For the backs that labour

Pushing up the weight of hopeless

Dreams

For the hands that grasp in misdirected desperation

For the streets that bleed

Memorial

to a million trodden, dusty, broken lives

For the reaching green

Sprouts of hope

Gnarled with time and pollution

Rooted in discarded filth

On shattered concrete

For that crusted soul

That watches glorious

Wheeling kites

In that forever cloudless

Expanse of sky

With vague, unattended longings

Akin to envy.

Life continues, after all these years, to be full of surprises. Some are of the sort that knock the air out of you, make you instantly feel sick and dizzy, that seem to turn you inside out, sucking everything into the swirling black hole in your gut. Some take your breath away in a better way, bowl you over with the awe, the mystery, of unexpected, undeserved goodness. Others are quiet and slow, gradual dawnings, eyebrow-raisers, producers of the bemused half-smile. Some come with thunder and lightning, trumpets and fireworks. Some occur in a quiet field at night, under stars, or lying in bed in the morning, watching the first orange light moving along the wall. warm, sudden realizations, or moments, isolated from time, without past or future, not to be questioned, only enjoyed-lived. Blessed aberrations, where something breaks in, something escapes, slips by the guards, as if the great numbing destroyer acccidentally overlooks something, and something from another world, one not fracturing, not dying, one of perpetual morning light, something from that strange world irrrupts into this one. They are quiet secrets, still and sacred, held and treasured only within oneself. Or, in rare blessed moments, with perhaps one other.

so its over... for now.
I don't feel heaven-like rest.
Exam stress seems to have seemlessly slipped into crazy holiday last minute Christmas stress.
I don't feel that peace ...i feel kind of numb.
I've theoretically had some fun, hung out with some good friends, but somehow, i didn't seem present for it- i feel like i'm swimming, like others' words are coming to me through murky water...they are blurry images to me, like i am seperated from them by this thick, enveloping medium...i watch myself moving, slowly, i hear myself speaking...it sounds like someone else. I am watching, from this soft, thick coccoon, from this odd distance, as someone else lives my life - or rather, continously fails to live it. This alternate version of myself is not one i particularily like- he doesn't feel much like me, or who i want to be- who i, maybe, thought i was...i want to supplant him, take control, banish that distanced, detached slow and constricted subsitiute, but i can't seem to reach him, though he floats nearby, just within reach... I see myself grabbing and shaking, only to look down and find my arms still at my sides. I will myself to hurl my body forward, but my surroundings don't seem to change. It feels just like waking up continously only to discover each time that i'm still dreaming.
Something feels wrong with me - despite assuring myself repeatedly that i know where i'm going, and what i need to do, i haven't, for the last week or so, been able to shake the feeling that something is wrong...perhaps, even physically...
Maybe i'm just recovering from the paper/exam frenzy...maybe i'm returning to a state school served to distract me from...
But i feel dull. Empty. Not manifestly unhappy, certainly not hurt or lonely, just ...not...here, somehow...
Anybody have the faintest sense of what i'm talking about?

Last night i dreamed, not of heaven, but of a strange curling-like game being played across the streets of my childhood neighborhood. The goal seemed to be a sort of simple race, to be the first one to get your rock to the destination, in the least number of attempts- kind of like curling/golf, but the whole neighborhood seemed fair game. People i hadn't seen in a long time were playing, and we wound up at the front door of my mother's house, she was baking, and it may have been Christmas.

Today my friend dave gets married, and many old friends will be there. But i can't make it to the weddding because i have too much studying to do. I just want school to be over with.

I am already somewhat into that euphoric Christmas break/next-world paradise i alluded to ealier. The only nice thing about two exams in one day is that half of your total stress load lifts in period of a few hours. More work remains, including preparation for the dreaded physics-that-is-the-death-of-many-an-arts-student final, but i feel demonstrbly lighter. In fact, come the afternoon of December 20, i may need a tether.

returning to an earlier subject, i used to dream about heaven. All the time, actually, when i was a kid. Which is a bit odd, in the sense that i was not raised to beleive in heaven, didn't go to church, and didn't have any theological concept of it. Nevertheless, when i slept, i used to die and go there on a regular basis. Now if you are the sort of person who, when you watch action movies like to point out things like the impossibility of firing a handgun sideways, or who turned off 'Crouching Tiger' when people started flying, you might also point out that my dreaming of heaven likely had some bearing on my degree of satisfaction with my 'earthly' life at the time. Well...possibly. But if you are that sort of person, you might also need to lighten up.
The point is, when i was young, I had recurring dreams in which i was involved in huge battles or other calamitous ordeals, managed, despite a typical lack of heroics, to get myself good and killed, and went on a guided tour of various versions of heaven. (There was never, at any time, any trace of puffy clouds, harps, souped up suburban garden gates, or people walking around in sheets with wings on their backs) actually, in one of the most memorable of these, heaven was simply the schoolyard across from my house, at night, under the orange glow of streetlights, quiet, still except for a slight, warm breeze stirring the treetops and promising...something. I was walking leisurely with friends, light, relaxed, laughing. It was quiet cool at the end of a long summer day, eveything was done, and we were waiting, with no hint of anxiety, only relief.
I suppose my heaven was, at that time, simply a slightly accentuated version of the one real place and time where i sometimes felt somewhat at peace, and somewhat ok.

You'll sense a reoccuring theme in the last few posts. In the madness of the last few weeks, hell, of the last year, simple daily moments of peace and relative clarity achieve an almost mystical value...

I just finished cleaning at the cafe...half an hour late! I should go home and sleep...but i have good music, playing immersively loud, candles, Christmas lights, heck, even a fake fireplace...atmospheric solitude. this post-shift lull is actually one of my favourite moments of a day. I'd just like to savour this low-lit cafe goodness just a little longer...one of the few moments i have left where life stops for just a little bit...

I think i'll go for a little walk under the stars...

There's a proper place and time for the bags under your eyes...

Round here....we stay up very, very late....

As predicted, i feel much better. Mellow. perhaps a little lonely. One notable absence, i suppose. A familiar presence felt in absence...or something. Of course, its also pretty deserted in here in general. The random music-chooser in the computer seems to share my mood- its developed an aversion to the upbeat. watching the candles burn out, one by one...watching the white ave early crowd strolling, plotting and hugging their cellphones in silent movie form outside the glass. It's probably only me who's moving in slow motion...i wonder...have we slipped into another kind of time in here? People outside seem to be moving twice as fast. Maybe we are, just this cafe, just this little glass-enclosed dream, losing touch with that silent world out there, slowly drifting off, farther and farther, till whyte ave fades to black, and this is all there is...an isolated, floating, warm & fuzzy oblivion that feels alot like sleep...mmmm....that reminds me....

Well, that's one down....packaged, sealed, and delivered. Just a couple tests to get through, and i might be able to breathe. Once or twice.

Aside from mad paper writing and the omnipresent exhaustion this is....well, no it's still a shitty day. Oh well. They can't all be good ones. My mouth is furry, my vision is all distorted ( people's heads are funny shaped again...tee hee...) My heartbeat is irregular, Old English poetry is swimming before my eyes.... I feel like every last once of thought has been squeezed out of me. I just want to sleep for days...but, of course, i'm working tonight. That might cheer me up- but i don't know if i'm depressed, or just utterly expended, in pure one-foot-in-front-of the-other-mode. In a weird, sick, twisted, and utterly unhealthy way, i kind of enjoy this. This could be bad. What if i overcame my absolute stress aversion the way i overcame my coffee aversion, and became addictied to stress? Thats sounds like someone i know, and fortunately, as much as i am sometimes accused of it, i don't think THAT's a transformation that could ever happen. I worry a bit about my gleefully self-destructive habits of late, though...

Surviving, just surviving....

just....

a little....bit...

....longer.....

Ok, fine...

That was a fairly pathetic hue-ing and cry-ing....but i don't have anything else interesting to post at the moment, so...here y' are.

Enjoy.

The Hesitant Reader

He sat, placed the book on the table in front of him, and prepared to read. He took a moment to take it in, its solidness, a thick, square object alone on the blank surface. What an odd thing, that something so small, so simple, ordinary paper spattered with ink, stacked upon itself like the layers of tree trunk it had once been, could carry so much within it. It took ideas, notions, plans, imaginings and fleeting images from the secret places of passing thought, of uncertain memory, and made them real, freezing them in unchanging, perceivable shape, fixed expressions on an immortal face. Imprisoning a permanent imprint drawn out of the fast flowing river of memory, it had the power to rescue some things forever from forgetfulness. In it, something of a person, something of their thought, at least, could escape even death.

