Paris, Until Now

This is actually part of a lager unfinished piece but I liked it, so here it is!

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And so it hits me now. Finally removed from my desolate stupor with enough time to find this elusive piece; I love this place. The soft light, the tall trees, the endless love. Romance in volleying capitulations, undulating between and in-between the living. A cool smoked cigar on delicate lips, morsels and bushels of timely placed ice cream cones, elongated baguettes and fresh moist cheese. Broken but moving, this place keeps its own time and let's you know, as soon as you're not watching, that it is about to change hands again. This is fall completing itself, like late summer. How many years have I been waiting for a season like this! One that picks and pecks and peeks in at you and calmly, warmly and asks you how you've been. An old friend, a warm heart with a steady hand, both of you out there living an independent yet shared existence.

Paris je t'aime. Not just for what you pretend to be in all your pretentious indignation and apprehensions, but in your sprawling madness, to slip my hand inside you and my head around a new avenue. To be volleyed upwards to the heavens with cascading gratitude. To be ignored in your dim light. . .

I love the way you part for me like a setting sun. Only releasing the part of your charms you want me to see. The cartography notes of your beauty, tattooed behind my eyes from past lives. You are a sheltered proper women, content to be called, to be photographed and invited to all the best parties. But as for what what you really want, that is to remain completely misunderstood. And we share that much don't we? Our language-less communication is one of mutual respect and curiosity. You are not the people within you who want to be you, or those who have painted your ancient walls. You are my Paris. You are my sin. Your are my misery. You are my despair. And right now you're my only hope.

But you wear hope well, like a rising balloon. Up and upward the strings of twine and rolling ribbons gather together with all those released before and after me. You wear them well, your loft coloured inflation's, all that hope spinning in the passage of time you know too well. Paris je t'aime, je t'aime beaucoup. You silence me.

La Havre

Alone in the early morning on a cold train station floor I am waiting to go home. When suddenly a twitch, a thought, not exactly spontaneity but impulse urges me to my feet and ferrets me faster than my still groggy brain can defend to an electronic ticket terminal. Normandy, Ancourteville-sur-Héricourt, Bennetot, Cailleville, Bordeaux-Saint-Clair, La Havre. Next train. La Havre. Forty euros. Can't be that far? What time do the trains return? Two PM. Four PM. Six PM. No worries. No worries. All day. Card, pin, purchase – laugh.

Twenty minutes to wait, looking at a map I find where I am going. The west cost, province of Normandy, going to the beach. The cold Atlantic beach. And while this still doesn't seem to be getting any easier, the promise is that it might just get better. . . .

We depart with a sigh.

Shhhhhhhhhh....... Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.

I've always assumed that if you can work past the fear of making a decision you have conquered it. While usually taking action is enough to alleviate a fear there is also another type fear, one that persists past initiative and into being. One that tears away at your senses, dulling and diluting experience into pinhole visions of the back of the seat in front of you. A heightened anxiety that cages perception into a routine of check, check, double check, check. Waves of fear that something or someone will attack at any moment unless you are constantly aware of all the things that there are out there to be afraid of.

I came out here, thinking I would find a piece of the puzzle. I found more gaps. More holes looking for pieces to fill them and a big sign that says LET IT GO. You want it all and you want it now. You want to understand and to be understood. You want to have lived through, what you are living through to feel good for having lived through it already. Impetuous child. Little girl with dreams seen out of a corner of the rear view window. A sliver of blur; rocks, trees, mountains, melted crayons and a plastic snake you got at the Zoo. Driving head long, laying down, trying to touch it all without your seat-belt on.

Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.

We arrive with an inhale.

Le Havre is the end of the line, industrial and unfamiliar. Not particularly quaint. Not like Toulouse. Not like Nice. Not like the Loire valley or the Effiel Tower. Its is utility, created in grace. I sit in a park, large chestnut trees dropping woody rounds all around me and wonder what roasted chestnuts taste like and if you can buy them in the streets of Paris in the winter. I like this park. It looks fun, without being fun at all. Concave and enclosed, it feels particular and established.

My wondering takes me diagonally straight through the centre of town 

- shop, store, bakery, empty mall, empty parking spots, dogs walking owners, owners walking children, grey skies, opening up, lazy fountain, three signs L'Hotel Ville, more parks, empty allies, stretched dirty awnings, buttered dough, sweets, rainswept gravel, horns of quite a distance, strange looks, green coat, garbage bins always in the way, small sidewalks, smaller cars, salty air, ocean brine, humid, dank, huddled, open streets, closed houses, construction down main street, port city, large cranes, running trains, barge, bilge, a city begging, respect me - 

and finally the coast. On the way, fruit and a bottle of water, washing them in the bag. Quite ingenious if not abnormal. I've sat at two coasts now on two different oceans in the past two weeks and just like before something unbelievably soothing takes over me in the knowledge that I have reached the end. There is no going further.

