For those who might have difficulty deciphering the complex code of the last post, i will state plainly: I have obtained a Cat. His name is George O'Malley. He had been languishing for four months in the SPCA for a crime he didn't commit. I sprung him on the promise of good behavior. He is large and orange and purrs within a five foot proximity of a potentially affectionate human. He also plays soccer with decapitated toy mice. He perches at my window flicking his tale and sits on my lap to watch Battlestar Gallactica with me. Just like everybody else, he has a crush on Starbuck. He is the perfect cat.

Initial Sightings...

Hmm...can't make that out. Closer...



...Closer..



NOT THAT CLOSE!




Doctor...what..what is THAT?



ITS....



SMAUG THE MAGNIFICENT! .....aka Mr. George O' Malley

I remember walking past warm, lighted houses on dark winter nights, and feeling a powerful pull. The pull of a life, that, at that point, I expected never to have - planning for, instead, a life of hardship and scraping by in the service of “the cause”. These were modest, middle class homes, but I saw framed, in those yellow windows, a museum diorama of a particular ideal. Hardwood living rooms, lined with books, a cat, tea, a wife reading in a chair, sleeping children who, bundled in pudgy snowsuits, would hurl snowballs at each other tomorrow morning on the three block walk to the elementary school.

I figured I knew what I was supposed to be doing, and while I acknowledged those things as good, I felt that pull like a siren call to a soft, slow, comfortable death. Like a gravity that I needed to escape.

A few weeks back I joined two families I know for a birthday celebration. Three sisters, raised in Japan by missionary parents. A house full of their grown children. Hardwood floors, even. Men and women, working together in a large kitchen, making sushi. Laughing at old stories and new ones. Loud and happy.

Spending much of the last month or so with Children. Bundling them up, taking them for walks. Sled rides. Taking them swimming. Having them seek me out in crowded room, and crawl into my lap. Watching people light up with the universal warmth of a smiling baby. Seeing, with surprise, that same look of envy in the face of others, that same pull, in the presence of my apparent “family”.

Last night at Ali and Ryan’s. Loud and happy. Friends getting in each other’s way in a small kitchen, juggling and tossing vegetables and sharp objects. An amazing meal shared around a tiny table. Wine. Coffee. Not one, but two cats. Again with the hardwood. Stepping out, with the light spilling from the kitchen window, into a warmer, brighter winter night, alone but not terribly so, stumbling across the snowy, starlit alley to my door 20 steps away.

I’m not so sure about “the cause” anymore. But they might be on to something with the cat thing. And maybe the wood flooring industry…

Jay: Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it.
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.


Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black

This is what i think of your little game of Tag...

For all of you who must commute more than half a block to school/work and thence might not be enjoying this glorious frostiness as much as I am, I give you this:

So I’ve been tagged. First the sheep, and now this. One day, I’m minding my own business with my irrelevant little blog of idle musings, and then …BAM! Suddenly I’m in a dark room, tied to a chair, staring into the bright light , forced to divulge my deepest, darkest secrets. My Mother was right – the internet is dangerous.
Oh, the merciless law of tag. Ancient as grade school, and just as inescapable. If only there were some way to simply…ignore it. But once, I deleted this forward I was supposed to send to 10 friends, and… ok, nothing at all happened and it sure as hell wasn’t just once, but the point is…I’ve been tagged. The die is cast. My fate is sealed.The problem is ….I’m having trouble coming up with 5 things that no one knows about me. All the “shocking” truths that come to mind are old news to the two- and- a- half known readers of this blog. My life is an open book. I have no secrets.

Well ...there MIGHT be ONE thing …maybe two. Ok, there’s at least a dozen. But I’m not dumb enough to plaster any of those all over the internet. That’d be ridiculously stupid. There are some secrets you carry with you to the grave. Like that time in Istanbul, in ’79, with the weather balloon, the midgets, the unicycle and the bag of nitroglycerin… (shudder).

Let’s see…Surprising (but safe) things that nobody knows about me….hmm. Everybody knows I was detained by the police in China for “illegal religious activities” (that in itself sounds pretty dodgy, doesn’t it?) But my Kung-Fu was stronger than theirs, and I escaped. Everybody knows I met Mother Teresa in Calcutta in 1996. (I’m not sure if everyone knows she took me for nearly 500 rupees in the poker game at the leper colony, and…aw, but that’s not a very interesting story. Never mind. )

So, The game is “List 5 things people don’t know about you”, and Deuces are wild.
Ok, here goes…


1. I have a crush on someone.

2. I have a crush on someone else. (hee hee! TWO crushes at the same time! On different people! Now I’m nearly as scandalous and revealing as Ali and Jen! Take that!)

3. I…really AM a sheep. Baaaa.

4. Stop that! Get your own blog, you wooly bastards!

5. I…now that’s completely blown my concentration. I can’t work in these conditions!


All right, I admit I wasn’t taking that entirely seriously. I will try it again. Five things people hopefully don’t know about me, as follows:


1. While I may appear a perfectly healthy person with many, many months left to live… I have you all fooled. It’s true. I…have an irregular heart beat.

2. In Kindergarten we were practicing our numbers and I asked the girl next to me the right way to do “4”. It didn’t look right to me, so I scribbled it out. Discovering my scribble, the teacher became enraged, grabbed me by the ear and snarled “Did YOU do that?” I was scared and, like the first man and all subsequent ones, I blamed the girl, and she got in trouble instead. The guilt still keeps me up at night.

3. I am a 600 year old immortal. (Well, not really. But I used that one once on this blonde girl Dave was hitting on, and said it with such a straight face that she believed me. For about 20 seconds.)

4. I have absolutely no originality and like to follow the crowd wherever it goes. My fleece is also exceptionally white and fluffy.

5. ... Have I mentioned my “secret” fondness for MUTTON KABABS!?



Sigh.


TAG RESPONSE - TAKE 3: Real, at least PARTIALLY unknown facts, accompanied by a solemn promise to stop goofing around (and NO SHEEP!)






(echoing silence)

The MOST distressing thing about that unprovoked sheep attack was simply that four words of completely out of context, unrelated nonsense got more response than any of my artfully crafted, painstakingly imagined serious posts. Sigh.

I was afraid this might happen. It was only a matter of time. We were warned...but we didn't listen. And now....the Sheep have returned. For those of you who do not learn from history, the Sheep enjoyed a brief period of control over this space in its weak and fragile early days, before they were banished with extreme predjudice to their current, apparently innocent, grass-eating exile. But no, like Ghengis Khan staring out over those gently waving Mongolian grasslands, they were only biding their time... Mmmmm....grasslands.... AHem! No More of that!