He held it in his hand, feeling its weight, it potential. He could not help feeling a quickening of excitement, of anticipation. It was more than a preserver of dead, frozen things, of course. It had a life, of sorts, of its own. He knew he could interact with what had been committed to this most unusual container- it could even reach out and transform something of him. It had the power to bring him into contact with people he had never met, people who had died long ago, people who, perhaps, had never even lived. He could converse with these people. He could sense something of their thoughts, their emotions, their moods. He could feel he knew them. Their words, their way of seeing the world, could become part of his. He could go to places he had not been, see through eyes not entirely his own. He could enter other worlds- worlds of possibility, worlds, perhaps, that could not exist in any other place. Things could be brought together, grouped, turned inside out, split - in these worlds, things could be made out of what would otherwise be called ideas, and these things could be positioned in relation to each other. Whole palaces could be built out of the intangible moments of thought, out of things which could be not be touched or seen in any other place, then explored, room by room.

With the spine resting on his hand, he gently moved his thumb over the edge of the pages, stopping in the middle, opening an inviting gap. He was about to begin an interaction with this book, but what form would it take? It could an engagement with the character of a battle, a conquest of territory and information, a struggle of opposing views, with only the winner left standing. Or it could be something more like a dance, the back and forth play of motion and response, whether executed according to formal, learned steps, or through rhythmic instinct. It could be a consuming - either slow, patiently chewed and digested rumination, or greedy, ravenous devouring, taking the text into himself and leaving nothing behind. He could lie back and let it wash over him, or he could force it to flow in a channel of his design. He could get caught up in its current and allow himself to be swept away, following the text wherever it took him, content to wash up on whatever bank it threw him on. He could also navigate that flow with a destination in mind.

Why was he reading? What was he coming to this book to obtain, to experience? What was he looking for? Pleasure, perhaps? Certainly it had the power to produce this. The flow of words, the music of sounds, could be enjoyed, as could the art of skillful construction. He could seek to be caught in the sweep of a story, its rising and falling, the fascination of characters, of living lives one cannot, or should not, live. He could be exhilarated by the sudden rushing in of a new understanding, or by the excitement of constructing something out of the puzzle pieces of ideas, the thrill of searching, digging, and finding treasure.

But this thing in his hand could do much more than amuse or entertain. How, again, should he read it? Should he look for something specific? Should he stare at it, past the surface of the page, until the components that constituted this text became apparent? Should he break it down and break it up, cut it open and dissect it? Was it important to know how it was put together and to what effect? Did the process of its construction matter, or only its existing structure? Was it a thing to be studied, so that one could understand it completely, definitively, possess it with certainty, know its substance, its meaning, without error? Or did it defy such analysis? Would it forever elude his attempts to grasp it, remaining a thing to be experienced as a mystery?

Should he enter it expecting to find something? Should he enter it with the interest of seeing what it had to say about certain aspects of his world? About culture? About power structures? About women? About reading? Dare he approach it for what he could get out of it – something he could use? Was he allowed to seek in this text examples to confirm a belief he already had formed? Could he use it as part of his own argument? Could he make it his own, do with it as he pleased, see in it what he chose, incorporate it into himself beyond distinction, or must he remain separate from it? Was it permitted for him to play with the book, to improvise in it and from it, to make it one theme in a larger symphony of words, to use parts of it as material in a new creation?

Was it even possible for to avoid merging himself, and what came with him, into the text? Could the book stand on its own? Was it really all alone in the middle of that table, or was it tied to a million other books stretching back through time, to the whole history of language, to the culture it came from, its history, to the personal history of the author? Was it possible to wrench it free from this web of attachments, and read it and it alone? And did it matter who he was, reading it, his gender, his culture, his position in society? Could he, and should he, remove such influences from his reading?

He furrowed his brow. This thing, this thing in his hand, did not spring from nothing, he knew. He was not completely alone with this book. There were likely other readers, but there was certainly, somewhere or at some point in history, at least one other involved in this book – an author. He wondered what his relationship was to this other as he read. Was he entering into a communication with someone? Sharing their experience, their thoughts? And who was that someone? Would he truly be able to see them in this thing they had brought into being? He might be able to know that other, perhaps even in ways they did not know themselves. Perhaps their secrets, their insides, that which was underneath driving them, without their being aware of it, would, to a careful reader, be revealed. Perhaps their world, and everything in it, all the books they read and the people they knew, the life they lived and the environment in which they lived it – all these might be contained in their book. Or perhaps they were masked, hidden from the reader by the reality of the words themselves. Perhaps that other had disappeared in the creation, and only the book remained. Perhaps they had merely been the conduit for some force, the obedient recipient of inspiration. Perhaps, after all, that author was merely a function in some greater process, an inter-working of many threads that went into this work. And it was possible, he realized, that he could not know anything certain about such a writer, even with their book in his hands.

But did that matter? Did he need to know the author to read? Were they sending him a message, or perhaps, messages, that it was his task to decipher? Did the book only say what the author meant it to say? Could he be sure the author knew what they meant in the first place? And might not the book mean something different to him? Who was in control, himself, or this distant other? Was the author constructing a world, fully conscious of its minute details, sculpted precisely to achieve a premeditated purpose, and was he, the reader, constrained by the laws and design of that world? Could he only enter in on the author’s terms? Was the key to the book’s meaning found in the mind of its creator? Or was the book something alive and separate, capable of speaking on its own, without the ghost of an author inhabiting it?

And then there was that troublesome word: meaning. Could he expect to find such a thing in as complex and powerful an entity as a book? There could surely be many meanings – could some be better, truer, than others? Did the book contain any certain, identifiable meaning? Was the quest to discover it even a valid one? For, trembling, he conceived the possibility that in the very search for meaning, he might create what he sought, burying the voice of the book itself.

He might only be reading himself, projected into whatever words were before him. He might not be able to hear any pure, other voice. The quest might string him along, as he continually tried to reach outside himself, to get at what was concealed in these words, that which he sought , which slipped away at the very instant he grasped it in order to secure an understanding, always retreating to the primeval darkness at the edge of his probing thought.

He almost put the book down. The storm of unanswered questions poised threateningly at the small gap where his thumb rested, waiting to be released.

He knew he could not possibly separate the book from its world, from all that went into it or was attached to it. Nor could he possible explore the vastness of that attached context. And he could not avoid bringing his world into the book, either. His encounter with it would surely change it.

But it just might be able to change him in return.

And that, perhaps, was worth launching into that sea of uncertainty. With a pause, and a deep breathe, he opened the book, and began to read.

Thirteen glorious hours of sleep later.....i feel much better. I most certainly did crash last night, and what a mighty crashing it was. I fell asleep at 8pm, and woke up, seemingly moments later, to the squealing of hyperactive Norbert's hamster wheel. I thought i'd dozed for a short time - but it was already 7 in the morning! Apparently Ali called at 1030, and i actually spoke to her...sort of. I have no memory of this. Though it does explain why i woke up cuddling my phone....

Ahhh...i feel good, though. I still have much to write this weekend, but it feels like a holiday. Christmas break....its so much more...anticipated after this ordeal. I have a pet theory that heaven works in a similar way. Its like the Christmas break at the end of a long, bitterly fought, barely survived semester....hmmm...

Good morning, good Mooorrrrning! Its great to stay up late writing flowery, pretentious papers. Actually, i like being given those 'write me whatever you want' assignments. I have just produced a fun peice of stylized pseudo- fiction, for marks. It'd be an odd animal as either a paper or a story- it occupies that strange nether region in between. Another entry in the no doubt already crowded genre of 'reading and interpretation' themed fiction, or fiction written for critical theory classes. well, i enjoyed it, anyway. I think it turned out well, even, a rare opinion from me regarding my own writing. Not brilliant, but well. I'd actually thought i'd post it here, but it's five pages...i fear it might exceed the attention spans of my blog readers. Tell you what - if there is an overwhelming hue and cry of demand, it might appear.

Despite a caffeine induced complete lack of sleep, i am absolutely wide awake. Either i am still under the influence, or my body has just given up trying to be sleepy at normal times. I may crash horribly later, but, for now, i'm pretty darn chipper.

Since i'm awake, somebody else should be. i'm going to go wake somebody up just for the fun of it.

Not grumpy today, though too much thought about what must be done this week might alter that...But for the present, i have imminent eating of holy cows to look forward to...

Now, i'm in the cafe...not working. I know, it seems like i never leave this place. But it functions as a little community centre, a pub, a gathering place for people i enjoy. If bored, depressed, or lonely, there's a good chance of running into someone to improve the situation...like magic, happy Elves!