Across the foreground kites start stutter and double over in the maritime wind and though I feel full in the company of strangers, I am still alone. Deliciously, deservedly alone. Beautiful arcane isolation. I love you and the thoughts you bring and the moments we share together. A deep leafy tree, looking up and under at great growing oaks of wood and fibre stretching strength over top of me. Mythical creatures, dining in the dirt with their heads in the heavens; too earthy too live to glorious to die. Ritual like tombstone stumps mark where all the good creatures have gone down.

Companionship alleviates the guilt associated with being alone. But I am not afraid to be alone. I am afraid when I am alone.

I don't have much more time. But I don't want to to go back. Want to press on. Goodlessons. Cooldays. Lightrain. Blurry skies marching slowly in the breeze. Pen bleeds in the droplets. I feel something refreshing, almost OK, though still sick like too many cigarettes or unwashed grapes, but happy to be here. Proud. . .

Now its not just time but my pen that is running its course. These words and thoughts and memories continue to click away unyielding to the outside world. I feel stronger somehow in the darkroom convalescences of this pen and novelty of it all. A small work of not much consequence, but mine all the same; and now yours. 

The Louvre

A stolen moment on display, two lovers making a pact between pursed lips - while I make love to this ice cream sundae. I feel sick. Here is all the beauty in the world. Here is the good, the bad, the wicked and the desperate. Here are my dreams, my hopes and fears. Here is Paris, spilling out before me and I can't even look up from my sundae.

I once swore that if there was only beauty before me, if only my purpose in this moment was meaningful, I would not want for any of the consumerist platitudes that distracted me; and so here I am, with all that is brilliant and golden in our age. All the resplendencies of class, wealth, intelligence, angst, struggle, poverty, and enjoyment lay at my feet  And I feel nothing.

All I can think about is the thick creamy mixture of dairy fat turning into broad protestations in my belly and how much my coat clashed and how much my feet hurt and how much money I had spent and how tired I was and how cold it was. . . and miserable. Miserable. Swimming in fog and chaos. It is my imbalance that brings forward my obsessions, my fears.  I can feel it. The temporary sense of well being, of being well, it overtakes me with every chocolaty bite. Bright pleasure secretions balancing out the darkness. Is this really what it means? The pointless suffering and the end-less-ness of it all? This factory line of work and sacrifice and emptiness?

NO ONE SAID THIS WAS GOING TO BE EASY.

Well isn't that just the point? No one says anything at all. You are just thrust here into the unwelcoming world and given some fridge magnet philosophy in which to get by.

SEE THE BEAUTY IN EVERY MOMENT. LIVE LIKE THIS MOMENT IS YOUR LAST. DANCE, LAUGH, SING LIKE NOBODY IS WATCHING. . . 

And what about the inbetween?

The one too many donuts and senseless bullying? The parents and the institutions and the friends who could give a shit about you and you know it. Because if you took off that Harvard grin and the cheap way you make them feel Oh! So! Good! about themselves and got down on your fucking knees and begged for money in the street, with the other gypsy's and hobos and pirates, they'd walk over you too. And right on into the nearest Tommy Hillfiger to buy themselves a pair of jeans and forget that no one really gives a shit about them either.

But I digress. I mean, after all, I am at the Louvre. . . 

Watching TV in The City

 I actually wrote these over the last summer. I am starting to revisit some of the books I have filled up and at least start some preliminary editing. Stuff I post here is never really `finished` I just like to share things as they are happening.

Watching TV

Watching TV

Won`t get those feelings out

Stupid drunk girl

Stupid saboteu.

I need to know who my mother is,

to find out,

What`s wrong with me.

The City

It Rains.

Heavily.

But I have already described the rain
- heaving, unyielding –

maybe it`s nostogia,

maybe it`s romanticism,

but I sit in it,

wet, uneven and exposed,

and dry in inside.

This City is a blister on my foot.

I live here – so I must navigate it.

The rain dulls my pen,

as these words dull my senses.

I want to look out and fear nothing,

see everything.

Apples and blues, demons with holes for eyes, pigs in drag.

I want to know them.

I want to love them.

Wholly.

Equally.

Brothers.

But I fear them.

My arrogance twists and steals my clarity.

Self satisfaction.

How many times down this shit hole? Do you think?

Before I get it right?

But alas,

these are just words.

Empty and common.

Just like me,

I suppose.

And as for them?

I am drained.

I feel the weight of a million un-lived lives in my gut,

and the taste of hope of my tongue.

I want life,

but it alludes me,

like consciousness alludes a dog.

Can you blame him?

Night rolls in quick,

colder now.

Rain splashing in aggressive pellets.

All the mediocrity of my life,

rolling through my mind,

and I wonder.

Is anything different understood,

In the rain,

out at night,

alone?

Alone.

I`m cold.

And that at least has to stand,

for something.