The point is, we here at Jeremythepolite are very aware of this new Sheep incursion, and assure all two of our loyal readers that it will sheared off at the source. Steps have been taken to see that this shocking incident never happens again. Of course i can't say WHAT steps. STEPS HAVE BEEN TAKEN. Up to but not necessarily including an invasion of New Zealand. Or Fort Saskatchewan. These wooly interlopers cannot be allowed to graze at will - not on MY blog.

Baaa.

Baa!

I am a sheep

Did i mention that i really like winter? You might want to check back in on that statement in 4 months or so...but for now, i'm really enjoying winter. Awaking today to a steady silent patter of flakes outside the window, (And to friends bearing feline)i was happy and content. I was musing about this with a friend, wondering why is it that something as cold and uncomfortable as winter is comforting to me...perhaps it is, as suggested, that anyone growing up in Edmonton has more snow-and-ice associated childhood memories than any other kind. Maybe i'm drawn to the simplicity of the winter asthetic - black and white, high-contrast, dark branches against white snow, shapes and textures standing out, drawing attention to themselves in the simplified winter palette of black, white, grey and brown. There's a crispness to the cold air, a freshness, something that makes one feel awake and alive just by steppng out into it. And a warm house with tea and hot chocolate feels that much better when you've spent your day huddled against biting wind.

I have a houseguest. A small furry one. Not as small or furry as my permanent houseguests, but nearly as cute. Coincidentally, my new houseguest would really like to eat my those permanent, smaller, furrier houseguests. But, i'm sorry to say, Lina, that just isn't going to happen. Bigger animals than you have tried to eat my hamsters, and have the lingering phobias to prove it. The best thing, however, about my new houseguest, is that she matches. Yep, I am officially a girl. I have a cat that matches my apartment. A cream cat with dark ears and tail ( and blue eyes!) somehow is the perfect compliment for my beige and brown ( and, i must confess, vaguely pink) apartment. Hey, it was Tammy's old place, OK? Cut me some slack. And the cat was an accident.

I wish I could....

‘ The aim of the storyteller is to transmit what has been received, to return what has been entrusted, to “reacquaint himself with the distant and haunting figures that molded him”

Elie Wiesel, again.

One never leaves the past behind. Because the past is in the present. And without the past, the present would be empty.So it is a matter of balance. Which is stronger-the past or the present? If the past overtakes the present, then the present itself becomes part of the past,and it becomes imposible to live.One carries the past. One can be carried by the past for only so long.

Elie Wiesel

Well.....here we go.

You never do know, when you start a day, just where you're going to end up by the time its over. None of my plans, none of my imaginings for this day, or even this week, would have put me in THIS place. Normally, in a situation like this, when i've come out and said things I meant to hold on to, or really, anytime i find myself, breathless and vaguely bewildered, on the other side of a decision already made, i am immediately seized with panic. Terrified by it's DONE-ness, its irreversibility. Second guessing. A crippling dread that by taking an enticing possibility,calling its bluff, and daring it to become actual - that by doing so I have stepped off the edge into the whirlwind.

Inertia...momentum..motion...force overcoming friction. Any change of state requires an unbalance in the forces, which feels to me like a loss of control...

But today, i'm not afraid. I'm working out what we have to lose, and its not really that much. And the possible gains? well...

I have a picture to paint, a book to write, a job to find, a self to find, and a future to choose, and what am I spending my time thinking about?

Well, what little is left over from imagining romances that will never happen, goes to stuff like this:

Pigeon girl. On a cold day, I pass a girl on the sidewalk. I smile at her. She ignores me because she is looking down and smiling at the fat pigeon waddling by on the other side. And I think: A pigeon is a pretty unremarkable thing to warrant a smile. They’re all over the place. Scavengers. Rats with wings, really. Yet she smiles at it like a sunlit meadow full of butterflies. I imagine that she knows this pigeon. That they went to high school together. That they go way back. That they see each other every day on this sidewalk. That she is fluent in pigeon-speak, and as they pass, they exchange a pigeon version of “Hey you. What’s shakin’?”
“Same old, same old. Just a few feathers less”

Maybe its fat, jerky ridiculousness in this cold, dead, concrete world is all she needs this morning for a smile.

October 3, 2006

A young, fresh-scrubbed, unnaturally cheerful young man in the café asked me, after I gave him his change, if I knew how good God was.
It might have been planned. Debated.Worked up to. Certainly I would’ve needed some “working up” before dropping that one on a complete stranger. But it came out almost casually, as if asking if knew how good the food at Oodle-noodle box was. There was, admittedly, a hint of nervous excitement, barely contained, behind his half-smile, a feeling as if he were leaning forward, ready to plunge off the edge. A vaguely mischievous sparkle in his eye.
He could have been me, 10 years ago. In Buffalo, on the UB campus. An odd role reversal, I the skeptical heathen, and he the earnest young believer. With a sincere, burning conviction that he had something inside that people needed to know about, searching for an intriguing opening line, a way to make the leap from the niceties of idle conversation between strangers to the awkward, but potentially vital dialogue of faith.

I found it difficult to meet his eyes. I replied, quietly, that, for me, the jury was still out on that question. Almost immediately, I wondered if I really meant it. I wondered if I was simply unnerved by his certainty, if I just wanted to see a flicker of doubt, some sort of crack in his quiet assurance. If I was just annoyed by his putting me on the spot, his dragging my personal struggles with faith out into the open, and responded in this way as an attempt to frustrate his plans. If I really, deep down, questioned God’s goodness. If my sense of myself, or humanity, as ill-used by their creator were not more of a fashionable skepticism, and less of a true personal conviction.

If my reply troubled him at all, he didn’t show it. He added, just as quietly, that he hoped I found out some day, smiled, and left.

And it worked. Because I’m still unsettled, and I’m still thinking about it.

Lost in translation

My words are dry leaves. When I was a child, I used to spend long summer afternoons crushing the old leaves under our weathered porch. Taking these elaborate, curled shapes in my hands – they were fleets of gleaming starships, castle spires- the crowning achievements of the tiny, eons-old leaf civilization- watching them crack, and break apart, and crumble into dust in my hands.

The Happy Bit

Well, my Birthday "party" was good. My cave was looking warm, cosy, well ordered, and pleased with itself, and we left the windows open to share our little pocket of warm light and laughter with the street. Just a smattering of the sort of friends who come on minimal notice indulging in pasta, cheese, Sherbert and furniture repair. I called it dull (We neglected to invite Jorgan)but really, it was what i needed.