I have a really great job.
I was monstrously grumpy this afternoon- exhausted, but unable to sleep, set off by something that always sets me off, but shouldn't.There are some things i've been feeling pretty good about lately, but there's still, apparently, a name, and today, a face, attached to a whole string of memories i can do without, that manages to find one of my deepest wounds, plunge in the jagged, rusty[spoon], and twist. And that brings out my least favourite side of me. Somewhere in my stumbling, simmering stupor I was probably a jerk to a friend-which made me feel guilty, which just made me grumpier. Add that to the lovely experience of rush hour traffic on the first day of snow- and i was in a rollicking good mood by the time i was ready to head off for work. Oh, yeah. rollicking. I was ready to commit some kind of war crime. Or vote for Harper. Or something REALLLY antisocial.

BUT!!!

Somewhere between my genocidal brooding when i bundled up, left the car, and launched out into the bitter wind, and my stroll down a nearly abandoned whyte avenue surrounded by streetlit flakes... the anger seemed to drain out, and it was quiet- just me , and snow, and the patter of it on my coat.and i was just...blank, for a while. and i came, finally into the warm cafe, early, and just sat-sat and thought about nothing at all, just being warm, and slowly coming back to where i was, in a bright cafe, where people are laughing, and pleasant, coffee smelling beverages are being passed around under my nose...
By the time i put on my apron and start pretending to work, i'm back. And though its been, i think, 48 hours since i last slept, i'm feeling ok. I'm actually feeling pretty good. I'm lookin g forward to sitting down and working through my physics, which must mean, in fact, that i am now so tired i am delusional.

Speaking of delusional- this morning when i went into hub mall- i could swear i was seeing things. I'm used to rushing past streams of overly made-up women and the slick boys of the university 'pick me!pick me!' meat market- but this morning everywhere i looked it was mishapen dwarfs, long-faced gouls, cackling hags ( really) like i had stepped into some bizarre alternate dimension of hub-mall, the circus side-show.In reality, its probably just exam-stressed students with bags under their eyes, pale from lack of sunlight, and bad hat-hair because of the cold- but it was surreal- everyone i saw looked ...off, deformed, in some way....
Reflection of how i felt? Or how long ago i had my glasses prescription changed...

Oh, and speaking of earlier grumpiness, now pleasantly dissapated- don't worry. I wasn't mad at any one in particular. Just myself, 'fate', Edmonton drivers, and the forces of gravity, to name a few.

It interesting to me how slight a shift it can take to move from dully exisiting to happy to be alive- just a little check in the mind, a pause, then a reorientation. Moving to where each stillness, each sensation becomes precious, valuable, to be drunk in, savoured- this is life, happening before my eyes- each moment is new, full- it will not happen again- as mundane as sitting in the cafe waiting to close might seem, this is unique life, never to be repeated. True, a similar situation will occur next week, but it will still be something new- a new entry into experience, into memory. The company, again, of a good friend ( albeit a preoccupied one) with whom one has enough understanding as to render small talk and idle chatter unecessary, i am enjoying, just as it is- there are no demands, expectations, dissatisfactions burdening our time together- it is just good human company, the often underated pleasure of being accepted, of simply being liked.
Just appreciating the ambiance of my world... don't mind me.

Slow night at the cafe....i'm not getting much done. Just relaxing in the company of good friends.
warm. Mellow music. The smell of coffee. Strangely peaceful. Lots of things, lately, strike me as strangely peaceful. I've generally been caught up in a warm happiness for the last little while - that strange sensation of feeling good about my life...odd, that.

I should be working...but i've hit of a bit of a deadlock with this paper, and i do need a bit of a break. My paper is a an attack, of sorts,( or more modestly, a questioning) of what the class has mostly been about - which is fine by the prof, i know, but i don't want to make a fool of myself. This just might be the most ambitious thing i've yet attempted to write. I know i can do it, but i keep second guessing my points, and am sorely tempted to wuss out and make the paper a bit safer, aim for an easier target. The appeal, however, of many of the authors we have been reading is in their audaciousness - going after holy cows and such. MMM... cows... that reminds me i haven't eaten yet today....

I am very tired, but today was a good day. Absurdly warm for november, the afternoon lit by that golden slanting sun that i love so much. I feel am waking from a long sleep...

wait!

That's supposed to be spring-

and i can see my shadow- that's not right....

I'd best get back in my little burrow....

Which, in this case was found in the medieval silence of Rutherford, in a little cubicle, shutting out all but a small pile of books.

Sorry- i just enjoyed the irony.

So...i'm in class, and we are talking about blogs. And i'm blogging. Fun, huh? I am, at this moment, the subject of academic analysis- a subject of study. Always knew i'd make it big some day.


More on Tolstoy and related personal reflections later.

I've been asked what i am thinking about- what i care about...

Contrary to appearances, there ARE some things, and we'll aim for intelligible ones, just for you, Chuck... to fend of the 'Spoon of Democles' that hangs forever above the vague and cryptic poster...

I've been thinking about my life, particularily recent, in bemused retrospective. About the comforting unknown of the future. Where i've been. What it might have meant. where i might be going. Who i was. Who i am.

Thinking how much i love quiet. And crisp stars. And leisurely walks under them with two of the people I've grown to love dearly- and a furry third who's growing on me. How so often the only times i seem to remember who i am are like this- alone, under stars, before a vast open space and a gentle tide of moving air...but tonight, i was there, yet people were with me, and it was comforting. And returning, of course, to the inviting yellow windows. To warmth. to home.

Am i starting to be at Home?
That is a strange idea to me.

thinking about Tolstoy. Yeah, really. Last night, waiting for coffee to wear off, i was reading a biographical sketch of Tolstoy- a writer, simply a writer, a teller of stories...but a man of conscience, a man of faith... a man of many acknowledged failings who nevertheless felt a deep duty to improve himself...a man who saw things differently, who did not accept them as they were, who did his best to make things better for as many as he could - a man who inspired no less significant a soul than Ghandi....

well, that was silly. I let myself be goaded into going to a meeting tonight largely because someone i had some interest in was present. This someone turned out to be married, a determination that was not difficult to make, and i found myself oblidged to remain through the proceedings, though i will somewhat sheepishly admit that i lost interest after that. I wound up in a group with a late-night infomercial- style hyper- enthusiast for the night.I felt duly chastised for my selfishly motivated, fake 'volunteerism'. I still feel a desire to get back involved with something resembling the 'ministry' in the sense that hasn't been part of my life for a while. I'm not sure this group is my cup of tea, however, and i think i knew that before i went, and probably would have looked elsewhere, without additional enticements. Again, i feel silly.

I'm not really in that much of a hurry to get back into that sort of thing. I don't want to be anyway...Having a 'distraction' would make me less of a 'pest' about some things, but, risking a cliche, i really need to focus on me right now.

I might try something a bit out of character tonight. At the same time, i'd be moving back in a direction i adandoned quite a bit before. It still doesn't make sense to me, in fact, it makes far less sense than it ever has before - but it still feels like home. well...more on this later. As to the risk? I'll let you know how it works out.

I could never compete with that ghost who eventually took a name and a face. Not even in memory, where i become a ghost like him...Ah, but i was a ghost who stayed, too long, and in the harsh and unforgiving light of day, I lost my magic- i was seen through, and became all too ordinary.

What cannot be grasped will always be sought, always perfect, always intact, unchallenged...beautiful and just out of reach...

The ordinary, that which is available and can be known enough to dissapoint, will never measure up...

But that's ok, because in that impossible image, even if it were true...I still see something i never want to be.

Coffee and Claritin...

Two very useful things for one in my position. I seem to be perpetually poised on the edge of explosive sneezes - and frequently seized by spasmodic snot- expelling seizures.

I slept until nearly 2 in the afternoon. If that sounds absurdly lazy, consider that this last week was that of the triple-all-nighter...i spent the vast majority of three whole days awake. An interesting experience. Not as bad as you might think. I could actually recommend trying it for the perception altering affects it has in its later stages. Probably, as is the case with most perception altering experiences, not particularily healthy, though. For all that, i like being up when the sun comes up, and few 'creatures are stirring'.

following those bleak blogs, regular readers should know i am actually doing quite well. Good things are happenng, and not just my prof graciously granting me a days paper extension ( in light of this computer eating a nearly completed paper at 9pm the night befor eit was due...) no, life is awright, i have to say.

