Another extremely slow and lonely night at he cafe. With the surreal exception of Tammy pulling up in a tow truck, complete with rusted pickup suspended from the back, and stopping traffic so she could say hi, and introduce me to her new bf(... and his son!) I haven't really talked to anyone all day. Got tons of work done, but... But here i am, with the lights low, candles lit and a sad song playing, reading philosophy. Sigh. Gosh, sure would be nice if some of my friends came to visit, to cheer me up!

But they won't. Too busy having fun. Bastards.

Man, is this cafe dead tonight. Frustrating. Because peace and solitude are not exactly what i'm looking for at the moment. well, peace, maybe....Something's up with the sound system, so i can't even drown it in good music. I'm playing radiohead, but i can barely hear it.

In happier news, its been snowing all day. I like my winter to look like winter. The cafe is warm, and the snow is building up on the sidewalk faster than occaisonal feet can muddy it. A walk may be in order, later. Sometimes white-carpeted branches, the night sky and stillness can do more to lift what hurts than talking it out a million times.

So i had a long and angst-ridden conversation with Chuck this afternoon. ( I'll let you guess who had all the angst.) yes, i want to be moving in a more positive direction, but i'm not buying that the way to do that is simply pasting on a happy face and pretending its all ok. And it's so relieving to just spew, to say exactly what you really think and feel, the good, bad and ugly, knowing that you're not going to be looked down on for displaying your lack of perfection, for not having it all together, for not always feeling what i should feel, or what makes sense to. And, hopefully, that it isn't going to cause that person to treat you differently, like some kind of walking disease or open, bloody wound, to tip-toe around you , trying to be polite and not mention it, but secretly revulsed by the raw, exposed mass of emotional flesh... er, sorry. That's the ugly part.

Its not that easy to have to face that the last few years of your life have been, to a great extent, a train wreck, and that its entirely your own fault.
Watching things go swimmingly for others doesn't really make that realization easier to deal with. Not that that's their fault.

All things considered, i think i'm handling things reasonably well.

You think this stuff is easy? Try it some time.

Can't sleep. Again. I was doing better for a couple days, but now i'm lying here and my mind just won't stop. Can't. Stop. Thinking. Its really annoying. I'm exhausted, have an early class tomorrow, and here i lie, completely unable to sleep. Jaques runs incessently, much like my mind. Going over everything. Too much. Where i've been. How i ended up here. Where things might be going. The past seems distant. Ancient. Irretreivable. Misty and irrelevant. Strangely, the future is a big, white nothing. Blank. Odd that i should just be noticing this. I'm used to thinking in terms of where i am going. what will happen when. Used to thinking in terms of tomorrow. I may have, in the past, indulged in a great deal of agony about which path of a particular set of options to choose, but i always saw something ahead. I could always follow those paths, see how they might end up. It was the detail and plausibility of those fully imagined alternate lives that made choices so difficult. To aim for one was to abandon hope of the other. Some lives had to die if one was to have a chance to live.

I honestly don't know what's going to happen. Tomorrow. Next week. Next year. The next ten years. I can't see it. I have no idea. Strange that this should seem a new feeling. I have nothing but now, nothing but today, this hour, these thoughts. No other certainties, no comforting thing or situation that i can count on to always be there, to remain the same. No "once-i-get-there" to look forward to. This is, suddenly, incredibly, unbeleivably scary.

At the same time, having no tomorrow might be just what i need to enable meaningful action today. Always did feel i had difficulty living in the moment. Now, maybe, i suddenly find myself with no choice but to do so.

All those possible lives, all those fully constructed, self-contained worlds i could plug myself into, if i only knew how to start, seem to have fallen apart, or dissapeared, or merged into each other beyond recognition, or something, leaving me with a big, messy unknown.

I really, profoundly, at this moment, don't know what to do with myself.

I'd say i don't know who i am, but the phrase is too steeped in cliched associations to have any meaning. I'd say rather that the identity i've been working with for the last little while is invalid. It doesn't hold up. It isn't healthy. It isn't me. It needs to be discarded, put off, like my old plaid shirts, ball caps, and super baggy jeans.

So where does that leave me? I don't know who i am or what to do with myself. The past is out of reach and the future is blank.
Sound depressing?
Hell, sounds like a fresh start to me.

All the cool kids are doing it

I 'm sorry. So very sorry. I know Weakerthans quotes have enjoyed a high circulation on the blog circle lately. I can't help it. These out of sequence lines have been stuck in my head for days.

Rely a bit too heavily on alcohol and irony...
Drowning in the pools of other lives.

In my defence i can only say that all our accidents are purposefully planned.