Transvestites Make Me Philosophical

I exist; which is too say I have a series of experiences, experienced in a linear fashion, which are impossible to understand fully unless you experience them yourself. These include both internal and external experiences of emotion, time, maturity, intelligence and perception. But as my life begins to compound into a life lived I am left wondering if there really is any value in experience beyond the inherent developmental value to the experincer? 


What I am, in a convoluted way, trying to ask is a question about loneliness and a life lived in conjunction, or 'in experience' with another. Despite the fact that human beings are fundamentally unable to fully understand another existence as a personal experience, the question still remains; why do we all seem to innately have a desirous nature for companionship and how does a dualistic existence ( that is to say one that is both simultaneously introverted and extroverted, though necessarily more extroverted) change the experience of experience?


As a person confident in there ability not only to do things alone, but too be content doing so it still amazes me how persistently I call the value aloneness into question, generally through the following train of questioning:


Will anyone ever care that I know these things? That I have these passions? Does anyone else share these passions, ideas and desires? Where does this experience go, after it is finished being experienced? Does it still have value? Does it even have a value outside of me? Is there someone who will come to know me as I know myself?


In summary:


Will my experiences be understood and valued by another individual ?


I know that in many cases my exaggerated sense of self-importance and introverted nature preclude me from having copious and gregarious types of relationships, but I also have a suspicion that this fear, of being valued as an individual for our individuality, is not something I struggle with alone. 


So, I leave a question to the universe. If I wish to be independent, self reliant, self motivated, educated, successful, creative and productive, exclusive of whether I have companionship in which to celebrate and share these experiences, then why do I sense that there is something missing in the experience of experience experienced alone? And what do these feelings of loneliness, anxiety, fear, seclusion, paranoia, and depression mean? Are they an experience? Or a symptom?


Just a thought.

There is a Peace

Incomplete and perpetually restless I press on
for a morsel of the being of being,
that lives
that breaths
and moves outside
and within,
these footstep soaked streets
this foreign territory
this familiarity
and in these Dionysian entrails,
spilled onto the table,
between raw fish
and foamed beer,
and between syllables
of a conversation
I am all to desperate to have;

There is a peace.

There is a peace.

There
is
a
peace,

and it speaks.

Musings on Happiness

This isn't new, I actually just found this while I was looking for something else on my hard drive, but I thought it was worth posting.

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Sometimes we try too hard to have all the right answers. The pain and grief associated with the unexpected often comes from our own inability to accept that sometimes, we just don’t know. When unexpected crops up, we often have a habit of criticizing our lack of foresight or our mistakes. What we seem to be forgetting however is that it is these unexpected moments, these changes in the winds direction, that allow us to really heal from the things that bind us to the past and follow us in the present. It takes time to acknowledge and embrace moments of change but eventually, everything does. Eventually, everything you know and love and rely upon right now will change, grow, die or disappear. There is no certainty and there is no foresight when it comes to the utter complicated mess of existence.

If someone was to have said to me at thirteen, this is what your life will look like I would have been extremely disappointed. What I am trying to illustrate here is not that I feel that my life lacks something today, but about the expectations one has and how they constrict the capacity we have to be happy. Under my thirteen year old guidelines I could have and would have only been happy in a very specific set of circumstances., This idealism, this sense of right and wrong about how your life is 'supposed' to look worked to construct my interpretations my own happiness. How could I possibly be happy, if my life isn't exactly what it is supposed to be?

Its amazing then, that we even find any happiness at all, with the plethora of insane and impractical expectations and ideals floating around our minds. Constantly comparing this current reality with the one created in our imagination. Well, I think if I were to be completely honest I would have to admit that all those thoughts -the ideas and dreams of what does or doesn’t make me happy- change. They change and have been changing all along. They are in every way transient and unpredictable. As I reach back through my memories trying to coagulate some kind of meaningful consistency, I find none. If I am really honest what I remember loving the most as a child was drawing or crafts. Glitter and glues, mulch-coloured pens and a world of possibility. Then dance, merely by happenstance then somewhere in there writing, poetry, philosophy, academics, business, law, religion, marriage, children, materialism, travel. . . All these things and more crossed and crisscrossed my emotional and intellectual conceptions of what I thought would make me happy. And you know what? It is only in this moment of disillusionment, for all the things I have ever held dear, that I realize just how impractical these ‘ideas’ of what makes me happy really are.

I have lost time being miserable. I have lost beautiful, precious time wasting my thoughts and my feelings on how ‘incomplete’ my life is without one thing or another. If I had just had more stable parents, more money, more time, more freedom. The hours whittle away beside my failure to meet my own demands. The things that hurt will always hurt. Change will still come as a surprise and will still cause me to question my ability to govern my own life. I don’t know that I won’t look back through the past and try and divine some meaning . Still try to find some kind of linear evolution leading upwards towards. . . well anything. But I can’t hang on anymore to the belief that I know what happiness means, or that I am able to facilitate change in its favour.