Recent changes are for the better. Relaxed and pressure free is better. Friendship is better. Me being free to find myself on my own terms is better. I feel free-er, and far less conflicted. Positive developments! ( and still cryptic- ah-ha! Try figuring THOSE out, Chuck!)

filling in ( temporarily) for Chuck at Dabar, thinking about Heidegger and art- well, trying to. trying to care about it. Thinking about endings, dreams and plans and futures that do not so much die as wither, fade, dwindle into quiet nothing. Thinking i should feel something. Thinking about regrets ....things done that might have been better not to, things not done that might have made some difference. Wondering whether some deaths, some endings are inevitable and contained, hidden within even their beginnings, or whether different choices could have led to different endings, whether certain choices can ever be undone, certain words unsaid- whether it matters. Whether i should still think about this, should still care. I feel a large part of time and energy for a significant period of my life has been spent on a lost cause, fighting, denying inevitabilty, refusing to accept a 'reality' that i saw clearly long ago, trying to will an impossible situation to be something else, all in the name of not "quitting" not running away, in the name of the lost cause, the faint chance, the unlikely hope... and a sense of duty, that i could still give something, i could still help. That something might be redeemed. But i'm not helping any more- i'm a weight. I have been in this place before - fighting the wrong fight, loyal to the doomed.

I know this is good. Things are stabilizing, returning to 'normal', returning to the way they should be. I have been diffused- i am slowly pulling in what had gone out from me, slowly oozing back into a whole, back into myself, or something like the self i remember, the one i used to know. The rebellion against that stability has completely run out of steam. I am back in familiar territory. That should be good, i think. I'm just trying to remember, now that it seems i may no longer hide from this... did it always feel so empty?

Had a good talk with a good friend last night. I don't know if anything is better, but a good friend is still a good thing- a very good thing, and nothing to take for granted, especially when one feels the shore getting farther and farther away....

I have slept very little, and i had a serious allegy attack on the bus from some lady's perfume - my breathing is just starting to get back to normal. But i'm actually feeling ok, or at least, in a an almost pleasant state of numbness. Hub mall is slowly coming alive, like the strange white glass and plastic village that it is, with shops opening, the sky lightening above the glass, and the quiet trickle of groggy students slowly increasing. I like being here in the morning, in this hazy dullness. It's strangely peaceful. The crowd streams in, mostly without speaking...the air is brewing coffe and a shffling feet, shuffling voices, faint echoing of indistinguishable music. Its warm...outside is biting wind and a few stray flakes, but its warm in here... i could do worse.

I have to find a stapler.

Everything i say sounds like nothing. My words trail off into to nothing the moment they are out of my mouth, or appear on the screen... if there was a truth that motivated them it is lost, and you will almost certainly take them to mean something different than what was originally meant- if i even knew that to begin with...frustrating. I want to write, i want to let you in on who i am, on what goes on inside here, but in can't...every attempt miscarries, every word is empty...

I am not mad. I am not angry at anyone. I am not displeased that my plans have been thwarted, nor do i feel i am not being treated fairly....this would actuallybe something significant, because it seems for a lengthy chunk of time i've been used to being mad, i've identified myself with anger at the world for not being what it should be, for not having any place for me, for saddling me with this misfit nature that cannot be at home anywhere, that cannot be satsfied, that belongs nowhere, that doesn't "fit" anywhere, in any role, that cannot slip into a comfortable pre-destined, well-travelled rut and coast along. That simple acts of relation and communication that seem to be second nature to everyone are alien landscape to me. That i am never myself, but trading in carefully processed surfaces- that i am always hiding. That intent and action seem to be seperated by this vast gulf. That i am never understood, not even by myself... that i do what i am supposed to do,I try to play the game, i take risks, and for a while, it seems as if i am actually living, actually present in my life and experiencing it, not standing back and watching it happen to me, i think i am acting and impacting and participating, and that turns out to be yet again only surfaces, calculated sheilding fictions....That i can get completely lost in something, chasing it for that blurry, uncertain glimpse of it dissapearing around corners, always thinking maybe around the next one, focusing all my dwindling energy on one object, hoping to to see the effect, the change i could cause that would prove i exist, thinking i've finally got some grip that will enable me to move, some friction...only to pass through, again, inconclusive, insubstantial...

actually, i'm clearly still AM angry about those things, which might be good, because acceptance, resignation, defeat...these are far too tempting...anger seems to me preferable to sadness, which seems my dominant state, my norm, to be always accompanied by the dull ache of the loss of that which i've never had...but what should i be angry at? What do i overthrow? What can i overthrow without becoming it?

I'm tired of people. Tired of words. Tired of trying to guess which ones i'm supposed to ignore, tired of them contradicting themselves and rendering each other meaningless. Yet, words,once uttered, even if absolutely retracted or superceded, qualified or denied, are never without effect- even if we say we didn't mean them...even if we mean them at the time but change our minds, even if we hear them as trivial or insignificant, they stay there, dormant, in memory, waiting to strike...We cannot act on them,cannot count on them, for they are never what they appear to be...but we can't avoid counting on them, neither words OR people...I'm tired of the effort involved in figuring them out, in translating - i'm so tired of bad translations, sick of us not getting each other, misconstruing and missing, misleading and being mislead...shoring up each other's delusions.
I'm hate my own words as much, probably far more, than anybody elses. Sometimes they are pried from me like my firstborn children, and i begrudge every one, i hate their imposition on the silence- yet silence is never silence to me- it is always full of words. True, full, absolute silence, stillness- i long for it like death, and probably fear it just as much.
and sometimes, like now, they just pour out of me,unstoppable, the most ludicrous things, the most trite, the vilest, the most unsupportable, unthought, unprocssed nonsense. So often i want to say nothing, or say what i think will pass as an acceptable answer, because to try to say what i want to say...i cannot make sense of it, and i know before it is said that it will be misunderstood-or just ignored, or translated into something that means more or less the same as what my audience expects me to say...

Tired of not writing or speaking because it will either be a disjointed attempt that never gets to its point, or a shallow waste of time- but this is not about wrtiter's block- not at all, in fact...

I keep writing and deleting sentences because i can't decide which version of me to pretend to let you in on.

This is a bloody serious blog.I'm sorry. It might be depressing. I wish it was funny. I'm not.

A few days ago, An old friend and i were talking about our mutual discontent with life. We both knew exactly what we needed to do to pull out of it - we both know and understand the choice, the intentional perspective adjustment involved, ... but for some reason, we weren't doing it. It's a bit of a challenge- i don't want to write her again and still be in the same place.

But my sadness isn't about that. Not the same old tired 'I'm not where i want to be'...not this time. Perhaps i am mourning all the little deaths, all the possibilities that die daily with my choices, all the things i have tried and failed, and need to be let go...

well, I did much better on my "Semiotic Analysis of the Canopy" than i expected. My Prof liked it, said it was very well written. My biggest problem with it was the abruptness of the conclusion, leaving several interesting ideas undeveloped, which makes sense, knowing that i finished it at 10 in the morning, when it was due at 11. He liked the intro a lot, which is good, because that intro took the majority of my writing time. NOT bombing this is a huge releif, because in my sleep deprived state, i wasn't sure if what i was writing made any sense at all. And i've been afraid to reexamine it since. Now that I have the prof's approval, i've been emboldened to go back in there, and really, surprisingly, its not that bad at all. I mean, that's not to say that with a little revision and some less groggy-minded thought, that it couldn't have been a lot better. But i am encouraged. And yes, J, now that i know its not UTTER crap, i think i will post it, at least here. (I'm not sure The Canopy site is appropriate- my prof thinks its quite sympathetic to the church, but i'm not sure it would come off that way to an avid Canopy-booster, and i don't want to hurt anybody.) Because i'm a perfectionist, at least in regards to things with my name on them (vanity!) i may rework the ending before i post it- as if i don't have enough current papers to work on- but, have patience- it will appear in due time.
all half decent semiotic analyses come to those who wait.

my eyes!

My eye is actually much better- which is good. I don't think i could have stood to have it continue the way it was for the first couple of days. I may seem to have a high tolerance for pain of a more emotional nature- at least, i seldom, if certainly not never, notice it anymore- but when it comes to physical discomfort, i'm still a wuss.