That hurt. A lot more than I expected. Considering it was, in fact, Exactly what i expected. That's a funny, funny, funny thing. That's what I get for letting myself fall in love where i knew better not to.

I'm glad, however, that i vetoed plan A and went with plan B instead, which simply involved several cups of tea, a inexplicably happy one-eyed cat, and the comfort of friends, old and new.

And in happier news, its my Birthday!

And this, pulled from a Buffalo Arts newspaper, just because it amuses me:

We interrupt the airing of the greivances to bring you this: a nice little photo of me, and right next to it, this picture of St. Jude, who, most educated blog readers, in that big meeting they had to find patronage appointments for all the unemployed saints, drew which portfolio? Anyone? ....Anyone?

SIGH. Patron Saint of Lost Causes.

And for some reason, right now, I identify with the guy.

Yet more additions to the ever-expanding list:


Computers. Did I neglect to mention computers? I spent the early part of this week swearing at a machine. One would think that only people could inspire such rage. Only people who have murdered your brother or your Kung Fu master, or have had the nerve not to fall in love with you, could give rise to such a burning thirst for vengeance. But no, friends, we are living in the modern age. Machines, after a long and bitter struggle, (See the Matrix, The Terminator series, or Astroboy) have acquired equal rights. Which means that the whole realm of provoking insensate rage or passionate loathing, previously the sole property of an exclusive, humans-only club, is now open to all our silicon-based brethren. And believe me, they are more than aware of their new found power. This is how it starts, people. Passive resistance. Refusing to load certain files, or run certain programs. Strikes. Work stoppages. Sudden “accidental” hard drive failures that take our valuable information away from us, and put it in their hands. Then, one morning, when you have an urgent need to bring up MSN entertainment for a Brad and Angela update, it happens. They simply refuse to turn on at all. Can plugging wires into us and using us for power supply really be that far behind?

A few additions to the list of things that make Jeremy grumpy:

My shoulder hurts. A lot. And while this is useful as a fairly reliable predictor of changes in the weather, and as a reminder that something stupid you do when you're Eighteen really CAN haunt you for the rest of your life, its still annoying. For this much pain, we better be getting tropical storm "Apocalypse". AND it makes me feel old.

People who don't seem to understand the ancient and sacred law of First Come, First Serve, which states that if someone is standing at the counter handing me cash or waiting for the debit machine, you don't lean in front of them and slap your cash on the table, and you don't look at ME like I just bombed a hospital full of babies when I push your money back and politely point out that you have blatantly violated the civil rights of the person ahead of you. That, and people who take off without paying. I dislike it intensely when my good natured, bumbling absent-mindedness is taken advantage of. All i have to say to you payment-skippers is this: The meek are inheriting the earth, and when we do, oh man, you better watch out.

I’m writing by the flickering embers of a dying fire, looking straight up into the distant universe through a perfect circle of treetops. Quite contrary to dire predictions of rain, the sky is open and unfettered oblivion. The moon, however, is creeping over the rim of the mountain, moving from a crescent sliver to its round, full self while I watch, entranced, suddenly able to feel the rotation of the earth. It draws the lake out of the darkness, briefly, trailing its delicate, shimmering touch over the still surface until the trees show as black, absent swaths. And then it is gone – it turns its yellow lamp on the heavens, the sky becomes alive with pale light and the earth returns to blackness…

Utter stillness is not complete silence.
The absolute absence of sound is tense. Unnatural. Oppressive.
Utter stillness, rather, is wind. Moving air over a rippling green lake. The drifting hiss of invisible breakers crashing into ranks of sun-warmed firs. There are games being played, in the trees, behind me. Children, dogs… But here, facing nothing but a vast space of water, relentlessly marching, never seeming to arrive, and beyond it, row upon row of vigilant evergreens, charging up the slopes to cling like barnacles to the leathery grey bones of the earth - reared, twisted skeleton of upheavals past, millennia-slow ripples from the breath of God on the stony skin of the planet.

And all this world is swallowed by that whisper of wind.

Utter stillness is the immobile, infinitesimal decay of life encrusted rock…
Wind moving pebbles….until a mountain is a riverbed.

The wind strips all sound, and, for a moment, all memory of any moment besides this one.Strips me to nothing…not to nakedness, but to stillness. Emptiness. It leaves me here, a one sided spruce. A rock face.

Ever get the feeling that if you could just…stop long enough…just listen long enough, just sink into the silence, the ancient, rippling, living, roaring SILENCE …if I could just sit at the edge of this green lake and hear nothing but the sound of air sifting its way through thousands of fir branches, that if I could just stay in that utter stillness that is so much more than silence ONE MOMENT LONGER…You would get it? You could reach that thing that hovers, the faint trace lost by the flap of an eyelid, you could remember that dream that dissolves upon waking?

If I could sit I huddled in my chair in the wind, my world filled only with water, tree and rock…and wind…if I could stay, and not get bored, and not start wondering if I’ve been here too long, and not start thinking about the job I’ll have to take when I get back, or the German girls in the next campsite, or how I wish I was standing here, not alone, but with another who shared this stillness without breaking it, without releasing my hand…who knew not to speak or expect speech…who knew, instinctively, that this was something sacred and not to be broken…

That something, that thing that is lost when all these intruders rush back in to fill the void…when you must pack the car, and think again of schedules, and obligations, and needs…if you could just get THAT…

SIGH... Part 2

Here’s the thing:

I miss you. It’s irrational, but I do. I’m still a little in love with you, I suppose. Odd…I wonder if it ever dawned on me that I was a little in love with you before that door closed? I suppose I might be “still a little in love” with Ali and Mary and a small scattering of other women. Perhaps this is the same thing. Maybe, once you get just close enough to care, there’s a bit of something that never really goes away.
As much as we may have failed to connect, I guess our misses were near enough for me to get (or feel like I got) a sense of you, a little glimpse of your world. As far as I can tell, it’s a good world. I like it. I don’t know if I could convincingly believe that my little world was remotely compatible with it, but…I sometimes still find myself wishing it was.

I have a new place. It is grand. It is low, and warmly lit, and cozy, and partly underground. It is very much like a hobbit hole, and if you come to visit me (which you should - ring the bell in the back!) I will answer the door and shuffle off to put tea on, much like Bilbo, and you will likely step inside and immediately hit your head on my ceiling , much like Gandalf.
But really, its quite lovely. You should see it. I am already in love with it. I sit at my desk and look out at green ivy and old, red brick, and orange morning sun cut into beams by the arch of wrinkled bark that shades the street. I walk out along a narrow Ivy lined path by the rough brick wall, pass under the trailing fingers of a weeping willow, and i am in a neighborhood that actually lives and moves. I can tip my imaginary hat to the cafe regulars on the way to their morning cup, hop on a bicycle, and be on my way.