The Harder You Try - Charles Bukowski

Picked up a book of Bukowski's poems in Soho this weekend and this one has been etched in my mind ever since. The last four lines will live side by side in my consciousness with the indellable words of Walt Witman in his poem Song to the Open Road:

". . .forever alive, forever forward."


the harder you try

the waste of words
continues with a stunning
persistence
as the waiter runs by carrying the loaded
tray
for all the wise white boys who laugh at
us.
no matter. no matter,
as long as your shoes are tied and nobody is walking too close
behind.
just being able to scratch yourself and
be nonchalant is victory
enough.
those constipated minds that seek larger meaning
will be dispatched with the other
garbage.
back off.
if there is a light
it will find
you.

Nap Time

I sit here in a moment which my life feels out of my reach. In which I look at the conundrum of daily existence and with an final exasperated breath I say not just why, but how? How do we go on living? If we cannot connect to a happier place inside ourselves and inside the world then what is the point? There is no hope for someone who does not have the emotional, or psychological will to participate in life as it is designed; in yet craves every ounce of its existence. Everything to want costs money. Everything in life costs money. There is a price to pay for everything. My 'head-space' as it were is just an excuse for my procrastination from the artistic endeavours I don't want to know I'm going to fail at. Everyone fails. Everyone who tries anything fails, because none of us ever really figure this out. We just keep plodding along day, after month, after year, after generation, after epoch. Down, down, down.

I am a morcel in a menial spectrum.

I remember feeling good. Sometimes. I also remember a lot of feeling like this. So tired of feeling like this but I honestly don't know how to stop. Though I am not without my faults, two of which being fear and a fragile ego, but I am not stupid or insincere. I am trying to have fun. I'm trying to do this right – by me. I'm trying to have a good and happy life. I'm trying to access the fundamental piece of my soul that makes me burn and let it go. You want to sing? Sing baby! You want to dance? Dance baby! Learn, grow discover, create. . . . burn, burn, BURN!!!! But only after the dishes are done. And only after work, and before yoga, and after the kids are asleep and you've paid the bills and saved for retirement and made a nest egg and saved for a rainy day and put a down payment on a house and bought a nicer car and right after the promotion that they promised next year. Yes. In between all that very important business and before you are too old don't forget to give yourself some time to do wants important to you. Only without merit, or resources or direction. Only with out love, true love and guidance and support. Only without anyone having a clue, how fucked up you really feel. How lonely. How lost. How weak and scared and alone you really are. Staring at the inside of your squishy mushy brain and all its little whims and how you are the biggest victim of your own stubbornness. You are the biggest victim of your addictions and evasive personality. And how hard you fight, everyday to give yourself the opportunities to be happy and explore the avenues of life you wish to suck up. But how even with everything perfect and every moment of everyday available to you, how the time just slips by like ceaseless waves. Untouchable symbols lapping up an invisible shore.

And how you truly feel like you have nothing to live for, if you are going to be as useless as you feel right now. Useless to meet people head on and with honesty. Useless to say sorry. Useless to allow yourself to let someone down. Useless to cry. Useless to give. Useless to try. Hopeless and so, incredibly, hopeful. It burns a mustard seed hole in the pit of your lungs like little a little firing squad. Shwing Shwing Shwing. Past the body and right straight down.

And there is lies. And so do I.

Cute Kittens!

Symmetrically insane. There isn't enough space in the world, to give me the room I need to breath. Can't think in this mess. What is it that I am looking for!? A wispy line of forgiveness, it tempts me to the troughs of exsistencelessness. There are no answers there, but it feels so good, to sit inside a suicide. Feeling the weight level off, slinking away calmly like hot sand through outstretched hands.

I would like to say this is a crisis. A breakdown for which, or at least from which something can be saved, but it is not in the moments of distress and agony that the call of the emptiness sings the loudest. For in those moments we are filled, at least, with something. Though a gaping wound bleeds and burns, one is aware that pain is transitory and finite, flesh up against the knowledge that it passes.

It is in the quiet solitude of daily existence – over breakfast, the middle of a gregarious burst of laughter, in a lost passage we weren't really reading – that the real threat pokes through. A strange paradox, more hope in hopelessness, than in this handshake.

Currently Unreflected

Breakfast still lingers below the exotic palate of lunch. The vestiges of my old familiar friend is a warm shadow.

No control, we have no control.

Unfamiliar, quickly becomes recognizable, even if still not understood.

It's no ones fault. This is just the way it is. A dream is an inherently tragic thing. It begs to disappoint. To be let out into the world to be crushed. To survive a dream must be flexible. It must be able to see itself reflected back in failure. And this failure belongs to no one. It is merely an antiquated repetition of the course of time.

History and anthropology. My condolences to the Queen, on this, the day of tragic consequences in the House. But perhaps, tragic is not exactly accurate. Perhaps we would be better served, if we merely said what we really thought: this House, is a house of cards.

*Shwoooosh*

Tumble, tumble – tombe bebe.