I am somewaht melancholy today. I don't want to say depressed, because i don't think i am, but melancholy. Melancholy, i think, can be OK. Just a little sad. It is unrerasonable( and frustrating) to expect to be happy all the time. everybody at the house seems a bit down, which likely comes from a variety of circumstances, the realization that what we are trying to do here really is quite difficult, and does not happen automatically. Maybe that's it. Maybe its theweather- we'd be fools to think it wouldn't affect us. The last of the green is bleeding out of everything, the leaves have lost their fire and have subsided to dead yellow ashes on the ground, the trees are black, burned out skeletons, and the sky remains, for days at a time, opressive, grey, and cold. The land, or what remains of it squeezed in between dirty concrete, is beginnning to hunker down for the winter, and people seem to be doing the same thing. Bundling up, wrapping scarves around their faces, pulling hats down, hunching over to duck biting wind, hurrying from shelter to shelter....

Maybe its me, taking stock of where i am, as a person, who i am, who i wanted to be....have i progressed or regressed? is school progressing towards something, or a distraction, a world to immerse in , another, more socially acceptable, form of escape?

So...right now i'm in more pain than i have been in for a very long time, and i'm not dealing with it very well. My eye infection has returned, a continual, near unbearable burning....you know what its like when you accidentally poke yourself in the eye? Imagine that, only that it doesn't go away. for a second. ever. I tried to go get my eyedrops, but of course, quickly realized i shouldn't be driving, bliknking continually, unable to stand the daylight, unable to keep my left eye open, too painful to shut it...I barely survived long enough to make it to a safe parking spot, and i called for a ride.
LOng story short, i 've got the eyedrops, and while i know that last time they cleared this up quickly, i wish they'd damn well get on with it. I'm only supposed to use them twice a day, and i'm finding it very hard to resist pouring every chemical i've got into this thing in the hopes that SOMETHING will make it stop. Note to various covert orginizations, for their recruting purposes: i would not stand up to torture. I would sell my grandmother ( if i had any left) to make this eye let up for just a minute.. I think i have a cold as well, i'm sniffling, i'm dizzy, my head hurts, i have a million things to do and they all involve intense staring at pages to understand them, andf i can't keep my eyes open without searing pain....i can only write this because i look at the desk while i type....

I guess there ARE things worse than Physics....

I hate physics with a passion... more than that, i hate that no matter how many times i go over things, my mind hits a brick wall whenever i need to make a leap from two known things to one unknown thing- can it really be that my mind does not work this way at all? When i said goodbye to math and algebra at the end of high school, it was with the relief of being released from years of forced hard labour in a prison rock-pit. My whole life, its been one thing i was never able to "figure out" to master, one challenge i've always been nearly helpless against. Not the only thing, to be sure, but a glaring, nagging, frustrating limitation that i do not enjoy going back up against at this stage in life...Grrr..

About nothing....

Its a REAALLLY slow night at the cafe, i should be working on physics, but my brain is so dead.
Ali's looking at dogs, i'm stacking flats of juice...not much happening, this does not make for riveting blogging....but, hey, somebody's gotta do it.

Family Portraits

http://www.scarysquirrel.org/current/lovey/ground/pics.html

So i'm writing this post from my NEW LAPTOP... Yeah, that's right, i have a shiny new item with wireless, a DVD player, twice the speed, twice the memory...OK, so its not completely new, its second hand, and it isn't really that shiny (just kind of black...) and it only set me back $300...that's because my old laptop ( less than 30 days old) got traded in fot it. Don't get me wrong, i was pretty darn excited about my old laptop, especially arriving as it did, utterly unexpected on my birthday with my friends chipping in and all- that was really special. And it served me well. But i have just a LITTLE bit of expendable cash right now, and i couldn't resist trading up. I know, conspicous comsumption is not attractive. I'm not bragging, i'm happy. I have a new toy -it feels much better to type on- it will be with me for much late night paper-writing.
speaking of which- I finished my semiotic analysis of The Canopy...at ten-fifteen this morning. I started around 4 pm yesterday and worked straight through. It was torturous- i couldn't seem to bring my ideas together. I'm not happy with it- it could have been so much better-i was so tired writing parts of it that i'm afraid to take a second look. That's really not something i ever want to put myself through again- not so much the sleepless ordeal ( i sometimes do that for a good book) but the feeling of having to turn in something that was so much less than it could hhave been. GGrrr. No one but myself to blame, and i have to admit, people who could be saying "I told you so" have been spectacularily gracious about it.
You know that new work ethic i was talking about? Still needs some work.

Why i am so happy...

I'm feeling really @**#$!! incredible today. Really, really good. Better than i've felt, well, bearing in mind the subjectivity of "happy" memory, in a long, long time. I feel light- alive- free. I noticed the mostly bare trees in the river valley on the ride to school, and it filled me with the same open air exhileration it used to, instead of the more familiar feeling of muffled longing. Here is the kicker- here is how you know you're in an absurdly good mood- i arrive late, for physics( joy!) and pull my homework off the cameron printer, breath deeply, and exclaim" AHH! The smell of fresh printer ink!" The old Jeremy would have immediately asked to be put down for a statement like that. Fresh printer ink? What the hell? It makes no sense. My evening was bookmarked by two of the most emotionally gruelling phone calls of my life, and the rest spent working on Physics problems til 3 Am, (and boy oh boy, do i love physics! I mean, i'm an English student- why, again, am i doing physics at all?) 3 hours later, i awake, wheezing and hacking like a TB victim, and head off to school for lovely, lovely physics. By all rights, i should be walking around with a frown and a messy, black ink scribble hovering over head, breathing fire, staring holes in people, willing somone to look at me wrong so i can evicerate them ( much, actually, as i have been all week...) But no, i'm bouncing on my feet, loving the cold grey fall air, loving the teeming,multicloured masses on campus, loving the @@##$$$%&!! printer ink! Another one of those things you don't notice till its gone- i feel like a huge, murky oppressive cloud has lifed off me, one that had been crowding the edges of my vision, pressing in with a thousand pointy knives, immobilizing me, sucking my energy, blinding me, sucking me down into dry, dead leaves and dark, sludgy mud, weighed down, tied down, trying to drag myself along while sleep, death, rage, and blackness seeped through my skin and began to saturate me, so that i would soon be unable to move, one with the wet, rotting earth.
Definition by absence- i never thought about it while it was there- it only appears in contrast to how i feel now, today, alive, under clear skies, myself, not something else, free, in this moment, alive NOW.
For those who know something of my situation, i'm not trying to identify the "murky cloud" with any particular person, rather, something with me, some consuming, owning passion, some Gollum-like possesiveness and possession, some clench-fisted, fearful greed, that has hung over me for who knows how long, that i appear to be released from. Maybe i let something go- maybe that was the subtle "turning" of last post.

Or, coming closer down to earth, a " that-turned-out-better-than-could-be-expected" resolution of a long torture may have something to do with it. I may be "easy", but I do "hard" very well when pressed to it, far too well, and i didn't want to go there- i was close. One can only turn the cheek so many times before there's no flesh left to hit, only dry, cold, cruel bone. But I don't have to go there. I don't have to hate a friend. We are, neither of us, so far gone as all that.

Maybe that's why this miserable grey day is all sunshine to me. Why i feel, quite suddenly, more like myself than i have in months. I must really be happy, or something.

Maybe there has been some drama, but this, this was actually surprisingly quiet. Small. An imperceptable turning. The sound of the last snowflake coming to rest on the heavy laden branch. A moment of absolute stillness, of aquiescance, of silent sadness, before the irresistable pull of gravity does its work.

Then i got angry.

Pride is stupid. I have hurt a friend with my reckless words. And the process has suceeded in dragging up ugly bits of me i don't like to look at. This isn't who i want to be...

the sweet smell of impending DOOM...

At this point school is finally begining to come upon me in all its fury. I am facing the harshness of how much i WILL NEED to rachet up my work ethic...i'm not scared...just the "oh, shit, here it comes" before the storm. LIke a man setting out to climb a mountain, standing at the first sheer cliff face, looking up and taking a deep, sobering breath, steeling himself to the realization of what he has taken on. It's like resignation, only a little more positive.
Its been a long time since i've experienced this- i don't have a choice, i MUST work. I do not have the option of stalling, of waiting, nor, really, of turning tail and running. The things i hope to gain from this will not drop in my lap, and for once, i know exactly what needs to be done. And while the effort required is intimidating, having a clearly defined task feels really, really good. ( my life is otherwise lacking in clear definitions...)

I'm becoming comfortable with more and more ambiguity- particularily in matters of faith. On one level, it seems a little absurd for us wee little people to speak with great certainty and detail about the ways, dealings , and order of God - and, strangely, at the same time, my experience of Him, His reality to me, is convincing enough that i have no problem allowing him to be as mysterious as he wants to be. One does not need to SEE to know, to sense, to feel, to experience... (: one certainly does not need to see or understand the whole.

You know, its true...sometimes it IS better not to see.

