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

Farmer's Market Apples and Latte's

Today is good day. Things that make today a good day:

1) Haircut. While I really can't afford it right now my hairdresser is one of the more delightful people I have met since I moved out here; probably because she is from Quebec. We always talk in exaggerated, mildly pretentious ways about living, art, culture and food - especially the eating part. She was one of the only people who reacted with a "good for you" when I mentioned quitting my job. Most of my haircuts have been after a day at work... she knew.

2) Reading. It always astounds me how quickly I forget how much I enjoy reading. Not just in an escapist sense, but in the way in which I always leave a book's pages feeling refreshed. Even in the mildest of ways. A book is a place which says to the outside world, "No, not right now, she's busy," and generally this is respected. It's hard to look at yourself reading a book and think that your wasting your life. It's the only kind of procrastination I don't feel guilty for.

3) Irony. Just as I began to muse on the pleasure I have been taking in my self prescribed social hiatus I am reminded just how dependant that pleasure is to the knowledge that there is something to remove myself from. Choosing to be alone, when there is someone who wants for your company, is much more fashionable then simply being inconsequential. Like a death, the act of removing the person from the social network causes stress, grief and frustration. While the dead may regret the imposition their passing has caused, they can't help but be simultaneously validated by these feelings of remorse. In my alone-ness every face is a stranger, except the ones I hold in my mind to remind me that my solitude is still a choice.

While this may not be able to go into the category of what makes today a good day, I did indeed see Beethoven's 9th symphony performed last night... by myself.

I sat surrounded by patrons, most of which were older then my grandparents, with tears welling in my eyes at the moment when, after the first refrain by the male vocal soloist, the music builds, the choir collectively hits and sustains that high note, then it all slowly drops away. Like a gust of wind that hits your ears as you pull your self upward for the first time on a summit and stand in amazement at the vastness before you. It was so perfect, it was divine - says the atheist. ;)

There are certain defining moments in ones life when we become intimately aware of the being who exists within us, and despite us. An endless and unconditional sense of love and appreciation which has no external source or measurement. As I vacillate unpredictably between external and internal versions of myself, trying to reconcile the duality of who I am, I am reminded just how infallible and uncomplicated this really is.

Now that's some great art.

Beethoven - 9th Symphony

Reflections and New Music

A few really interesting things have happened in the past weeks and though I can generally say that about the last three weeks of almost any point in life, in particular I have had to reexamine a number of key assumptions - which is good.

1) Money buys freedom, which buys happiness.

Not true, as least in this surveyors opinion. Granted a significant injection of funds into my bank account would not hurt the causes in which I am currently in pursuit, but what does money really cost? One cannot live without working, that is the way this goes, but I cannot work without living.

2) Being unsure is a bad or frightening thing.

I have no idea who I am or what is really important to me. The few notions I have of what makes me truly I have no idea how to obtain, or confidence in the fact that they will actually make me happy. It's an obscurity all my own. The only thing I am sure of right now is my own resourcefulness. I'll be OK. The impact of tragedy is always a hyperbole. What an awesome opportunity to learn. I am not rigged, I flex - with purpose.

3) I am my own worst enemy.

Surprisingly, I am the only one that knows what's really best for me. Even if I don't know it myself. Dependability can be a difficult thing to find in this life. My stubbornness to only do exactly what I want is unwavering. And though that may sound like the statement of a self indulgent teenager, I implore you to look deeper. Don't force the balance, it's already playing for position.


And last but not least, Lyra Brown!!! Amazing new local artist I found. Check out these fantastic tracks.

Pretty Baby

Air Balloons

Unknown Title

http://www.myspace.com/lyrabrown