Cat's cradle, this world belongs to dog spoons and the rest of the cutlery drawer. Though of course we all know; we don't save the silverware in a fire.

Women and children first.

Only if there are enough boats. . .

But I don't come equipped with life rafts.

Too much baggage.

But anyway, the prevalent winds say. But anyway, how much can you pay? Indeterminable amounts, in indefinite increments. As much as you need. Just give me what I want. We all get let off, and we all get lead on. Head on. It's the only way to see through. Head on, this beautiful day – is not for me, inside this crucible, locked into the falsities, sucking them back like gob-stoppers – everlasting. I am Slugworth, you are Slugworth . We Are Slugworth. Only Charlie. Only baby. Not me, I'm just the damage done.

But Anyway. But Anyway.

But Anyway.
But Anyway. But Anyway.



It's not decision day.

Freedom Rights, For Seagulls

Did you know that seagulls are racists?
Brown against white
Turf wars spill out before me on the banks of the English Bay.
Light against dark,
and a small territory,
of an invisible square.

Do you think they would kill him?
If he continues to refuse?
The imposed order of things?

Scatter

Horizon clouds
Like snowbanks from the shore.
Drift-less puffs of cold steam.

Free will,
the power to surprise.
Sailing ships in the sky with rotary blades,
cuts the power.
And blankets the atmosphere.
In and out,
out and in,
in and out and in and in and in. . .

The endless struggle.
Factory workers of the sky,
dropping bombs of water,
into steam.

It ends here.
The beginning and the end ends
In all moments,
As this moment is.

White fought back.
The larger of the darkest having gone,
he picked a protegee brown to unleash his repressed emotions on.
His relinquished territory reclaimed in the name of opportunity,
Like all good things.

Though it may remain a question of personality,
not consciousness. . .
I can't prove the gull is angry.
I can only argue he has the capacity to be.

Water wind is always remarkably cold.

Ground pepper shores.
And salt washing constantly inwards.
Spice of the earth,
Below my feet.

And now the sun.
The passage of time unbearably bearable.
Is this all there is too it?
Just a request?
And a promise,
That tomorrow there may, be?

Smoky processed pork, does not feel as good as it smells.

Mum, you're son's going to remember this forever,
Days at the beach,
At least somewhere in his mind.

I remember feeling safe like that.
The cleanliness of security,
It washs perceptions dry
Through a wet wind.

This will always be an experiment,
this will always be guttural.
It's how I was trained.
Yes, you should do well,
But how do you feel?

Oh the places you'll go!
Forgot it was a metaphor,
and lost it's own subtly,
along with mine.

But here I am.
Not quite alone,
but wishing I was
at least out of range.

Are you supposed to swim in this?
Doesn't seem right. . .
How does he know?

Speed boats across the elastic tundra
knows not that I am here,
Nor what it is speeding towards.
All he can say is brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. . . .
Which I interpret to mean,
I love you.

Harold.
You're a good man,
if just a bit broken.
I think age might age you - but I'll never know.
Thanks regardless,
For all the fish.

The oppressed seagull thanks you too.

Some Thoughts - In Transition

I don't know how to pull back any further. I'm trying to let go but I feel entranced by my own past. Time is a nightmare moving into the future - keeping no secrets. I hold on, on, on. Past the point of no return, past mere logic and into sleep. Past these dead desires that manifest in purchases I'm too dumb to see. My hands are old. Sinew rigidity. They look like my mothers, they remind me of my father. As everything falls out of place I expect something; and as anyone can tell you, that is my first mistake.

I expected you to call – earlier. I expected to get here – earlier. I expected something – different. Only the mental space between here and there and its passage will alleviate the guilt, the confusion and the lies; I've told myself.

Feeling mostly narrow now. Narrow mind, narrow eyes, narrow steps. I keep shaking my head and taking deep breaths, I keep working through. But except for a temporary understanding between me and the universe I generally remain unavailable. I remain closed and struggle through the dirt to follow up to the surface, the cracks of light I see through the muddle.

I felt more myself at home, in love with the idea of leaving. In love with the fact that I had met my own escape. The psychological worst case scenario come true – I'm trying to run away from myself. Running from these thoughts and the perpetual sense that I am in some way being undersold on life. That there is something in the world and it is saying I. . . CAN'T.

But it is my own shadow. I see that now. My skin, my own boundary and all the fucked up miscreants inside that flow like clockwork. My body factory. Squish, squish – snap. Squish, squish – snap. Snap.

And there it goes.

It's dark outside and you're too afraid. Have to impress somebody. Have to make good on the promise to yourself that you won't deny how much you LOVE . . . EVERYONE.

Bullshit. Love is like blue cheese. And just like love, some people will get that. And some people won't.

But I get it. Loud and clear – coming in like the bloody bells of Notre Dame. BING! Time to move. BING!! Let's go. BING! Faster now. BING! Pushing forward. BING! Ceaseless. BING! Careful. BING! Watchout. BING! BING! BING BING! BING!