Today is a good day. At least, it is going to be. Last night i returned from class, feeling just a little bit sad and sorry for myself. But i dealt. I resisted the lure of the poker game upstairs (sorry guys!) did the stuff i needed to get done, read my readings for today, and, amazingly, spent more than two hours just writing. Something i hadn't done in quite a while. It just poured out of me, i wasn't agonizing over every word, i wasn't laborously self-editing. I wasn't sitting, wasting my time, letting myself freak out about things beyond my control. I just sat and wrote, almost in a single minded frenzy, and got out what i wanted to say. Followed that thought, that creative impulse and got it down. it felt very, VERY good. Its a small thing, ( and possibly, in the sober light of morning, not that great a bit of writing) but part of the ass-kicking of yesterday's post was to stop making excuses and start making it a priority to do the things that really matter to me. My writing will get better with use.
And then i slept. Like i haven't in weeks. Deep and silent and free. i woke, at the first buzz of the alarm, without fear. You don't realize it when you've been doing it for a long time, but you notice its absense. For the past while, a seeming eternity, i realize i've woken up already scared. Already dreading the day. Dragging myself ouy of bed, wanting nothing more than to keep hiding in sleep, filled with the trepidation carried over from the night before. Today i woke without fear. What comes, comes. I'm not going to stay where i was. I'm going to take whatever steps are needed. I'm going to be ok.
It helps to actually have gone to bed at a reasonably sensible time, and to be up more than 5 min before class. To have time to reflect, to find peace before throwing onself, always behind, always trying to catch up, into the day. Again, a small thing, but getting up and getting to work when i resolve to do it is also part of what i want the new me to be, and it feels good, for once, to plan it and actually have it happen. Hey, i'm seizing the small victories here. Even doing that, it suddenly seems like i have so much more time. ( Though i know part of the reason i'm suddenly finding more free time on my hands, and I admit that, while one part of me is quietly happy about it, still stings a bit) But hey. i have time to write. I have time to blog. (yay!) I have time to sort myself out. I might actually survive school, and come out of it with something to show. These are good things.

Hey, its nice that everyone's concerned. No, that's not a sarcastic, leave-me-the-@#$&!-alone comment, i really mean it. Yes, i am having a hard time. Yes, i do notice that you notice, and it means something. In the spirit of what we're supposed to be about here, i'm not ashamed to say that right now, i'm ok with a little help, a little encouragement, a little prayer. Heck, if you're exceptionally lucky, i might even take advice. I'm a little overwhelmed, a little more than usually daunted by the frightening gap between this-is-where-i want-to-be and this-is-where-i-am. Again, i appreciate people being there, even peripherally, while i sort this out. But i'm not looking to make it all go away. I don't need a quick fix. I need to be here. i need to feel this. I need to feel this hurt, to let the full weight of it rest on me - so i can finally face where it comes from, deal with things i've run from my whole life, get healthy and start moving in a better direction. It may involve opening old wounds, and may get a bit ugly before it gets better. It may have to involve professional help. Probably will. But i'm tired of this shit and i know i don't have to be like this.

I appreciate my few ass-kicking friends. We're such a "mind your own business" culture; it isn't always good for us. I appreciate people who have the guts to tell things to me straight. Tell me i'm full of shit. Tell me i'm being an idiot. Who can tell me, in respect and genuine concern, that i need to get help. Which is scary- but not as scary as the thought of spending another thirty years like this. Thirty years is already WAYYY too long to spend waiting to live. Enough is enough. i'm putting it in print so i can't weasle out of it. A little sadness is part of life, sure, but morbid paralysis sure as hell doesn't have to be.

State of the Union

Sorry. I am still alive, for better or worse. Just having trouble finding words lately. And to speak of my largest concerns of the moment would either require extreme delicacy or a torrent of words i would almost certainly come to regret. Suffice to to say that while i can be genuinely thrilled at the unexpected good fortune of others, and i am, truly, my feelings regarding my own present situation are, um....not good. And I am facing the highly uncomfortable notion that unless I succeed in changing certain entrenched tendencies in myself, this situation could well be permanent.

On a more cheerful note, however, it does encourage me greatly to see dear friends finding richly deserved happiness. Its nice, every so often, to be reminded that life has nice surprises for us, to go with all the ones of the other kind. In a world that too often seems fractured, cold, disappointing and malisciously random, it has to give you hope to see things working out in a way that just seems, well, right. If one believes that our lives are steered, which, at the bottom of me, i still do, you have to shake your head at the strange ways things work, beyond all possibilty of prediction. That part makes me sit back and smile.

And being able to smile for others, at this point, may save me. For the moment.


I still so owe this blog an explanation of that China comment, though i suspect that by now anyone who actually bothers to read this has heard more than enough about China from me in person. I also promised Chuck my life story to go with it. Give me a bit on that one, mate.

. . . . . .