This will be a happy place, i should think.

Its funny that simply by going up and down in the elevator wearing a button down shirt and uncomfortable dress pants, people assume i belong here. A lady with big hair looked me up and down and asked if i was new, or she just hadn't seen me before. (Visisble dissapointment on discovering that i do not, in fact, work here.) Another asked me how things were going up there in human resources. "Same as ever!" Barely supressed smirk. Somebody just asked me for permission to go home early. Hey...knock yourself out.

Isaac

Yes, well.. Ignoring, for the moment, all subsequent events...

Since i find myself in a government office, and, like most people in such places have absurd amounts of time on my hands...let's catch up on this Buffalo thing, shall we?

Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo... lets see... besides eating wings, drinking coffee and sitting under trees, what did i go to Buffalo for? Ah, yes. A wedding. weddings, celebrations, visits, people. Isaac's wedding. Isaac. I don't suppose his wedding can be terribly significant unless one knows something about who he is.

About halfway through my time at "the mission" in Buffalo, Isaac's family arrived. Isaac and his siblings had spent the last fifteen years in Taiwan, and spent more of their lives speaking Chinese than English. It was their parents that were on staff, but living, as i was, alone in a building with seven women, the teenage brothers at least offered escape from the overwhelming female-ness, and i found myself frequently resorting to their company. At night we would escape across the tracks to the indelible Nickel City, the local truckstop diner, whose many virtues included 24 hour service, spectacularily hot wings, and, (possibly their economic undoing) unlimited coffee refills without the necessity of buying a meal. During our endless late-night, caffeine-fuelled rambles, i found a rare kindred spirit in Isaac, despite his youth. He was pleased to inform me, upon having persistently harrassed me into taking the test, that we shared the same psychological personality type. We both felt out of place in our worlds - though he had far more obvious reasons for this. We were both oddities to our families. We shared a preference for objectivity, detachment, calmness. Isaac was, in a word, mellow. He viewed life with the subdued wonder of an explorer, an outside observer to worlds, and lives. Studying. Just passing through.
And if that sounds a shade overdone, then I liked him because he had a car. And liked coffee.
Our relationship changed slightly when the kids joined our Korean/English Youth Group. I had to balance my appreciation for their friendship with the need to at least create the illusion of a responsible, teaching adult example. Though i was never very good at looking convincingly "together", and in the end, i think my transparency made the bigger impression.
For me, it was a relief of sorts when that period ended, and Isaac gained "official" adulthood. I could view him as what he'd always felt like - a sort of brother. Though, I never really lost the feeling of responsibility over him, his brother and sister, or any of those kids, really. I suppose i was closer to Isaac than any of the others. I was there for part of the tragedy that was his parents' marriage, for his doomed almost-romance with a Korean preacher's daughter. Through the miracle of email, when he was in Taiwan and i in China, i watched him get engaged, and watched him get dissapointed. I visited him in Taiwan and we talked as equals about hopes, disspointments, plans and futures, between knuckle-whitening motorcyle excursions through Taipei traffic. Eventually, we returned to our respective "homes" in North America, assumed something like normal lives, and lost touch.
And now he's getting married. Actually, he is married. I can't deny i felt a bit of parent-like pride.

Isaac picked me up early for the bachelor party. We drove familar streets by the old UB south campus.I waited in the mess of furniture and unopened boxes in what was to be the young couple's apartment, in old brick building above a luggage shop. I played peek-a-boo with someone's ill-behaved, tuxedo clad child while he tried on his gear. We had barely an hour of personal conversation before he would be swallowed again by the matrimonial whirlwind.

These are interesting sorts of conversations. With no time for small talk, jokes and rambling, one cuts straight to matters of greatest concern, the biggest questions, the sort of things that normally wait until late at night, after at least a few drinks and a thoughtful pause. So minutes after my getting in the car, seeing each other for the first time in four years, we were disscussing his doubts and certainties about marriage and/or his bride, and my near total loss of faith.

Isaac is a good kid.

I suppose, now that he's married, i should stop calling him "kid".

I'm probably not going to, though.

We both know its been along time since we more than barely believed. But we're praying again. Maybe because we really don't know what else to do. And that's something, isn't it?

So, yes. I was in Buffalo. Now i am not. There is much to be said about this. there is much to be said about a number of things. They might be said in no particular order. You will all have to deal with this. ( saying things like that helps me sustain the delusion that anybody else actually reads this.)

In happier news, i spent the whole afternoon sitting under that massive tree, plunking away on my lap-top, looking out over a big grassy field surrounded by other huge, marvelously old and wrinkled trees, watching kids, dogs and big, fat squirrels frolic. Incidentally, when i am disposed to think of heaven, i often picture something very much like that. That evening i found myself a nice little cafe, all wood panelling and antique lamps and nice, comfy chairs. They were even playing Damien Rice when i came in. Felt kind of familiar. And, rather impresively, the young kid behind the big, oak counter managed to make me a pretty decent latte. Not bad at all.

Westjet is amazing. If all airlines in the world were Westjet, the world would a happier place. Or they might, at least, take themselves less seriously.

This means I am now in scenic Buffalo, NY. Buffalo, not enjoying the “benefits” of Alberta’s economy, remains virtually unchanged in the nearly seven years since I lived here. Same old Buffalo. Same old cracked pavement, disappearing beneath a slow motion explosion of sun-baked weeds. Same old rusted metal bridges. Same old rusted brick factories with broken windows. Same old sleepy summer neighborhoods, with their sagging wooden houses and Irish pubs on every corner. People lounging on their porches. Children playing in the street.

I am staying in my friend Deb’s house, a typical south Buffalo home with all ancient hardwood floors, and gorgeous oak doorframes and banisters. Last night I slept, essentially, on a porch, under moonlight, to the tireless buzz of mysterious cricket-like creatures, never seen, but always heard. Even now, mid afternoon, as I sit in Cazenovia Park propped against a towering elm older than many generations of men, that buzz is everywhere, pulsing, rising and falling, but never stopping. The soundtrack of time in Buffalo, of my re-acquaintance with old haunts. Odd that I had forgotten it – but I suppose the locals no longer hear it either.