Fire's out.

Feeling hollow.

Oozy, doozy brains. Shhhhhh. Shhhh. Quiet now.

I will complete the puzzle. I will manifest joy. I will attempt at living. I will die.

Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.

I will complete the puzzle. I will manifest joy. I will attempt at living. I will die.

Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.

I will complete the puzzle. I will manifest joy. I will attempt at living. I will die.

Shhh.

Stanley Park

New video from my long afternoon in Stanley Park. . . apparently I make video's now! haha

http://www.youtube.com/user/thewonderemporium?feature=mhum

Moving to France

So at the end of this week I am moving to France for a year. But in the meantime I am in Vancouver, BC enjoying the uniqueness that is the westcoast:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1vgTo7VGnM

More to come. . .

Seattle Etc. . .

There’s a strange dimness to the light in a City where it always rains. As this languid night spills out before from this top floor Seattle hostel I notice life begin to come into focus. No longer bleary eyed and staggering through routine I look around, and bite down.

I cannot begin to understand why I am spurred so into darker and darker tunnels. Alice, the white rabbit and I, spinning, spinning toward infinity, crashing casually into the darkness and laughing all the way down. At the bottom, through the tiny, giant door and from across the room she looks at me; the lesbian on the lower bunk. So I write her away. Words hit the page like bullets exploding fear into tangible, edible bits. Shrapnel, battleship battalions lay in a wake of creative ruin on empty white space.

Finally, I feel it.

I am here.

I am here.

I am here.

I place the world upon the page and it is defined away; my poetic justice.

In this common room all the languages of the world commence and fall apart on my ears. It’s a hot bed of narcissists, refractories, languishers and hooligans. Wayward children lost in a mess of concrete, looking for the last frontier of affection, looking for someone to pass along the minutes in loudness - drowning. Choking in street side noise and going down in the spatial discombobulation experienced as the lost, in a generation of losers. The husk of a patrician cob thrashed off for the more valuable internal structure - kernels in perfect rows. Unstated fears sweep like marine tides in and out, in and out and playful around the thoughts and minds of a few kids trying to get home. Home. The allegory for my sadness. The end of a rainbow, always in my peripheral.

But we can't go home. Not really. Our homes are just old families with new lives. They do not hold us but in a photograph on comfort side furniture. Whether they left us, or we left them, there was point of no return. A point when the promise of something more mocked us into this gasoline fueled hiatus. That promise mocks me now; from the street, through the window and into the space stained sheets of this hostel bed. Sadness mocks me. Anger mocks me. And this city mocks me with its potential. And mine.

I grind the reality of this place like dirt between my teeth. Pumiced and chalky it pastes between my gums. It tastes and sounds like a place where things began in earnest, rather then in vain, like the marketed wonders of cleaner avenues. Cold open markets splay out in front of me as I watch the eyes, of people watching things. I watch their mouths, lazy gum worms form audibles that pass redundantly, repetitively through weather, children, decorating, banks, doctors; weather, children, decorating, banks, doctors; weather, children, decorating, banks, doctors. These days beat away like a loose snare and, as clichéd as it sounds, Grunge does makes sense here, even if it is 10 plus years gone.

These streets are a migraine. Macaroni and cheese. Chalk silhouettes of artistic trials on long sprawling outdoor shelves. Bacon, boxes, lilies, doorknobs, doorstoppers, door-hangers, odd sods, whole loaves, half buns, panini’s, crepes de banane, ripe oranges, perfect grapes, warm pies, dates, fruits, figs, wine, beer, truffle oil soup - mannequins in a street side masquerade. Layers and layers of things and rings and ideal idleness. This City sinks and is lifted, not by spirit, but by the noise of its own existence. It thinks. This City thinks. . .

Jumping Snowflakes

Something happened last night.

These gigantic, feathery snowflakes fell coating my small universe in a deep sugary paste. They weren’t your regular snowflakes. They didn't fall with the same razor like precision. They floated adrift, almost flying on their own, like big fluffy clumps of pollen. . . or cat hair.

I used to regularly make up metaphors as child about the natural phenomenon around me. The willow tree magician, the sewer ditch river that went on to a land of endless playground equipment and no bedtimes; if I could just sneak between the grates. I remember no other time feeling more grounded, more sure of myself, then with my bear feet in purple rubber boots dug deep into the murky, mushy creek bottom . My immortality against the current, the water washing in over my rubber toes. Within the imperfection of nature there is a symmetry, a feeling of creativity. My Papa taught me that every time he lifted me up to drink raindrops from the pine needles, or pulled to the side of the road to listen to the sunset whippoorwills in silence.