School

Well, this it ...
I've put off thinking about it as long as possible because i know once i'm in it, i will become entirely immersed - or i will fail miserably. I know from past experience that i can't do this unless i let it become my world. That said- i'm not nervous. maybe i should be, but i know it's well within my capabilities. Just have to take it- pardon the phrase Ali - Seriously.

Now that it's started, i'm excited. I love campus in the fall, the leaves, the slanted orange-ish light, the bustle, the energy of new things, enthusiasm for ideas not yet numbed and dulled by crushing stress and expectations of performance.
I'm looking forward to this.

public prayer?

Tonight at the cafe i had a slightly unusual request- a fellow with a bit of a thick accent, leaned over the counter and asked me something, very quietly, and rather nervously, as if he was embarrassed to be asking. I couldn't understand clearly at first, i heard something like " need a place..." and something that sounded like " play" initiallly, i though he was a musician asking about the possibility of a gig here, but gradually it dawned on me that he was asking if it was ok for him to PRAY here, which, you have to admit, is a request for permission you don't hear every day. My Christian thinking ( this being a pseudo-christian cafe) had me respond, with a puzzled expression, " yeah. sure. why not?" Being from the sort of perspective where prayer is no particular " big deal" , a simple conversation with God that can be entirely silent, in one's head, or involving, at most, some slightly odd looking bowing of ones head, i couldn't imagine having to ask. he was by himself. I wasn't imagining a noisy pentecostal prayer meeting . I gestured to the couches or tables, fishing a bit , trying to understand the request. " You just looking for a quiet place?"
He looked even more uncomfortable and embarassed.
" No, you see... i have to , you know, stand up, kneel, lie down..."
He performed a quick mime of the actions, and i instantly recognized the distintive pattern. He was a muslim, and he needed a place to do his regular prayers, facing mecca. Now i was embarrassed, for having misunderstood, for the strange sort of embarrassment that accompanies religous things, supposedly personal, private things, happening outside their accustomed boundaries. Which is odd, because i'm a Christian, and i certainly haven't always been private about it. Maybe i was embarrased beacuase i was a christian and he was a muslim, embarrassed for the crusades, for Iraq, for all that nonsense and bad blood, and the assosiated baggage that accompanied our respective fatihs, embarassed because this young man was embarassed, having to humble himself before a foreigner and ask permission to take part in a normal part of his everyday life in my cafe.
I assured him that i had no problem with it, and he gestured to the other people in the cafe. I tried to assure him it wouldn't bother anybody, but he still somewhat sheepishly set up his samll mat in the back of the cafe. I was distacted by business, and didn't want to add to his discomfort by staring, so he was finished before i noticed.
it was a bit of an odd moment, but since i've been trying to figure out what should be so odd about it.

Full ... of what, exactly?

I am full, yet when i sit down to write, words come only in dribbles. So much going on inside me...Many around me are struggling- much to my regret i feel distant from my friends at the house- i am consumed with so many things- i fear i am slipping away from them...the thing i am trying not to think about may be one thing...that may be what causes the haze that descends on my attempts to write about anything else- that may be part of what is pulling me away at the moment. i feel almost as if forming, as if i am striving to break free of a sticky cocoon, and can't quite yet... something... its almost there...my mind is spinning...

That might just be lack of food.

Writing about Writing off...

Having ranted a post or so ago about my alienation from my family, i might have to say a few thingsd in defense of some of them. I'm normally one for being friendly to people you actually like, rather than pretending to like people you think it good, or advantagous, to be friends with. ONe thing about family, it forces you to have dealings wsith those you might not ordinarily have any interest in, those who, if they were not related to you, you would dismiss into the broad categories we use to avoid the inconvenience of dealing with people as individuals- like "trailer trash" for example. But i'm talking about my mother's side of the family here. Specifically my aunt and uncle, who are currently staying with my mother. My aunt is big, loud, and talks a million miles a minute in a stuttering rural accent ( despite living in calgary for probably 30 years!) She drives an old pick-up with a camper on it, her bearded husband drives a really old ( but not classic) harley( nobody said they were poor...)But they dress in zellers finest, and generally give the impression of being people that myself and a good many people i know would regard with , at best, morbid amusement , but really, would religate to a vaguely sub-human category of human charicatures, far-side cartoons, to refer to only as examples of the decay, the frayed edges, of north american civilization-to make fun of. In other words, they are not, in any common sense of the term, pretty.
But they do feel, and dream, and hope, and, wonder of wonders, think. I must be the first to admit i find my aunt's non-stop stammering really, REALLY, annoying, and can't be around her very long at all. But none of it, i am discovering, is meaningless, certainly not more meaningless than much of what i blather about . And it is not insincere.
They were talking to me about trying to find her husband's ( an adoptee) birth family, about travelling Alberta to find a quiet place to retire and live a simpler life- real things, and things i could identify with- and they know me so little, but they willingly share this with me. My aunt, in explaining why they ruled out retiring in her hometown, frankly and honestly discussed the "trailer trash" stigma- a subject my "PC" ness wouldn't have touched, or would have cloaked in vaguer language. She talked about what it was like to have grown up poor and scorned in a small town- how the stigma continued into adulthood- how everyone knew many of her brothers and sisters,and their children, were often drunk, divorced, broke, in trouble and always ripe for head-shaking, tut-tutt-ing gossip.She wasn't whining, she didn't attack the "small town mentality" or call people snobs, just honestly related the effect of a family's reputation- and i saw the genuine pain she felt- i recognized the pain of being misunderstood, of being judged and written off by people who never bothered to actually get to know her- being dismissed by assumption and association- and i felt a twinge of guilt for my own thinly veiled elitism, but i also identified. Aparently, there are those who have me categorized as a "loser", and while i frankly can't really blame them for their interpretation of my life based on visible circumstances, i'm afraid my attitude to them is not as charitable as my aunt's is to the small town prigs who have obviously haunted her life.
My own pride gets up at being dismissed ( or at being categorized at all- even when placed in arguably positive divisions) that people who do not personally know me ( and perhaps some who do) would DARE make evaluations of my worth. But i know i do it myself all the time.
IN my own case i know that respect is earned, i can't demand it,that i'm not living my life to impress the critics, and that they haven't had to BE me, so who gives a rip what they think? I'm trying, i'm certainly not proud of some things, but there are others i AM proud of that don't fall under some people's definitions of "accomplishments"
Back to my aunt- little about her life is "pretty" but she survived a bad marriage and finally, past middle age, found a good man. She worked a lowly job steadily and honestly for many years, and i've never heard her complain about it. She stubbornly resisted people's expectations of her failure, resisted the influence of her screwed-up family, and remains, in a realization i am struck with, a profoundly good-hearted person, who wants little more than peace and quiet, a simple life, and a little understanding.
But from the outside, in the things that are obvious- a big, loud redneck who talks continously in scrambled sentences that give the impression of some sort of mental disorder.

no news....is good news?

I have been collectively berated ( as in, berated along with many others) for posting infrequently ... for which i apologize. It is not entirely true that i have nothing to say...or even that i'm unfathomably busy- after all, my only gainful employment right now is at an internet cafe...but when you type as slow as i do, a sizeable post can be an entire evening's work- but i'm just making excuses. Truth be told, i don't like to talk about myself- even to myself. I quit journalling ( for the most part) because i was reading past journals and found myself whining about the same things over and over again, and even repeating the same "insightful" observations on life- i found it discouraging, a reminder of lack of progress, of growth, in certain areas, and in reading old journals i experienced distaste similar to what many feel when they hear their voice on tape...Am i really that annoying? Am i that self important? Some old journals DO, i admit, reveal a more honest, living faith than i currently practice- which is troubling- but book after book of them are also full of blind wishful thinking and me parroting "Christian" self-help drivel. Yeccch.

Before someone saw fit to create a blog for me, i had thought that, if i had a blog, i would use it to stick up portions of my stories, or other writings, for some instant criticism and response. But the story i am currently labouring on is both too personal and too recent ( and not far enough removed from recognizible reality) for a broad, public airing, which is a pity, because i would love feedback on it. So this is a blog about how i don't know what to blog ...