I DO NOT LOVE Canadian literature, or working on three papers, on utterly unrelated subjects, at the same time. I'm a One-at-a-time kind of guy.

I love noodles...yes, i do...

Want to write....so much needs to be written. But i'm torn between having absolutely nothing, and far too much, to say.

Oh, hey, and i'm thinking of moving back to China. More on that later. I must get these stampeding Rhinos out of my ear....

Live...from Canmore, its...

wait. What am i doing in Canmore? Where did all these mountians come from? And why is that squirrel nibbling on my shoes?


Odd.


It's peaceful here, though. Nice place to wake up in. A sound muffling mist forms a roof between the mountains. The tourist shops and restaurants are quiet.


But 10 screaming people are playing scrabble in my left ear. Seriously, how excited can you really get about scrabble?

Some people really don't understand solitude. But hey, at least i have friends.

Yet another person who was planning on having a good day today...but my fuse didn't even last the morning without being set off. I try to stay positive on here, keep the bitter whining to a minimum, but what would a blog be without an occasional angry rant?

I mean, who uses random toothbrushes that they find in a bathroom? Seriously! If you didn't take it out of the package yourself, and you don't know where it came from, why would you stick it in your mouth? A toothbrush costs...what, two dollars at a drug store five minutes away?How lazy do you have to be to just grab what's there and not care whose it is? Never mind how pleasant it is for me to go for my fang-scrubber in the morning only to find it dripping wet and freshly used, but what if that nagging cough of mine isn't just allergies, but, oh, i don't know, a particularily virulent strain of Tuberculosis? SARS? Bird flu? What if that brush was there to clean into the cracks under the toilet-seat bolts?
Then there's the troubling thought that this might not be the first time....
I know, i know, i need to let that go...but that lovely little discovery pretty much set the tone for my morning. More things go wrong. Computers don't work, plans are thwarted- i arrive at school, park in front of Ali's, grab the parking pass and slap it on my dash, as i have done for time immemorial, so that i am a good little university-area parker in compliance with the mighty parking law , i rush off towards class with little time to spare, happen to glance back wistfully at the forlorn, green escort only to discover an agent of ultimate evil, a vile parking nazi, looming over my poor vehicle licking his slavering jaws hungrily as he gets out his dark list of doom and begins taking my liscence number.
Though i fervently desire to be in class on time ( for once) i cannot abandon my innocent conveyance to such a fate. I swing my bag, laden with lead bricks, around and hobble back to the car. I attempt to reason with him. I forget one cannot reason with pure unrelenting evil.
There is a parking pass in the window, perhaps you didn't see it?
Its for the wrong zone.
That's preposterous, its parked directly in front of the address on the pass!

Oh, then this pass is expired.

(IN truth, i knew this) Oh, well, I know. we forgot to renew it. We're getting it done now.

It expired on January 20th. It is now January 26th. I'm going to have to ticket you.

But you know this is a resident pass for in front of this house, and i'm here now anyway. i can move.

Doesn't matter. Its expired. You're getting a ticket.

You have to somewhat admire one for whom the world is that simple. Either admire, or stick your fist in their gut and hand them their spleen.

Eventually, due to my entering the car and beginning to roll it forward, the beast relented, reluctantly snarling, and went on to savagely pounce on the next offending victim. I drove around the block, found the swath of destruction that marked where the dark presence had already passed, and hoped there to escape notice and be gone before it returned for fresh blood.

But i was despicably late for class.

Really, worse than any of the that was the way such little things got to me and had me snapping at friends this morning, and seething with insensate rage about half the day. So a few things went other than i would like. Poor little bunny. I didn't have to let it put me off that badly.

I get home and find that a friend, the very same one i was unforgivably rude to this morning, dealing with far more shatteringly real unhappy news, of a kind i can't, at this point in my life, even imagine. And i'm whining about a toothbrush.

Today is a good day to be alive.

Fresh from my time of communion with mountain and snow yesterday, i awoke rather pleasantly to another glorious winter day, read a medieval anglo-saxon epic, and dicovered i could go skating with what was promised to be a fun group of people. This offer proved more enticing than said medieval epic, so i trundled off to rundle park to await the wintry festivities, only to discover my fearless comrades would not arrive for quite some time.
I spent some of the interim wandering the abandoned upper reaches of rundle, what i think, in summer, is the golf course. There was no reason for anyone to be here now, and i had it to myself. It was a moment of quiet perfection, a soul-deep sigh. The tailored, gently rolling lanscape, short trimmed meadows surrounded by tastefully spaced trees, clumps of firs, old, solitaryand thick-limbed birch and poplar, everything, from ground to reaching branches, dusted with a thin covering of snow, just enough to make this world thouroughly white -just enough that the dying sun, fanned out in orange rays against a glowing backgound of cloud, catches the frost with its fire, making this entire lanscape seem cut and sculpted from a sparkling white rock, or as if it were coated in the dust of diamonds. No footprints but mine and a few rabbits. following the path, pass through trees or over a hill and come to a entirely new scene: a meadow, a small arched bridge, an ancient, twisted tree, new and varied shapes, all cut from the same fine substance.