What do we see, when really look at the life around us? Only in childhood do we ever have the presence of mind to really allow ourselves the time to sit in a stream of thoughtless contemplation. I have had almost a month now to do nothing but allow my thoughts to drift and wander. To tap into the thoughtless. Giving myself permission to not worry, to not concern myself with that which is beyond my control and especially that which is not within the realm of what contributes to my happiness. Now, winding down to the end of my self-prescribed exodus I have a renewed anxiety. I have learnt that there are two kind of happiness. That which is extreme, a fleeting joy, a hyper feeling, a busyness in your gut. And that which is a contentment from being ok with what you are. I wouldn’t say I have been overly happy this last month. I wouldn’t shout my joy from the rooftops or go running through the street hugging, loving and exuding. But something of a quiet whispering pride has appeared. It sits and warms in the pit of my soul. It spills slowly towards laugher and spurs me out of bed early, when I have nothing to wake up for. It dulls my material needs, when I have nothing to satisfy them with. It is a bedrock of self knowledge that has nothing to do with ‘knowing who I am’ and everything to do with being happy with the fact that I am.

I don’t want to lose that again.

But how does one simply get off the proverbial band wagon? Without ending up homeless, poor and half starved? Is there some compartment, some private berth on this train that I can find a sense of contentment in? Because all I see right now is a giant ceaseless steam engine; and the world passing by my window.

I want to jump off and roll in the dirt. I want to jump off and climb up mountains and run down hills. I want to stay out late and wake up early. I want to hear the sound of my own heart beating, not because I’m running on a treadmill to obtain some kind of pre-prescribed physical perfection, but because I’m exerted from wandering. I want to be challenged, not in a way that forces me to work through what I hate, but in a way that forces me to listen. I want to be humbled, I want to be awed. I want sand in my shoes and wind in my hair. I want to see the stars again.

I want to jump, but I'm not sure where I’ll land.

So with one toe over the edge, I peer at the ground swimming past me.

And wonder how much this is going to hurt.

Still Not Sure

Love, absolution, abstraction, contemplative bargaining. Oh! Life! You strange, misinforming torturous beast!

There are somethings that are easy to write and something that are easier to say. Then there are those things that make no sense whatsoever. The abstract intangibilities that elude us, even on a good day. Why do we feel sad? Angry? Misanthropic? Why do we judge? Why do we fail? Why do we fail to fail? Why do we settle. . .

There are many things to feel heartbreak over in this life. First off it doesn't make any sense. The few have much, many have less and even more have nothing. We rely on institutions to raise our children and then to occupy us as adults. Prideful, bashless little miscreants run around building, bombing, expanding, exploiting and condemning without any clear purpose, directive or end. There isn't much to believe in and even less to trust.

Sure we can make some kind of generic claim about love, fantasy, creativity or commonality. Use it to determine some kind of defined boundaries for our fledgling consciousness, but this surveyor is in supreme doubt that something so simple, so incredibly humanistic, could really hold any real value in the broader context of the universe. Not that we need to live with that 'ultimate' truth hanging over us constantly, but the point I'm trying to make here is that if you think about it, it does all really seem to be completely irrelevant.

Now with the pile drive into nihilism out of the way let me share with you some of the things that have given my life meaning over this fairly difficult couple weeks.

- Writing. My longest friend and most faithful companion, once again you allowed me to focus in and express the depths of agony, trist and joy. Without you I would be truly lost.

- Unexpected Love. The sharing of a dormant feeling from an unexpected source. While painfully transient when determined under truthful circumstance, love is surprisingly infallible. What a thing to be reminded of.

- Humility and Honesty. Not always my greatest attributes and not very easy for me to allow to shine through. I trusted someone with it and they didn't fail me.

- Beethoven, Woody Allen and Anthony Storr. Specifically the string quartet in C# minor, Cassandra's Dream and the book Solitude.

- Chocolate Milk. You may have been my friend longer then anything else. Thank you for remaining so delicious. I love you.

- Exercise. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly everything fades away two miles into a great run, or half way through my yoga class. Thank you endorphins.

So while I delight in reliving these simple pleasures, I am remiss to try and use them to bludgeon out some kind of an answer. If we are to believe Jung, there may not ever be any such thing anyways. As he once said, ( paraphrasing) self actualization is the journey your always on, to the destination you never get to.

In this chaos, this absolutely random seeming gyroscope known as earth, that may be the only real truth that we can take any absolution - no matter how far you get, no matter how much you may believe you know some part of yourself, or life or another person, the only certainly is the uncertainty and the doubt. There is no right answer. There is no 'right' path just as much as there is no perfect career, wife, husband, child, friend or pursuit. It is a messy combination of all of these and none of these. Of trying and failing, of failing to try. Of the lowest lows and the highest highs. Of getting up the next day and trying all over again, even in the face of absolute futility, because you need to live. And you need to know.

What else can really be said? Don't need too much, don't think too much, don't set yourself up for failure by listening to the TV. Go outside, take deep breaths. Chew slowly. Be kind. Listen. Use your body. Use your mind. Don't be afraid. There is nothing really that remarkable about being human anyways . . . or is there?

