The Josie Pages

The Wickedness Of Flowers by Josie Boyce | Make Your Own Book I decided to hastily throw together a quick and dirty book of all my unpublished poetry that is maybe kinda sorta fit to print. Some pieces are much better than others. but it's an interesting roadmap of who I am/was as a poet, these last 25-30 years.

Field Notes In/On Transition Ch-Ch-ch-Changes! Obviously, my life, my body, my self, my soul, everything about me is changing, has changed in the last year or so. Some of the changes are obvious and expected (by me) in Transition, the body, the change in sex drive (from 80 to zero in 8 months or so), I am seemingly no longer inspired to watch 5-10 movies (and 6 or 7 tv shows + hockey when it’s on) a week. I still have a passion for movies I’ve seen, and maybe a few I want to see. But my compulsion to see as many movies/TV as possible has been dropping off (in retrospect) dramatically since starting transition. I have the same amount of free time: evenings and weekends. I’ve never been one for morning movies, maybe some tv reruns, or cartoons, excepting on Saturday or Sunday. Back in the 90’s when I was writing for Terminal City, I would bike over to the 5th avenue cinemas 2 or 3 times a week and watch a new film coming out the next week. I saw The Matrix at 10 am drinking...

Field Notes In/On Transition Puzzling Out What Everyone Reads I’m just finishing up a week off from my job. Back to work this morning, all the knots in my stomach are back, and I’ve spent the morning on the toilet.  Blergh. That’s what you get for spending way too much money on eating out most of the week, while not working. My routine was very much upended, and I often slept in until 8am or so; which, for me, in the last 5 or 6 years, is an hour or more later than usual. I really did need a break and am actually a bit nervous about going back.  I did seek out and have one counselling session. But you can’t really get much out of one counselling session. I’ve done lots of those one off counselling sessions. You actually have to go for  a while to get any real results. I find I don’t express myself exactly how I want to in these early sessions, because I find it annoying that mostly all the person does is repeat back to you the positives in what you are blabb...

Field Notes In/On Transition Head Above Water Starting off with a little note to say that I moderate all the comments that are made on this blog. If you make a hateful reply, or a spam of any kind, it will never see the light of day on this blog. So why waste your time? Haters gonna hate as they say, I guess. I’m starting with this, as I woke up this morning, checked my email and “oh a comment!” I see in my inbox... The first line though (as if this anonymous person knows me) starts with something to the effect of “Well, still trying to convince people you are a good person?”  Um, yes. Yes I am. But far more important than that is that I’m trying to convince myself of that very same thing. Is it somehow a bad thing to want to feel good about yourself, even though as this person twigged and triggered with me, you don’t feel like you are a good person? Some people assume they are the only ones capable of change. Everyone else is the same person they were whenever th...

Field Notes In/On Transition. How to get people to stop commenting on your blog? Make it really depressing. For the last month or so, most of my blog posts (and facebook updates) have been very dark, self hating, depressing. The amount of people commenting, liking my links to the blog, or responding to my whinery on Facebook has dropped off sharply. No one wants to know about the (self made mostly) horrible parts of your life, that you feel you can’t do something, or have lost or don’t deserve some kind of entitlement.  This has not been my intent, to drive folk away from me and my various first world troubles. But that has been the effect. Nobody likes a Debbie Downer, or a Negative Nancy, unless she has her own sit com. In most of my blog posts I feel like I have worked through what ever issue that was eating at me, through the act of writing about it and evaluating how I express myself through that prose. My last few posts though, I feel like I left out the “ahhh ...

Field Notes In/On Transition Oh Yeah, there’s more to it that slapping on some Pancake and Lippy On Friday I went for (already paid for with a decent groupon, so it’s not cutting into my now lower paycheques) my first Laser Hair Removal of the facial hair variety.  It hurts. Sometimes only a little, sometimes a lot, either way it’s rather a stressful place to be; under the laser beam. There may have been a bit of the electrolysis as well, on the eyebrows. That part worked out best after one treatment. The eyebrows look good. The laser though seems to have woken up more follicles than it killed. In the couple of days since getting it done my face seems more stubbly around dinner time than before. I may have to start shaving twice a day, if I want to go out in the evening. I am more than hoping this is temporary. I don’t want to go through what was an exhausting experience on a regular basis if it’s going to make things more of a pain, and more embarrassing ...

Field Notes In/On Transition. May Day and Other Stigmata My life has been a-tumble recently, the video store game ain’t what it used to be. I’m having to work slightly shorter hours, which translates as a bit of a cut in pay: (maybe not so ironically the cut occurred on May Day!) Not that this was totally unexpected, either, I was the only staff who had yet to have hours cut. Still, it doesn’t help my life in any way, except as a reminder that this thing I have been doing to pay rent and keep myself in eyeliner the last 9 of 12 years is on like Siberian Tiger Level Extinction Watch. I need to really start thinking hard and doing some concrete things to do yet another transition eventually. I really want to keep doing what I do now as long as It’s feasible, but then what? I had a tough couple of days with the whole pay cut thing, but after a great dinner, and drinks with my friend Leanne, I was feeling better. I woke Friday morning with a bit of TGIF! to be ce...