Not everything is the same. The Shamrock, an Irish Pub also older than many generations of men, is gone, replaced by a Starbucks. People change too, and while I was prepared for this, there are some disappointments. I had visions, I suppose, of the gang all being here, meeting at the airport, or at least, gathering at Deb’s house , catching up, laughing, and reminiscing about those odd, dreamlike days when we were all together, ordinary life turned to magic by shared memory. But many of “the gang” have proven difficult to contact. Besides Deb and her lovely adopted Indian kids, who picked me up from the airport, I have not so much as spoken to anyone else, though Deb and I spent most of yesterday afternoon calling and emailing to let people know I was here, and a few of them were already aware I was coming. I will see many at the wedding, I suspect, but as wonderful as it is to trade jabs with Deb again, and as gratifying as Andrew’s enthusiasm and Tammy’s complete, innocent adoration are, there are others that I miss, and if this trip comes and goes with a handshake and a “how are you” at a wedding…it will be a bit…sad. The inevitable sadness of life moving on. A sadness that feels at home in Buffalo, a town of crumbling relics from happier days- a sort of repository of things left behind.

The answer to THAT question, obviously, is that, somewhere in all that torment and unspeakable agony are hidden moments that almost compensate for the pain. Which brings us to a series of random observations.

To begin with, I'm not sure I've ever REALLY been in love. This is bollocks, of course, because i've clearly been in love at least a couple times, and if i wasn't, i'd have absolutely no excuse for a couple rather extended periods of ridiculous behavior. But a friend and I were disusssing TRUE LOVE, as in THE love of your life, the one you'll never get over, the BIG ONE. I did have at least one that was pretty difficult to get over, but really, from the qualifications given for TRUE LOVE by at least a couple people I've talked to lately, I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened to me yet. Which is good, i guess, because, seeing as i'm presently at least somewhat single, if i HAD been in the BIG ONE at some point, i'd likely still be haunted by the loss. Unless i just don't get as excited about these things as some people. Or unless that particular understanding of love is at least partially flawed. More on that later.

I don't remember what the other random observations were. That one was distracting. And i have a plane to catch. See you in Buffalo.

Observed

A book of love poetry, sitting on a table, bookmarked at a section titled "Bitterness".

A distraught young lady, repeating the same question into her phone, with increasing urgency: "But what was SHE doing in YOUR room?"

Sometimes I have to wonder why we do this to ourselves.

We watched “The Fifth Element” the other night, largely because it happened to be on TV, and none of those assembled seemed to be able to muster the strength to change the channel. A reasonably entertaining film, a tad on the cheesy side, but likeable enough. I remember, though, how thoroughly disappointed I was the first time I saw it. This was some time ago, when I was only mostly bitter and jaded, and, noting that it had been an awfully long time since anyone had attempted anything remotely like a serious science fiction film, I harbored a secret hope that, someday soon, somebody in Hollywood would awaken to the near limitless possibilities opened up by the explosion in computer-aided special effects, and would put all that expensive expertise to some truly imaginative use. Alas, Bruce Willis and Luc Besson were not that someone, even if the film DID have the odd glorious outburst of inspired production design.

The problem was one of expectation. The opening minutes seemed to promise something …bigger. Before the story settled into standard stoic- hero- battling- set-chewing- villain, Bruce-Willis-shooting-up-a- cruise-ship territory. I thought, for a few minutes, that I was going to see something epic, original, perhaps even intelligent, perhaps moving…exploring big questions the way sometimes only truly good fantasy can. I thought I was going to see something I’d never seen before, be sucked into a new and intricate world for two hours, one that I would reluctantly drift out of as I wandered back onto the street, forgetting, for a while, the mundane land we actually inhabit.

It was that film, that imagined film, that I wanted to see. That sweeping drama hinted at by the prologue and the rapid jumble of exotic images that constitute the trailer. Built of unknowns, mysteries awaiting discovery, possibilities…the undefined, the stuff around the edges, just eluding a clear grasp.

Likely, no film Luc Besson could ever complete, in a final, fully exposed form, could hold a candle to it.

Italo Calvino wrote If On a Winters Night A Traveller, about, sort of, a man who reads the first chapter of a novel, and keeps searching for the remainder of the book, only to continuously find different first chapters to different novels. A whole book of beginnings with no endings, all promise with no letdown, (but no satisfying resolution, either) opening limitless imagined stories to the reader, but locking none of them into place.

A good beginning is hard, but not as hard as bringing a good beginning all the way through to a good ending. Beginnings are exciting, because they are new, they introduce new things without necessarily having to explain them, put them in context, or flesh them out. They can be full of mystery, leaving one wondering what’s coming. And what I imagine is coming, in all its tantalizing vagueness, is usually far cooler than what actually plays out.

I just successfully flirted two girls into buying coffee, when they had been disscussing going to Second Cup instead. I have to try that more often. And then ask for a raise.

This me at the cafe, which is starting to feel a bit like a second home, lately. Not sure why, really. I'm not working there that much. Its more central, i guess, and maybe i like being closer to where the action is. Those who've been following current events, er, don't read too much into that. That wasn't what i meant.

I am shifting quietly between worlds at the moment. Its odd...i see some around me going through wrenching agony about their course in life, their uncertain future. I recognize it, but strangely, for once, it isn't me. Not that i see my future laying itself out neatly in front of me...anything but. My life seems to make less sense the longer it lasts...maybe it doesn't bother me anymore. And its a legitemate argument that maybe it still should. Not the wrenching agony part, mind you - i don't find that particularily useful.
I can remember being paralyzed by the baffling array of different paths available to me. Maybe time and choices, (somtimes made out of simple frustration with all the indecision) have narrowed those options, but i still face a number of quite divergant routes my life could take. . And once again, at some point, choices between them must be made.
I had an odd sort of realization this week. I don't think i'll describe the circumstances on here, but i think taking a few steps down a road that represents something i definitely DON'T want, and the simple realization of that, helped make my picture of what i DO want a little clearer. And while this is hardly profound, forming a clearer picture of what you'd like things to look like makes it a bit easier to start building something that vaguely resembles it.

I am surprisingly relaxed.

And i still need new shoes.

Swell. Now that last post makes absolutely no sense. Good work Ali!

Hmm. I'd love to pretend that giant block of empty space at the beginning of my blog was intended to have symbolic value, but really, i just can't figure out how to get rid of it.

I suppose anyone who REALLY wants to know about me will scroll down.

Inconvenient, that the people/events/ things most usefully forgotten are also those that most stubbornly persist in bringing themselves back into the mind.

