close to my body. I had a nightmare, the same one I've had many a time: in the dream, I am sleeping in my bed, but when I look down to my toes, I can't see them, because I have a very bulging, very pregnant stomach. I gasp for air, panic, cry. Then I wake up. I'm not from another era- I know perfectly well how to avoid unexpected pregnancies. Yet this is a fear that has burrowed into my psyche and which springs up when my body is trying to rest. Perhaps the fear is not the pregnancy itself- it is the fear that I will never want a child. It is the fear of...babies. While other women my age already have this maternal instinct, a drive to squish chubby cheeks and fantasize about cribs, I am ambivalent about babies. I can't fathom what drives a woman to momentarily give up her body, to sacrifice a portion of her career, and to devote her life to a crying blob without a formed personality, without hopes or...

As a young person, my attitude towards life, others, and myself in general is constantly in flux. And I'm learning, over and over again, the old-age adage "if you keep doing things the same way, things will stay the same" (or something along those lines). It's true: if you don't change your attitude, your behaviour remains the same, and you are stuck in a never-ending replay of a car crash that you can easily avoid, but choose not to. From various life experiences, these are the "Seven Deadly Attitudes," if you will, that might not necessarily keep you locked in purgatory, but which will make your life on Earth feel hellish. 7. Anger No one likes an angry person. Someone who is perpetually red-faced is not nice to be around, but he is mostly harming himself. Having an angry attitude towards life means, roughly: lashing out at others and using anger to disguise more vulnerable emotions, such as pain and sorrow. Basically, you puff up like a porcupine...

There is something special about coffee shops. The ambience. The grainy smell. The chatter of young lovers and old friends in the background. The stability of it all. The simplicity. Most breakups take place at coffee shops (true fact). The sun blaring down, scalding coffee at my lips, trying to gulp it down to get the conversation over with quickly. Secrets murmured. Coffee cup left half empty (or half full, if you will). Reunions occur at coffee shops. Gift exchanges. Christmas time. New seasonal special: white candy cane mocha with gingerbread biscotti. The smell of creme brulee wafting through the air. Cheap tinsel on the walls. Hungover morning after New Year's Eve: a stop by the coffee shop, a large cup of roasted heaven. Injected like a drug, warming every vein in the body. Then there are days spent alone at the coffee shop. Bent over a stack of textbooks. Fifth coffee of the night, and not the last. First dates at the coffee shop. A mixed sense of hope, and despair in the p...

What do you do when everything you have been working for For let's say, the good past eight years Goes up, up, up To reach a climax The tip of the rollercoaster The momentum The adrenaline That goes down, down, down and around In grooves and loops and exciting angles What happens when that climax Never comes? And you're left there, facing upwards, in a halt Simply trying to not fall back down to where you came from See, I've tried, I've really tried I've prayed, and I've bled and I've cried I thought I got better in all I did I improved my writing I improved my relationship building Busted my bad habit forming Achieved all the grades I wanted to Made friends, lost friends, travelled around Wrote a mammoth 40-page senior goddamn thesis Then I applied to my master's program and I got Waitlisted And the uphill battle came to a stop A deafening screech of the wheels Silence What now? Panic Well, I thought I was smart enough, pret...

Before I went to university, I thought the whole four-year experience would look something like this: And on the odd occasion, there would be a little bit of studying involved, like this: (Seriously, why are university students always smiling in the grass in all university pamphlets!?) But, my university experience pretty much looked like this: When I first started university, I was striving to be the best, and I was thriving after repeated failures, visits to the writing centre, visits to professor office hours, and countless hours spent studying. Now, I'm just surviving university. The eager motivation I had as a freshman, second year, and even third year student has now worn off. The illusion is gone: of endless partying, drinking, carefree nonsense... well sure, I did some of that too, but I always felt a perpetual guilt when I wasn't studying. I didn't settle for Cs, I aimed for Bs. Then I stopped settling for Bs and only accepted As. I pus...