Family is a very odd thing. I went to a celebration of my Aunt's 70th birthday this week, which consisted of a small, awkward gathering of relatives near and not-so-near in a white, echoing community hall in the west end. Either because of the mood i was in, or the simple fact that most of these people really had little to do with my life in any way, but i was even quieter and more detached than i usually am . I stood by the food, said little, and observed. It all struck me as slightly absurd. The only thing most of us had in common was a little genetic material, yet we feel obligated to gather every so often and catch up on the superficial details of each others' lives, where we are now working or studying, where we travelled, who we ran into once and where, as if any of this mattered to us, as if we were old friends who actually had some shared experience, some bond more concrete than this mere biological "family", as if these people had interesected with my life for more than a few minutes, at another birthday, wedding, or funeral 15 years ago, when i was only "this high". True, immediate family has shared experience, shared pain, perhaps some shared happy memories, some journey together, and so much of this fills the silences between and behind our words, our differing remembrances of those times when we were together, when what we did and said affected each other, before the seas rose and we became islands. I would be a fool to discount the affect that 20 years of living with one or both of my parents, and my brother, had on who i am now...but could not people i have known for much shorter periods of time have equally significant influence on me? And what are these lonely, troubled souls who shared my early life to me now? When i was young, they were my world, my culture, my friends and enemies, the people whose love or approval i sought, the only ones whose habits and words i sought to understand, the only ones from whom to try to cajole the things i needed or wanted. As i grew older, they still shared my world with new objects, new puzzles and confusions. But i left them somewhere back there, or they individually left me and each other, and now i am as incomprehensible to them as they are to me. I have spent more time with them than with any other human beings. Yet we are strangers, groping for some point of common understanding. My father i think i know best, yet he continues to surprise me, and in his silence there is a deep well of feeling and thought i have not touched. He is still a mystery - i cannot predict him, and i do not how to read the motives behind his actions. I worry that all relationships lead here, to this entropy, that more time only reveals less understanding, that any connection or shared understanding is only an illusion that time will eventually dispell, leaving all of as completely alone and un-comprehended.
Yet i share tables with other peoples familes, the children of my father's sister or brother, who i have only snippets of shared life, a thanksgiving meal once a year at best, people i respect and enjoy, but as an observer- they do not know me and i can only know in them what read in those short encounters. They finish degrees, move, marry and produce children- but these do not reveal who they are. This is a gathering of stangers- we are all nervous, we are all unsure of the other, circling carefully, answering politely but vaguely, avoiding the known but unmentionable, My father and my uncle's alcoholism, my cousin's failed marriages, another cousin's disowning her mother, the fact that my own mother, previously a part of these strange gatherings, is never mentioned here, as though, in my father leaving her, she has ceased to exist. I wonder what they say about each other when they leave here, how do husbands and wifes judge the updates they obtain about these unrelated relations? I wonder what they think of me? Do i imagine their puzzled expressions, their forced inqiries? Afterwards i imagine them shaking their heads, wondering what happened to "Don and his boys"
I think about them, i read into their distance and their too-polite inquiries a condesension, an unpleasant but necessary duty discharged- but is that only attributing my own feelings to them? Is it merely the same noncomprehension that seperates us all? Why should we expect to find understanding and connection in family, though we are thrown into it by chance, as it were, when it is difficult to find even among our carefully selected friends, drawn from those that common interest and pursuit has led us alongside?

Attempted explanations

I suppose when i write bitter, depressed dirges and then say i'm "doing better" it helps to say HOW i am doing better.The trouble is, i understand well enough what plunged me into it, but what lifted me up is a little harder to nail down. Well, not quite true... i know what, or i must say WHO it was, i just don't know how to explain it, can't make my experience of God make sense to anybody else, and don't like the way it sounds when i try. But deep down, i think, i know it was God who met and helped me. And it irks me to even write it- i'm not sure why, possibly because of the incredible triteness with which many toss around phrases like " God met me and helped me" Nevertheless, as far as i can tell, that is the essence of what i experienced, and i've been doing this too long to try to disguise it with a bunch of vague, speculative nonsense. I guess it comes down to how we choose to see things. I could easily say i just "felt better" after a while- when the pain had run its course, i let things go and adopted a healthier outlook. I could even say " i found comfort in my faith, in the familiarity of its rituals and reassurances" in the same way that some drag God out of a dusty box in the attic only when they need to deal with death, loss, grieving or anything else that they would otherwise not be able to asign any positive meaning to. But again, in some interior, incommunicable place, i know such explainations do not do the situation, or God, for that matter, any justice. For me, at least, they do not really describe what went on. For my "sudden upturn" followed acts of confession and repentance- confession, because i had finally been honest with one i loved about many lies and misdeeds, and repentance because, seeing the damage it had done, i finally truly regretted what i had become. But it was more than that. For a long time, in my doubts, in the contadictions of my life- i had put God away from me. I suppose, in a way, seeing the ridiculousness in the church, the seemingly brianwashed, rigid and untested belief in many christians, seeing the uniformity with which they were mocked outside their safe little circles and their inability to perceive the reasons for this, i began to feel a little better than them, began to believe that i say more, saw clearer, that i was a little too smart for "God" or at least, the "simple " God i assumed them to believe in. That feeling, never fully owned or chosen ( which would have required a courage of conviction ) produced a "practical agnosticism" ( to borrow a phrase) which had me offering occaisonal lip service to God, but generally keeping him at a distance, not willing to depend on him. Of course there were ups and downs in this process, lapses where i ran back to the safety of simple, prescribed beleifs and certainties, and other times where i seemed ready to concede that all of this assumption of God and his benevolence was baseless, ready to admit that which had hitherto guided and shaped a large portion of my life was " meaningless, a chasing after the wind"

But there i was, faced with a number of unpleasant realities. I had lied, cheated, hurt, wasted, acted in blatant selfishness. True, the hollow shell of faith i was not willing to completely discard had not kept me from being like this, and many who believe do worse-far worse. But i was was standing aloof, sitting in judgement of God and faith, and of others who did see " simple certainties", as if i was above these things. Who was i to judge? My own behavior was not consistent with my morality, the values i said i held. But could i adopt a view that lying, cheating, wasting and hurting did not matter? Could i trumpet them as virtues- as excercise of my freedom, my individuality?I could- but i would lose all ability to change, and any reason to, save in those instances where such things did not serve my interests. And ...i'd be a really miserable person nobody would want to be around.

But did any of that really go through my head? i doubt it. At the time, i was just alone. I had, as far as i then knew, lost or irreprably damaged the most important human relationship in my life, lost that person's respect, lost my own self-respect, alienated and grown apart from other significant relationships in my single minded, stubborn pursuit of that relationship, and, somehwere in the process almost completely lost my faith in God. I was alone- alone with myself, and the self i saw was ugly, bitter, cold and empty.

And i COULD say that in that loneliness -unwilling to face its implications- I ran back to the comfort of the idea of God. And i suppose some will view it that way, regardless of anything else i try to say about it. And...hell, let them.

But run to Him i did, and, wonder of wonders, he was there- not a blank wall, not a cold silence, but warmth and comfort, and assurance of love. I suppose it could be that in my need i dropped my doubts and reservations and it SEEMED like he was there, and i WANTED assurance of love ....But i've wanted and needed many times, and i haven't ever been able to make him jump out of the hat at my command. Maybe He really WAS there all along, waiting, while i doubted his existence, while i doubted the character of someone i wasn't sure existed(!), while i stopped worrying about his existence and just ignored him, while i did what i felt like and tried to convince myself i was free, all the while feeling more and more chained up, tied to my weakness, unable to quite reach what i wanted to do and be. Maybe my frustration with myself, my realization of the utter ugliness of my heart and behavior with him expelled from it, maybe that was the repentance, the turning from trust in myself and admitting my need for him. Maybe i had to truly admit my need, that i wasn't enough on my own, not good enough , not strong enough, maybe that acknowledgement of failure was what he needed to step in...Though i did, in that state, offer him an explicit invitation to reinvolve himself in my life. I did, as one would with a person one had treated in that manner, apologize for ignoring him and doubting his character.
In doing so i chose to see things through that lens again, as you can't adress meaningful conversation to someone you don't think exists. All i can say is, he met me there. I experienced God again- i experienced him communicating to me in that subtle, quiet way. Despite my emotional upheaval over all that had gone on in my life, despite still grieving for the relationship, about which i was still in no way reassured, i felt that sense of peace ( for lack of a better word) that sense of things being right with the world, or at least with my world, that i had felt before at my "conversion" and at a very few other times since. Actually, i'm not sure it is a feeling, but an awareness of a change of state, like liquid to solid, or the like. You don't always notice when it leaves, except long after the fact, and then you wonder if you ever had it, or only remember things as somehow "righter" before. You may not really feel that it was gone until it comes back....like not realizing how hungry you were until a nice, steaming meal is placed before you, or something like that. Something clicked back into place. Perhaps it is beyond accurate description, but it is a sensation, or an an experience, that i recognize, and it's asociation in my past has been with affirmation that i am on the right track, like finding a path after wandering in the forest- you don't know where you are going, but you are going SOMEWHERE.
This- my surrender in my little war with God- was the genisis of my "upturn". Whether or not it makes sense to me or anybody else, whether the experience is "true" or "real" or not ( and What, exactly would words like "true" and "real" mean if there were no God, no absolutes?) God is part of who i am- i cannot escape him. However my life on earth will play out, whatever i will chose to do with what i have ( or what i have been given), he will be part of it- he is part of the make up of who i am, we are intertwined, God and I and I and God- so that we cannot be separated or i become untrue to myself, a half person with the rest of me supressed, striving to break free and be allowed to live. Others may be able to exist, and be noble, and have purpose, and be triumphantly THEMSELVES without him- i am in no position to know if they can or not. i know that i cannot. Accepting this fact has been the foundation of the "getting on with things" that has been my life for the past few weeks.

maybe it's not all QUITE so bad....