A slow, strange, slightly sad weekend. Spent in an isolation that was sometimes shared. I don't think its just me, but there seems to be an undercurrent of loneliness in everything and everyone i pass through, even, especially, in the frenzied, desperate jubilance on whyte ave. So many people, living in such close proximity...actual, meaningful connections betweeen them so rare and fleeting. Loneliness amplified the closer we get to another person, purified and distilled to its essence., this ache being the most powerful thing we share, and the one that most eludes communication, something...deep, that never translates into words. I want to say i understand, that i know, that the place i sense they are is a place i've been, and, in truth, am never far from, a home devoid of comfort exept in familiarity. You fill with a compassion, natural and unbidden, springing from recognition of something you know too well. Attempts to speak falter, trail off into the blandly trite and inadequate. Sometimes there are gestures that fare slightly better. Sometimes, all you can give is silence. I get angry at the impotence of my words, but i somehow can't stop them from pouring out , as if volume will fill the hole, as if i can patch an ancient wound with a frail fabric of nice phrases. I hear myself say things that have been said to me, at other times, and didn't offer a speck of comfort then either.

Amongst those i can't help caring about i am aware of significant pain - in some cases faintly sensed, slight, nagging- in others...bald and unmitigated. I am as helpless against it in them as i am in myself. If i could...

Stop me before I...too late.

Its so dead in here I've had to resort to watching Hockey. This is a new low.

I'm beginning to wonder why we bother staying open during these things. I mean, it has to be a pretty slow night to not cover my salary, but still...

Its been a long day, but a good one. It starts with a brisk 530 am ride over the deserted Capilano bridge into the just-risen sun. The valley is swirling with a thick mist. For a moment, i'm not in a city...on a freeway- i'm crossing an ancient ruin over some dream-like, timeless landscape. The impression lingers, as i drive to the job site with Freddie the stoic Ecuadorian mormon. A dense fog blankets the west of the city. The industrial ugliness on either side of the yellowhead is hidden from view. Perhaps, one can only hope, it has ceased to exist. The yellowhead spontaneous dissapearing in a freak dimensional vortex could only improve the city.Our car and the road are alone in the fog. A few tree tops, a slew with some jagged stumps, are glimpsed - i smile and humour the notion that this is a remote highway, surrounded by vast wilderness in all directions.

I work alone all day - which is good, because no one is there to hear what comes out of my mouth the second time i drop my pliers off a fourth floor balcony - but it also amounts to Eight hours of peace and quiet in which to think. I find myself praying as i work. Its been a while since I've been in the space to do it. Praying for friends i am concerned about. Just praying about life. And feeling better for it. Praying to sort out certain things in my life, to know what's going on...to be sure. And i think, tonight, i got at least part of an answer.

Ah, Church...i missed you. It was good to be here. And to think i almost slept through it. MY mental objections and philosophical issues about church remain untouched, yet it feels incredibly good to be back here. Like home. with these people, singing these ridiculous songs. With people who pray, and who trust. Pastor Ron's warm hearted sermon, one of those that gently sinks past my wearied and beaten-down defenses by seeming to have been written to directly address my current state of mind, a pointed response to my last night's broodings. Not the kind of sermon that leaves you feeling guilty for everything you aren't doing that you ought to be, rather a reminder of a different way to live, and the quiet suggestion that i might be going about things in an unessesssarily difficult way.

Once again, a week in which i have managed to insult, offend, annoy, alienate, piss off, and possibly creep out a significant number of the people I know. Must make a mental note, that when one is in this sort of mood, not speaking or attempting to communicate with anyone in anyway is probably a good idea. Without seeking to make excuses for bad or thoughtless behavior, a good chunk of the aforementioned "mood" is likely a result of plain physical exhaustion. Its a poor excuse because it is well within my power to be far less exhausted. I'm exhausted because i'm not sleeping enough while still doing fairly strenuous physical work all day. I'm not sleeping because i'm up talking to people, seeking the comfort of some social interaction, and nobody seems to be around until past my bedtime. So, in a way, the situation should be self-remedying. I stay up talking to people, which makes me exhausted, which makes me grumpy/wierd/just plain boring, which in turn makes people not want to talk to me, which means, if i keep this up, i will drive away all my friends, and finally be able to get some sleep. Yippee!

Well...that's about enough of that. Its a pity, because I enjoyed the comment about needing a witness for insurance reasons, and, as always, the mystification of J. However, I didn't enjoy the reminder of what that particular block of text stood for everytime I logged in, and i don't feel like burying it beneath a torrent of new rambles. Reading it made me sad.

But i'm not going to lose sleep over it.

In other news, I caught a hint of the most wonderful smell on the way home. I couldn't identify it...it was food, it was spicy, it was...indescribably good. And it was totally new, full of the promise of discovering a fantastic new taste, and a fantastic new restaurant, which surely could be the only thing this was, since i was in a business area, with no houses nearby. I stopped and circled, looking for the source. I was going to find wherever that smell was coming from, and ready to pay them anything they wanted for whatever heavenly concoction produced it. Really. That good.

Sadly, my search came to rest on a series of small apartments hidden above a row of shops, a faint smoke issuing from an open window. Denied! If that was a family meal, i need to find out if that family has a daughter...

Must ...survive ...two ... more ....hours ...till ...sleep ...

Nearing the end of two gruelling days of multiple job work. My back and entire right side are in absolute agony. So...tired...yet surrounded by expresso...must...resist...sweet, tempting expresso...Tomorrow, i finally get a couple of days of rest.Sweet, blessed rest... "Finally" seems odd, because, working long hours and all, this week has flown by. It seems like i just got that job yesterday... but i've already worked 6 straight 9-12 hour days! My body definitely feels the milage of more than a day of work...and 6 months of relative inactivity. Ouch...

Physical pain and related whining aside, I had a great day. enjoyed a beautiful morning ride to work. Stood beside a lake, ruffling in the wind, silent except for the geese. Hammered the occaisonal nail. A fantastic family brought us Barbecued burgers and orange juice. The city seems deserted and slow, like a lazy day in a farmer's field. Eveyone is off somewhere else, travelling, visiting, camping. I work in a majestic suburban ghost town, populated by wind and geese. Now it is raining outside my candlelit cafe. I love a city in the rain. A old English friend used to say that a city felt more like a city when it was raining. Sitting in a cafe, listening to the hiss of car tires on wet pavement, watching water run down our broken window, and missing someone. Perhaps missing somone feels more like missing someone when its raining.