That feeling...was one i had forgotten. And i should not have forgotten it.

Skating, loomed over by the surreal but oddly beautiful backgound of the refinery, with its terraced gardens of lights and torches, and plumes of purple-orange steam, was also sublime. Our friends had lit a small fire on the island, and after a few laps i joined them there. To me, there is something in skating on a sort of pond, and gathering at a fire among trees to laugh, roast things, and drink hot chocolate, that springs from the deepest and best of human existence. It is, at the very least, the quintessence of Canadian winter. THAT is Canadian culture. Beer commercials, Bryan Adams and bland social-commentary plays can burn, for all i care. Preferrably in a large bonfire. By a frozen pond. With people skating on it.

Just returned, in a puddle of pleasant aches, from a skiing/boarding trip to the mountains with Chuck and Mack.
While i think it fair to consider myself a relatively proficient skier, having begun when i was in the second grade, but this trip was only my second attempt at working with only one slab of wood under my feet. I tried it once last year, at one of the puny local hills within edmonton, and thought that went pretty well for a first attempt. And i fell in love with it. Two boards would never be the same for me. And though this time i spent more time on my face, on my ass, or on my knees or in some rolling snowball combination of the three than actually standing up on the board, i still remain stubbornly un-dissuaded from abandoning skis forever in favour of the glorious board. For those brief moments that it was almost working, it was a thing of beauty. The tantalizingly close possibility of sweet heel to toe carving, trailing an arc of powder gleaming in the sunlight, is more than worth the present pain and humiliation, and the humbling admission of needing to go on easier slopes until i suck slightly less.

I hurt, but it was worthwhile. Abundantly so. While this trip, particularily our parking and attempted escape from sunshine, had elements that dangerously approached fiasco status, (We had to park about three km away from the lodge, on the road, and when we finally got back to our car at the end of the day, a tractor, used to ferry skiers to their vehicles, had jackknifed and slid into some poor schmuck's car, causing the mother of all line ups. we narrowly avoided that, and had to deal with some of the slowest drivers yet to crawl on the earth. AND we almost ran out of gas. Fun stuff) but it was SOOOO good to finally get out of the city. These grey, soulessly functional industrial parks and clone condo units really get to you after a while. To be on the road, to feel ones place in the presence of immense, stoic rocky massiveness, to see towering firs laden with snow, the black and white patches of mist shrouded juts of rock, that whole striking two-tone winter world...i don't know, somehow open space, trees, and really, really big rocks, all seen through the endless flow of large, fluffy flakes- it heightens something in me, raises an awarenesss, quiets other voices, releases other pressures...puts me in a different....mode. Fresh air in my lungs, a lot of snow down my pants, a bit of physical excercise and a number of blows to the head- all a recipe for improved mood, if you ask me. Nevertheless, it WAS good, and will be repeated soon...oh yes, it shall..... Mucho props (Don't get chopped up, though...) to Mack for driving and boundless generosity, Chuck for knowing what's going on, Chuck's bro Dave for head injury and company ( and taking me on a tree-dodging last run that definitely surpassed fiasco) and Jeff for graciously obtaining gear.

We define a man by what he admires, what raises him. All things aspire, even if atomically. A body will rise quietly until caught by the surface. Then the moon pulls it to shore.

Also from Fugitive Peices

There's no absence, if there remains even the memory of absence. Memory dies unless it's given a use....If one no longer has land but has the memory of land, then one can make a map.

Ann Micheals, Fugitive Pieces

Another old poem from the vaults...circa 1996, from somewhere in India...

Awake

The ridiculous morning rooster cries

Arise and join your world

The sun is up

Red and Fiery

Casting sharp light on the land

And, suddenly

Nothing is hidden

In your plush

Flower-papered bedroom

You are warm

Beneath soft, pleasant sheets

And comfortable

Your head sunk nicely

In enveloping pillow

I will rest yet, you say

My dreams are pleasant

I am not yet ready to face

The day

My dreams are grand, and noble

Mighty adventures

And oh so safe

Being only dreams

Awake!

The rude bird screams again

Leave your petty dreams

Let your eyelids struggle open

To the magnificent blaze

Of morning

Streaming through your painted windows

Awake I say again!

You have slept long

Your limbs are stiff

You had best check your house and fields

Lest

While you sleep on, in mighty dreams

The thief has come

Stolen all you once possessed

Taken your lambs away

While they had yet to see

This dawn.

Once more into the breach, my friends.....

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?