I'm Stephanie, a 20 year old girl residing in Manitoba, Canada. I make jewellery for a "living". I left school due to depression and anxiety disorders, so I'm still working on my high school diploma. After that, I'll be getting a degree in Library and Information Technology, and then hopefully a degree in Anthropology.

I spend most of my time learning; learning new methods of jewellery construction, learning ASL, learning to knit, learning to be open and loving. I devour books on every subject and especially love anything relating to anthropology, mythology, astronomy, feminism, and gemmology. I garden and stroll though markets in the summer, and knit and read in the winter. I'll often throw some cinema in there, too.

I like people who live with passion and intensity. I love fiercely, openly, and loyally, but like most people I have a bruised heart and a problem with trust. I'm slowly healing, but still remain fairly isolated within myself. I love people, but I find myself getting anxious around them, as if I'm being expected to do something. So if you meet me on the street, I may be quite quiet, but make no mistake; I am loud and joyous around those who I have come to know.

I try to maintain an integrity of being within my life, and I'm slowly becoming peaceful within myself. I work at meditation and yoga when I can to keep myself free and flowing. I love to laugh and be silly. I'm eccentric, scatty, smart, and I greatly enjoy dark humour and wittiness. I'm also pretty much a hopeless romantic.

I like: sweetpeas, slow cello music, Cirque du Soleil, fresh fruit, purple hair, scratchy records, oxford commas, and that beautiful midnight fever that comes when the sky is clear, the moon is bright, and the warm breeze floats through your curtains like a whisper.

The Tea Party, Rob Zombie, VAST, Madeleine Peyroux, Devendra Banhart, Leonard Cohen, HorrorPops, Placebo, CocoRosie, K-Os, Rasputina, Tom Waits, Tori Amos, Thievery Corporation, Goldfrapp, Massive Attack, Scissor Sisters, Oingo Boingo, The Rolling Stones.

Sarah Waters, Jeanette Winterson, Anaïs Nin, Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Hunter S. Thompson, Jeff Lindsay, Michael Ondaatje, William Blake, Charles Bukowski, Susannah M. Smith, Betty Smith, Anne Perry, Bruce Campbell, Sandra Gulland, Edward Gorey, Erica Jong, Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas, Mervyn Peake, John Bellairs.

Before Sunrise, Dead Poet's Society, Stealing Beauty, MirrorMask, Lolita, The Dreamers, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Hours, Hamlet, Secretary, Serenity, Donnie Darko, Manic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Court Jester, Prozac Nation, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Ginger Snaps Trilogy, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Whale Rider, Army of Darkness, American Psycho, Dawn of the Dead, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Young Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Velvet Goldmine.

(More?)

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under the rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

    this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

         and knew

    what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife.  Smell me.

I believe you can tell a lot about a person by their favourite poems.