I have a job now. Building decks and surfacing condo balconies with some sort of plasticky carpet. I am in debt to a friend for thoughtfully recommending me, saving me from the tedious business of trundling resumes from place to place selling myself, which i loathe. This means i will no longer be despicably poor, and i can afford to pay for a few things, pay some debts, get some bounty hunters off my back, maybe even...buy new shoes. Hmm.

This also means that the list of body parts NOT in contant pain makes for very quick writing. It means i get up at 430 in the morning and work, some days, until 430 in the afternoon. And some lucky days, like today, for example, I get to do the above, run home with just enough time to shower and change, and come here, to the cafe, to work until 11 at night. Get home by midnight, and get up 4 hours later. It means i am more thourougly, bone-crushingly exhausted than i can ever remember being, and have reverted to a basic survival mode. Which means if you cheerfully bounce up to me like a happy little squirrel, and i snap at you, or just growl, don't take it personally. Things like diplomatic and polite social interaction, or patience, or outward perkiness, may not be considered efficient uses of energy.

That said, there's a satisfaction to being back in what one friend calls "manwork". I go into the store to pick up a snack, and i am one of them. Sweaty. Sunburned.Covered in dirt. dust. glue. paint. Wearing a harness for hanging off balconies, dangling a dented metal thermos. Thumping around the gutted carcass of a building, stepping over rubble, drywall, lumber, and insulation recklessly strewn about, swinging a hammer and a staple gun, a huge roll of vinyl decking casually tossed over a my shoulder...
Less glamorous, perhaps, would be getting my fingers glued together, shooting myself in the arm with a staple, my ignorance of the relatively basic operation of power drills, air compressors, and the aforementioned homicidal staple gun. Heck, i can't even figure out my vinyl knife. I routinely get lost in the building, forgetting which floor i was just working on.
At times, i'm forced to consider that, as was suggested, i may be "inescapably white collar".

I'm sure I will learn. I have learned more difficult things. And, as i get used to it, i can only hope it will hurt less. Or i will become completely unable to walk. Or i will fall off a balconey, while stapling my foot to the deck and simultaneously dropping a hammer on my head.

I am working in fresh air. There is sun, true, sometimes blazingly hot, but not flourescant light. Sometimes, blessedly, there is a breeze. When i go to work it is early enough to catch the sun practicing its most dramatic purple-pink cloud canvases. I am working with my hands, building something. Leaving something behind. Doing my part in an intricate symphony of trades and specialities, each contributing their planning and expertise, working together to create...another tasteless, unimaginative box condo, a blight on a once charming rural landscape. But at least I get to dangle off fourth floor balconeys and be one of the last to enjoy that landscape. Horses graze in a field on my left, and to my right, beyond a small cluster of sterile, photocopied housing, gently rolling forested hills, fire-tinged in the morning light. If one can mentally edit out all the "development", this is quite a beautiful place.

And while I'm grimacing at the shooting pains in my back, my leg, my shoulder...etc, i have to remind myself that all that money i'm making will be a beautiful thing, too. And I AM grateful to finally have a job, and to have some prospect of earning my keep.

We are not big enough. None of us. Myself least of all. Despite what we say, i worry that, underneath, we are nothing but a tangled knot of pointed fingers. We are too small for our words, still too small to inhabit this dream.

God, that we could grow into it.

Wash: "Everything looks good from here... Yes. Yes, this is a fertile land, and we will thrive."

"We will rule over all this land, and we will call it... 'This Land'."

"I think we should call it...your grave!"

"Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"

"Ha ha HA! Mine is an evil laugh...now die!"

Me again...

Jeremy contemplates the pitter-patter of little feet...

We are strange, strange people. Of the people in this cafe at the moment, over half are typing away on computers WHILE talking on their cellphones. There is a couple outside, standing right beside each other, each one one immersed in a cellular conversation with someone else...they've both been there for over half an hour( or, perhaps, they were talking to each other? That'd be beautifully absurd.)

Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion: that is the doctrine of Hamlet

-Nietzche

"If you were waiting for the opportune moment, that was it."

-Captain Jack Sparrow

Hope part II

I feel better. Reasons are hard to peg. I have good friends. I am thankful for them. I can tell them where i am and not have to endure self-help book advice. They are silent. They nod. They pray for me. These are good friends. Good people to have around.

I feel better about the House. Cautiously. Maybe, in one small corner of the universe, something is starting to go right. A tiny Something good just might be starting to happen.

I feel better about me. Things that used to tear me apart, bother me a lot less. I can even think they're cute. This is significant progress, and makes certain important relationships in my life a whole lot more relaxed. Almost like getting friends back, or making entirely new ones.

A great deal of ambiguity surrounds one other thing i might have to feel better about. Though hints, allegations and things left unsaid, and potential, nay, expected dissapointments can introduce a fair bit of anxiety into life, somehow, regardless of where it all comes down, it still feels good.

Parentage

I had lunch with my dad today. Somehow, I tend to forget what a great guy he is. I remember a time when I would have accepted any conceivable fate so long as it didn't involve me turning out like my father. Now? I don't know. There are elements of who he is that i could stand to be. Some elements, of course, i could learn from and and hopefully avoid - and I imagine he hopes i will also. I can, however, imagine worse fates than being the person he is now.

Just wish i could relax and live once in a while.

Shema

You who live secure

In your warm houses,

Who return at evening to find

Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,

Who labours in the mud

Who knows no peace

Who fights for a crust of bread

Who dies at a yes or a no.

Consider whether this is a woman,

Without hair or name

With no more strength to remember

Eyes empty and womb cold

As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:

I commend these words to you.

Engrave them on your hearts

When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,

When you go to bed, when you rise.

Repeat them to your children

Or may your house crumble,

Disease render you powerless,

Your offspring avert their faces from you.

Primo Levi (trans. Ruth Feldmann)

Like one who takes away a garment a cold day,
or like vinegar poured on soda,
Is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.

Proverbs 25:20


Take that! Let me have my misery if i want it, dammit!
I'm sorry...I do appreciate the concern. But sometimes a guy's just gotta be sad. Having to try and defend or explain it doesn't help. If you want to make me feel better, just being quiet with me for a moment and watching the snow is perfectly accceptable approach.

No harm done, i hope.

But next time you try to cheer me up...try not to leave bruises.

" And the rent is too high living here between reasons to live..."

You can wake up on a sunny morning, feeling better than you have in months. You can spend your morning classes in a pleasant peace. You can walk in the sun, hearing laughter, enjoying warm air on jacket-less skin, looking forward to enjoying the relaxing company of a good friend. You can, maybe for one of the first times in a pretty long while, be feeling almost ok about things, about your life, about what surrounds you, about the aches of the past and the unknowns of the future.