One Story

After spending the day reading "Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters" I am left with only one conclusion:

It's embarrassing to unconsciously laugh out loud in a crowed cafe!!

But in all seriousness, today passed in the most deliciously languid way. While I sat here - enveloped in a faux leather chair, my legs bent under me, knees crushing painfully hour after hour against the arm of this coffee house easy chair - I ate, slept and wept for everything Salinger was. . . and wasn't.

There is a particular strangeness, a very indiscernible quality, to everything he has penned. It reaches out to the reader in a way that simultaneously validates and alienates him. Much like trying to dive into Salinger himself, we can't help but be left with the feeling that no matter how close we get, no matter how deep we are allowed to gaze into the psyche of the men and women within the pages we will never fully understand them.

It is in this obscurity though, the aloofness of his characters with their lead door morality, that I find the most condolence. While I have dogged eared, underlined and highlighted many a passage, it is very much the space between the characters and within their identities that resonates.

It is because we are given so much freedom within our own imaginations to play out the motivations of his characters we end up identifying with him so deeply. We are constantly asked to reach out to make those slightly intangible connections between the characters and their actions, between their past and present lives and in doing so we automatically infuse ourselves into the obscure details we are asked to make up. We can’t help but feel, for example in Catcher in the Rye, that young Holden Caulfield’s angst is an angst we know, his anger is an anger we have been driven to; because when it comes to identifying with a story it is not the emotions that need to be universal, but the opportunity to create motivations for those emotions that matters.

I'm not sure I could sum up in so many words, what I adore so much about Salinger’s writing specifically. It could be the way it rolls off the page, so much so it becomes not so much an act of reading, but one of listening. Or it could be the moments of unbearable humour that pop up in-between the moments of intense insight. Or possibly it’s the little details, that become observations of immense meaning and magnitude. For example when Franny Glass was four she believed that she would fly around the apartment when no one was looking. How could this possibly be, she was questioned. Surely she must have only dreamt that she was doing this? But of course it was real, she protested. She knew so because of the dust that was left on her fingers from the tops of the light bulbs. The light bulb dust. . . . of course. There are really only two reasons to even contemplate the tops of light bulbs, if you are changing them, or flying over them.

It is the details, the obscure, simple, or otherwise that we continually take for granted. They are always there, though dulled by the pressing emotional turmoil of immediate needs, wants and desires. Salinger’s characters were ones that through their own genius, acknowledged or not, pointed out these details to us again. These details were a part of their brilliance, were a part of their consciousness in such an ingrained way it allowed them to make the commentaries on people, life, love, loss and hopelessness that we find so profound and meaningful.

But alas the greatest part about reading Salinger may not be the observations made by his characters - but the ones his readers inevitably make about themselves.

J.D Salinger died Wednesday at 91 years of age.

"How wonderful, how sane, how beautifully difficult, and therefore true." - Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters

Thanks J.D.

Don't be Scared, I'm Just Venting

I'm not really this bitter - honestly. But just for the record, think this needs to be said.

Dear Love,

Fuck you.

That’s right, screw you and the horse you rode in on. You and your misconceptions and misgivings. Your sugar coated pre-pubescence is intolerable. You are intolerable. How many a good man has gone down in the wake of your vicious floods? In the aftermath of your formidable tirades? Damn you straight to hell. The hell that you dredge up from the bubbling ground every time your name is mentioned. Do you ever get sick of being used? Of being bought and sold like the one dimensional cavity that you are?

You tricked us.... all of us. Tricked us into thinking that you were somehow necessary. That you in some way, any way, enriched our lives. Let me tell you what you have done for me, broke my heart and stole my dignity. You took the years of my life I will never have back. You looked me in the eyes and said four simple words: you, are, not, worthy.

I hate you. I hate every incarnation of you. I hate the guilt, because I love them, I hate the heartbreak because I love them, and I hate the twisted demented way in which you inject yourself into the smallest moments in some exasperated attempt to force me to need. Listen here and listen well. YOU NEED US. I do not need you, what you need is our ravaged decaying carcases to implant your sick self- procreating egg sack. You need every Rom-Com, every Valentine’s Day, every maladjusted miscreants hopelessness to posses and propagate. You need every depressed housewife’s helpless plea with a husband that ignores her. You need every voice that cries out in loneliness, that cries out in pain – and hope. You need the blonde hair and big breasts, you need to make this all unattainable, you need to make it transient and wash it away.

How about this? I give you nothing; I spend not one more moment of my life in pursuit, contemplation, or resentment of you. I take every day and I start to live it, without you. And when you do find me again? I’ll be ready. So good luck to you on your journey, there are plenty of sad pathetic debilitates out there ready and willing to sign on the dotted line. But I sir? I say fuck you.

Just to curb the massive negativity, I think I need to end this on a better note. As only Woody Allen can... :).

Woody Allen - Love and Death Final Scene