Here at honeymooners anonymous, we welcome people coming from every stage of lustful self-destruction. We particularly aim to help those who are addicted to the honeymoon phase. Yes, addicted. And pills can't fix it. Because when you first meet a person and their lips taste like honey, you assume that they must always taste like honey, that you and them will be in a stasis, a trance, a tasty eclair filled with a never-ending flow of creamy love. But one day your beau eats onions. No longer tasting like sweet sugar, you stop, re-evaluate. Why settle for onion breath when there are honeys buzzing all around you? The full moon comes ever so soon, and before you know it your love is gone too.  Every full moon you transform, like a werewolf, from a man to a rabid creature.  On the hunt, on the prowl, so here you are. Seeking perfection. An immaculate pair of hands to hold, fingernails trimmed long but not too long, French manicure and Italian perfume. Perfection. ...

I have started reading a book called "Help, Thanks, Wow." It is basically a how-to guide for prayer, geared towards spirituals and skeptics alike. The book tries to answer the difficult question: How do we pray? The author, Anne Lamott, recalls her childhood, growing up in an atheist household where only rock bands were worshipped and the New York Times was a temple. Feeling alone, lost, and caught in existential despair, Lamott "snuck off" into the attic to pray to God for help. Prayers for help humble us. They make us feel that the world is out of our control. The cosmos does not act in accordance with our wishes, and our prayers are not answered in the way we would like them to be. Thomas Merton's prayer reads: "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me" (Lamott 33). Just by reading the "Help" chapter, I realized why I have trouble with uncertainty. Because it is admitting defeat. It is admittin...

I remember the days when I was scared of ghosts After watching a marathon of poltergeist movies About hauntings in strange homes My juvenile friends and I couldn't get to sleep And we'd squeal at every creak creak  On the floor board I'd sleep with a night light on  The one with Winnie the Pooh reading a story to Piglet Yet I'd still lose sleep I was so scared of the ghosts that were out to get me Now I want the ghosts to get me I don't even understand what I was scared of I want ghosts to haunt my house I want ghosts to transcend their world and show their white faces Hell, I want poltergeists to mess my whole room up Because, see, if ghosts don't exist Then why should anything invisible exist, too? What you see is what you know But I don't see love, so how do I know it's there? What if love is just a ghost?  What if "love" is what we label that chemical reaction in our brains that sparks fondness? And...

"H uman beings are not like sheep, and even sheep are not indistinguishably alike" - Mill I got lost on the way to adulthood. It is easy to get lost in this world. To drown in a sea of facts and statistics. To get beaten over the head with estranged opinions. To get into quarrels over our views on religion, violence, sex, education, morality, this and that, each person trying to prove that he is right, each person trying to demean the other because of their insatiable need for always being right. Although it would take some god to determine whether humanity is making the right decisions or not, one can always decide what is best for himself.  But it's easy to get swayed. I've wanted to be a teacher ever since I was in elementary school. But in university I panicked. I was told that the job market for teaching sucks, that English majors will never amount to anything, and that I am not actually as special or smart as thought I was because everyone is a uniq...

Yes, chivalry is dead because it was never alive. Besides, we are not knights and princesses; we are confused young adults, always looking for a convenient distraction. I hate the word "convenient." It reminds me of a gas station convenience store, with cameras installed to the ceilings, and a unisex washroom with a rickety door. This is convenience. Beef jerky on the side of the road and a quick fix of Redbull. Convenient. I can distract myself with hours of brainless television. A few hazy nights spent at the entertainment district with the bass pounding every molecule of anxiety out of me. I can jog with headphones in my ears and my back dripping with sweat. I can spend a ridiculously long time preparing a garden salad while watching a rom com from the corner of my eye. I can soak in strawberry scented bubble bath and hum to myself. I can do all these things but I will never be able to fool my own mind. I will always seek another distraction. What am I distracting ...

I'm not a role model, an intellectual, a poet. I'm not a good person and I'm not an evil person. I am just a member of the species  Homo sapiens . I am blood, guts, and bone. I am an amusement park of veins. My heart feels no pain or pleasure; my heart just pumps blood. It would be silly to think that there is a deeper purpose, when I am a bundle of nerves wrapped in naked, papery skin. Why would I be part of a grandiose plan? I am just an animal. There is no logic in the animal kingdom. There is no philosophy and no art; just a hierarchy of animals that kill and eat one another. We are part of that kingdom. Maybe Hobbes was right. Without security, we would be cannibals. Without morals, we would be foxes. Without politics, we would be wild. We are wild. We are not ladies and gentlemen. We are panthers and wolves. We huddle in packs and howl at midnight just for the fun of it. We flee from danger by scurrying away like scared little squirrels. We would do anything for o...