Ok, I know those were apallingly depressing and bleak, and it's been a while since I've posted, so people could think I'm in really rough shape. Those two posts, i should asure you, represent a low point that i have since substantially ascended from. I was greiving for the loss of a relationship, and for the loss of some associated dreams, and dealing with the fallout from some ugly personal failings. While things are not "back to normal"( thankfully- "normal" for me has not been are real swell place) I am doing better. My additude has been helpfully adjusted, i've been encouraged and reminded of some of what i have to be thankfully for by the wise, compassionate concern of good friends near and far, and the relationship in question, while certainly changed, probably for the best, is not as utterly destroyed as i thought it might have been. There is grace even for my stupidity and selfishness, and as i finally come back to a place where i can no longer pretend i have my life figured out and under control, i find God is not so distant, the God i knew has been quietly reminding me of his presence.

I can say quite a bit more, but I am out of time...so stay tuned for some slightly more cheerful stuff.

Terror and Anger

And if last night was abject terror, staring face to sneering face with the naked ugliness of my soul, and the knowledge that i may never again be able to take comfort in the certainties that have always comforted me in those times, because my trust in those certainties has been eaten away, today is anger. Anger at myself for squandering ,wasting and ruining, anger at God for dangling what seem to be good "gifts" in front of me, and retreating to watch, mute, as i squander, waste and ruin, all the time trying to do what i think he wants. Anger at someone else who i never wanted to be angry at...

Anger to hear that a good friend has been arrested, interrogated and threatened with injury merely for trying to live accoding to her beliefs, and that i have caved in without nearly so much opposition on most of mine.

I want a divorce

Lately I've had a hard time living with myself. Really, i don't like me very much. I wouldn't get along with someone like me very well, and when i meet people like me, i don't like them. In fact, i avoid them, which is a normal reponse for dealing with awkward, ugly things. When we find something repulsive, we naturally want to be, well, repulsed, be pushed away. We want to get as far away as possible, or we squish the little slithering thing quickly with a tissue and throw it away so we won't have to look at it or be reminded of it's unpleasantness. But if what repulses me most at the moment is myself... I can't get away from myself. I can't break into a seperate person who can stand in judement of myself from the safe vantage point of "not being like that". Just as I cannot, as an actor, REALLY play a character unless I can find something sympathetic about him, some reason he is able to live with himself - otherwise the character becomes a hollow charicature of a person, a hollywood "front" like the fake towns in the old westerns, just a carefully presented exterior with nothing behind it but the functional struts required to maintain the illusion. Because i am stuck with me, i cannot wholly repudiate myself. I can repudiate my actions or motives or choices, but i have to maintain some sort of basic sympathy for me - or i will never be able to put much energy behind "overcoming" my struggles, because why would you want someone you can't stand to win? I am having trouble with that basic sympathy. Everything i thought was valuable, or good, about me, from the "rightness of my cause" to my supposed " necessary perspective" it all feels hollow, like those hollywood sets, something biult purely to convey the desired impression.
And of the steps i have taken to combat this disgust, to move towards a me i can live with, have not worked out well. A decision to stop intentional deception of myself and others, regardless of the consequences of the truth, has so far resulted only in greater injury and pain, which tempts me to return to my earlier assumption that a lie that makes people happy is justifiable, an assumption i nevertheless cannot respect.

I suppose that the quest to "feel good about yourself" is not a Christian one, and that being utterly, inescapably convinced of one's own lack of merit is a good starting point for a Christian who wishes to receive grace. But while i could myself easily repeat the arguments stating why this is not the case, receiving such grace seems like avoiding resposibility for my actions. Mind you, it is apparent that my raging guilt, which would have me feeling wholly responsible for everything from my failed relationship to the invasion of Iraq, has yet to produce any change in my behavior, and being consumed with it has kept from reaching out to others in need who i might have been able to help. Punishing myself does not make me a better person. In fact, it may be another form of self-absorbed pride- another way to justify myself-saying " i may have done these things, but at least i was"good" enough to torture myself about them."

The idea of grace, after all, is that we cannot earn anything, we cannot be good enough to deservedly pat ourselves on the back and say, " I'm an ok person" And grace is the focal point of my whole professed belief system. God supplies our self worth simply because he chooses to value us, and from that foundation of unconditional and unearned love and acceptance, we build better lives out of purer motives than simply trying to prove to ourselves we aren't a waste of air and water. That's how this is supposed to work, anyway. I'm still not sure what stops us from saying "thanks God, for taking care of my nagging conscience, now i'll go on being a bastard, if you don't mind." Maybe i still don't have a very good grasp on that unconditional love and acceptance.

Aspiring to be a hick

The minstrel has finally found gainful employment. While not too terribly gainful, it involves being outside all day providing the low paid slave labour required to run a playground for rich people. I have to get up before anyone in their right mind would, engage in hard ( well , at least relatively taxing) labour as the sun comes up, and spend the day under said sun tending to very short, groomed fields. Plus, i get to play with large-ish motorized equipment. In some respects, it seems a lot like farming.

Now, some may have observed that i am not known to be overly enthusiastic about the working man's lot, but, as i sat on a grassy field idly picking weeds out of sand, and getting paid for it, this really isn't all that bad.

I seem to be very powerfully affected by the atmosphere of my surroundings ( sometimes going to far as to change continents to attempt some change in myself) and the office jobs i have been doing...my intense dislike may have had a lot to do with spending the majority of my waking hours in a florescant-lit, climate controlled excercise in functional blandness.

Here, though from the start i was hot, sunburned and bug-bitten, at least the air is moving, i'm under the unobstructed sky, and there is water, and ducks, rustling leaves, rippling grass, a pleasant excess of green, and butterflies- seriously, they're everywhere. I may form the opinion that no job could ever become entirely tiresome as long as it continued to allow for frequent exposure to butterflies. I would gladly spend my whole day in a place like this even if no compensation were involved. I wanted to get out of the city- this almost works. Even on three hours of sleep, i feel quiet, rested, surrounded by living things, alive.

Which, given recent events, is good. Nice to play with feelings other than pain and regret.

Interlopers

Hmmm... now there are all these posts on my blog...and i didn't write any of them. Mind you, i never used to have a blog. I suppose , if i'm supposed to be so polite, i wouldn't tell people to screw off and stop impersonating me. I could also change my password. But that wouldn't be polite.

I am a sheep.

...

...No, but i wish i was... if i were actually a sheep, i wouldn't agonize over what to do with myself and i wouldn't have the crushing pressure of a need to accomplish things. I would just munch grass and follow the asshole in front of me.
Plus, i'd be mutton. Mmmm.... sweet, glorious, tender juicy mutton....

Peanut butter sandwiches

So a great number of women want to sleep with me... and there are an increasing number of blonde and blue children pulling on my legs... where have all the men gone? I mean, I'm just alone with a horde of women, and they have these looks on their faces... oh what do they mean? I'm just a minstrel, minding my own business...

slightly bewildered minstrel

Its the strangest thing....here i am, minding my own business, and suddenly a blog drops in my lap. How absurd. I suppose i should write something profound in it....but that'll have to wait till later. Right now a small blond haired child is tugging on my leg.

Welcome to Jeremy's Blog!

Welcome to Jeremy's blog! Eventually he'll know about this...

What can we say about Jeremy? He's polite! He's philosophical and writes poetry, but can't yet play the lute (he does, however, have the puffy hat with the big feather).

Jeremy hopes and dreams about the day when society collapses, when all of his dreams will come true.

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This blog comes to you courtesy of Amanda and Erika, who have way too much time on their hands at work.