Moonlight & Metaphors

Another year, come and past, has brought me back to this date: December 23rd. Two years ago I took the advice of my grade nine English teacher and took into consideration the words she uttered to me when I was 14. Nicole, you should really publish what you have to say about things, maybe on a blog?  Sure enough, it took some time, but here I am celebrating not only another year as a blogger, but two years of expression and finding meaning. I'm not a timely person, I don't write on a schedule (though I'd like to) and I do try my very best to keep it interesting, but what matters the most is that I do it. Regardless of who reads, who enjoys, who is spoken to in my words, I am so thankful that I picked up the pen, so to speak, two years ago today. This blog is my never ending novel, a collection of short stories, a cluster of poems, a review page; my rock when I need it most. Two years ago on this day I remember sitting at the computer in front of the read count gaping at th...

You spend a solid four years planning to go somewhere, or at least, planning to make a plan. Then it hits you smack in the face. You're eighteen years old, walking to your first lecture and assuming that the nervous feelings in your stomach are those of ambition, not complete and utter mortification. And they're actually neither; they are actually just a pang fear for change. Change is scary and I think it's so prevalent when you waltz into university because you're not allowed to be a kid anymore.   So there I was, standing outside a lecture room, waiting to walk in and wanting to go back to multiple snippets in time that had left my grasp. One being Frosh week, which I spent with some of the most incredible people. The semi-obnoxious school cheering, painting my face blue and gold, watching new friendships be born and just the experience of careless happiness seemed to be one that I missed. I got to know my school in that week, but now I felt like I knew nothing ...

Bright lights, a colourful people walking the street and an unforgettable ambience. In a large portion of literary history, we find New York City, the Holy Grail of all things publishing and in retrospect, the ultimate setting to a large portion of modern and classical literature.  In New York City, we find the characters of Holden Caulfield, Jay Gatsby, Esther Greenwood and Princess Mia. Author's from prior to the 1900s have been fascinated with the city and authors today are follow this trend even more so. It is home to many publishing houses, some of the biggest, and the home of the notorious New York Times Bestseller List.  New York City has an immaculate ability to draw in captors and once left, it is a place where a part of your soul remains.  But why? In Catcher in the Rye we find Salinger diving into the depths of Central Park, using it as a symbol for self-growth and the beauty of youth for young Holden Caulfield. Central Park is just this, it is beautiful. It...

I read Wuthering Heights actually over a year ago but I cannot get out of my head the searing passion between Catherine and Heathcliff. Though their love story a tragic one, isn't it beautiful? And though extreme, oh so common. We never want to admit when we love someone, we run, we hide, but in the end..."I am Heathcliff!"

I spend a lot of time immersed in written words, in the arms of hard covers and intrigued by names of people who are either long dead or just beginning their lives. I always wonder how they do it. How did John Green push through an evening that only seemed to bring one sentence? All I really have to say is that I have been re-writing various posts for quite some time and my issue is not a matter of what I have to say. I know exactly what story I want to tell.  I just have no idea how to tell it. 

I'm not going to sit here and romanticize high school for you, or your teenage years. It's all been a blur in honesty. Four years, as I now have realized, is a little freeze frame in time that we can hardly grasp. Hell, a lot of us have another four to go, some even more. So stop beating yourself up for not wearing mascara today. Eat a good lunch. Stop worrying about your hair being pin straight. That corny little poster in your English class, the one that says something like, " 30 years from now, it won't matter what jeans you wore, how popular you were, what your hair looked like, or what sneakers you wore. What will matter is what you learned, and how you used it," is completely cliché but, God help me, it's one hundred percent true. I can't tell you what colour we painted our nails on the first day of grade nine, but there are four things that I can tell you to help you get through 1. You're going to struggle with who you are. Labels, as much as ...

It all started with a nine year old Nicole, cliché as it sounds, admiring a new copy of Anne of Green Gables . Little did little me know, that I'd be opening up the pages to more than a book, but, unmistakably, a passion. I've always known I wanted to study English Literature and I could continue talking about that for hours, but hell, " Where?"  was the question that I struggled to answer since the tenth grade. I narrowed it down by the time I applied, going back and forth between Queen's and Ryerson University for actually months. I had probably done thousands of virtual campus tours of the both and still been confused. Sometimes, I wanted to be in the city, the culture clashing around me vibrantly as I wrote myself a story of self invention. During others, I wanted to sit by a lake and reminisce over old Dickinson poems that drove me to believe in love and find it in everything I could. I told myself that acceptance letters would make my decision, when I had ...