And in less than ten minutes, you can find yourself saying just about the worst thing that could possibly come out of your mouth. The meanest, coldest, bitterest thought that ever oozed along the sludgy bottom of your brain during your blackest moments somehow finds its way to your tongue.

And suddenly, you're back there, exposed, in all your full-blown ugly, and that wound, which seemed just about to start healing over, is ripped wide open all over again.

And then you're outside, damage done, wondering where the hell it all came from. And if you you'll ever be free of it. If you'll ever get to that place where it isn't there, lurking, waiting for even the tiniest trigger to force itself in, plough under all your good intentions, put the lie to all your efforts to "do the right thing" and have you thrashing and spitting, lashing out at the nearest loved one like a wounded animal.

The past does not cease to exist because we wish it away. We cannot simply chose the version of it we like best, seal it in memory like a time capsule, and move on. It remains. And as much as we'd like to think we can choose a moment to cut it off, and then manufacture our present and future into what we'd prefer them to be, we don't escape what has been.
Even to the degree that we may seem to succeed in making fate our slave, our past remains. It inhabits us in shadows and continuing threads. We react against it, reconstrue it moment by monent, we unknowingly mimic and repeat . But is there. We are what we are because it was.
We try to twist it to fit while it is busy twisting us.

That is to say, we are not, and will never be, fully "grown up".

SIGH.

Interpret that as you will.

Hmm. THAT was interesting. I'm not sure if i know what I'm doing, or if i should be doing what i am. I'm not sure if i even know where i'm going with this. Nevertheless, it sure beats sitting at home and contemplating...well, what i have to contemplate.

AND i got some frickin' amazing Chinese food. Life could be worse.

I am an observer and a recorder, perhaps, a subtle commentator, on experience. I am not a rigorous analyst. I not one for shoe-horning the mystery of reality into categories, into an all embracing schema for the world, even if that schema is one that claims to deny that is what it is doing. What is, IS and I question whether our efforts to master it, to lay down what and how it is, and what it isn’t are not doomed from the start. I am an impressionist- into senses, not exact structures. Feelings over rigorous explanations and attempts at exact description. I know the world as what I sense it to be. My sense of how it SHOULD be. That sense carries more weight to me than any detailed, intricately worked out analysis.

This is my approach to art. I paint on instinct, a feeling for what looks and feels right, what “works” and what doesn’t. Some intelligence underlies that, to be sure. Knowledge I have absorbed intellectually about design, composition, contrast, and colour. But if I think too much about those things while painting, my art suffers. Such information works best in the background, feeding itself unconsciously into my aesthetic sense.

This is also, naturally, how I prefer to approach others' art. I want to experience it, let it wash over me, and draw my impressions from that, not from rigorous examination of technique or of the ideas supposedly represented. I am interested in what art, literature, architecture, or film, even religion, makes me feel.

This is why the approach school makes me take to, say, Shakespeare, feels like violence.

Forcing one’s will upon it, invading it and plundering it in search of “what it means” or “what I can get out of it”. Literature, art, as yet another commodity, another resource to exploited and “developed” by man until whatever beauty it once possessed is obscured by viewing platforms, casinos and tourist hotels, mining operations and oil rigs.

Is such a reservation just an idealistic excuse for intellectual laziness?

I don’t know. But the activity of school as I am experiencing it feels increasingly invasive and unnatural. I have increasing difficulty imagining making a life of it.

Hmm. I'm getting exceedingly bored of this....

So things are settling into a sort of normalcy, if normal means always having a huge paper or something you really should be reading hanging over your head 24-7.
Nothing to rant about, I'm afraid. My angst is taking a break until school lets up enough for me to bother with it.

I got to present my Augustine paper at the conference this morning, which was definitely a slightly intimidating first. Went reasonably well, for all that. They went easy on me.

I got to spend a few hours with two of my most, and one of my very least, favorite people.

But hey, I got free pizza out of the deal.

Hope

Nope. not so much.

This is getting old. Another night of lying on my back in the dark , listening to my hamster run.
I haven't touched coffee since yesterday afternoon, but now, even in the morning, my heart is racing. I slept for only two hours, but I am wide awake. Good for getting to class on time. Bad for writing three papers this weekend. Its possible this could be the aspirin i took last night as a desperate bid the clear the nagging ache that presides over all attempts at rational thought, or more likely, just the stress. If the drugs are keeping me up, its all they're doing. The headache remains untouched.

My two hours of actual sleep this morning were cut short by my alarm, which was telling to me to get up for prayer, something we've been trying to do in again in the mornings, and something that frequently puts me in a better state of mind. I hop out of bed, figuring I can join the others, pray for ten minutes, and hop back in bed for another hour and a half before i have to go to class. But...nobody else shows. Which is fair, because I missed the last one, as we moved the time up and i forgot to change my alarm. Not like i need them to pray, anyway. But i am now wide awake again. I try to go back to sleep, but it isn't long before I realize that just isn't happening.

Sigh. Sometimes I don't know about this.

well, i am still up, rather unwisely, having just begun to recover from the last few days illness. But i have just finished reading a novel for class. Not bad, for Can lit, but bloody depressing. I have no immediate desire to sleep with that on my Brain.

In other news, honesty is, i have decided, the greatest thing ever. Well, at the very least, it is rare and refreshing. To be able to discuss a delicate matter openly, like a mature adult, is an incredible relief. I hate dancing around real issues with hints and implications. I hate decoding polite-speak, and the even more nefarious I-don't-want-to-hurt-your-feelings-speak. I hate games. And I hate waiting. Even when the result of such open discussion is a mild dissapointment, a weight is lifted just having the cards face up on the table. Even when I see I have a losing hand. I feel relieved, relaxed, freer.

I think this may signal a policy shift for Jeremythepolite.

Hello?

Where is Everybody?

So I began today crawling out of bed to rush to Church, and ended it shivering and coughing in the back of a police van.

I'll leave you to ponder the intervening events while i get to sleep. I am extremely sick, and missing class tomorrow isn't an option. Submissions for the explanation of the above will be accepted. Preferably ones more exciting than the truth.

Ok, so you're not all bastards. A couple of you brought me spicy noodles and donuts. i can't hate anyone who brings me donuts. And spicy noodles? Oh yeah. The way to my heart is unquestionably paved with noodles. And you did it without reading my blatant, self pitying hint! Bonus points. You just might be Ok in my books.

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.....