When I was four years old I didn't know what death was. I used to cut earthworms in half, just for fun. And even after they were chopped like slices of salami, they would still squirm around and I thought this was because they lived forever. My schoolteacher told me it was because they had eight hearts, but even if they survived my slaughter, they would eventually die because that's nature's way. When I was eight years old it dawned on me that the worms are no different from us. They live and eat and do their best to survive, and one day they get snatched by a bird or a disease and they turn into mush. A bird will eat me up one day, too. I, at age eight, became terrified of eternal darkness. When I was ten years old I attended a Catholic school where religion was a mandatory subject. My schoolteacher told me that when you die, you go to heaven, where you are happy and safe for all eternity. I was so excited by this idea that I wrote prayers down so that I could memorize...

Over the years, I have met many people. I have also known many others. Then there are are the few who I had befriended, and for some period of my life they were my role models, companions, and temporary acquaintances with whom I identified with. And the more people I got to know, the more I started to realize how much we are all alike. I'm not sure whether this revelation is a result of my slow progress into emotional maturity, or perhaps it is a fleeting thought. But it dawned upon me how truly messed up we all are. As a hopeless romantic and a stingy perfectionist, I have sailed through life, thus far, searching for a seedling of sanity in this raging sea of lunatics. Alas, the water would never settle. Little did I know that the water was calm all along, and the unforgiving sea was just my own reflection. I can say, without exaggerating, that I have much fewer friends now than ever before. I have become the person that I had loathed as a whiny teen- I am the person who ins...

Scattered Thoughts While on the TTC Subway/Bus/Streetcar Waiting for the subway . It's funny how the TV monitor screen says 5 minutes but I already see the lights coming through the tunnel. Trying to find a place to sit . Smelly guy. No. Homeless looking person. Uh... Dude who packed his entire life into his luggage bag. I'll just stand. The pole is warm . I wonder how many people didn't wash their hands after peeing . And touched this pole. And then licked their hands. God damn it I just scratched my face, I'm going to be infected with pee germs. Why is that guy staring at me? Is there something on my face? Stare at reflection in dark subway window. Looking good , looking good. Dude, turn down your music, I can hear Destiny's Child from here. New people coming into the train. Avoid eye contact at all costs . I just locked eyes with that girl for more than five seconds. AWKWARD . Put head down. Lift head back up. We made eye contact again. I'll just t...

I don't know about many things. I don't know what I want my future to look like. I don't even know what shoes I want to wear tomorrow. Then there are things that nobody can ever know. Like how the sun looks like up close. Or how it feels like to sit in a corner of the Milky Way. I will probably never know how it's like to be a billionaire or a celebrity. I don't know when I'll die and I don't know if I'll go to heaven or hell. I'm not even sure if either exist. I don't know if I'm a good person. I don't know who I will see in the mirror tomorrow. I don't know if I will live to see another winter day. Will I be able to tell my grandchildren the tale? I don't know what the ocean's abyss looks like. I will never know how it's like to step foot on another planet. There is just so much that I don't know, and it taunts me. All I know is that I've already felt the sun up close because I've felt its warmth in your ...

A shiver goes down my spine when that one boy…the one with the hair in his eyes and a scruff of hair on his chin, walks into the lecture ten minutes after the professor has begun talking, and he stomps like the Green Giant to the front row and while moving to the middle of the aisle his backpack hits my face. No, I can’t stand students like that. Then there are those who treat the lecture hall as their personal restaurant. Once, this girl opened a full can of tuna and pasted it onto a piece of bread, downed it with Starbucks (worst curse upon this world) and proceeded to strawberry yoghurt and crackers and fries. Why? But these are mere observations of mine. Other students count sheep or just listen to the professor and they fall asleep, even if in the second row. There are those who type furiously, as if the course was a pathway to God. They record every detail being said, they probably write down who coughed in class and when and for what reason and questions on t...