fabricati diem, pvnc

Hello, Internet. It's been a long time.

2009-07-28T23:55:00.003-04:00

I would like to say sup. How have you been? A lot has changed since last we danced. You've grown up, all 2.0 like. I would really appreciate it if you explained what that 2.0 thing really means, though.

You've gotten louder, more demanding. You have so many friends now, and it's getting harder to hear what I'm thinking every day. I suppose we all just have to keep shouting louder and louder in order to be heard. I wish they'd turn down the music in the background, if only for a while, then we could sit down and have a talk, so I could tell you about all the cool things I've been doing with my life and we could share photos and plan events in that real world thing that may or may not exist, and then we could get tired of each other and go on a break again.

Sup, Internet, sup.

dream: night time in the mysterious city.

2007-10-04T01:49:00.000-04:00

it’s winter. we’re in an old house on a hill, in an old city that is being rebuilt -- whole city blocks demolished, erased, wiped clean, with new ones taking their place.

the house property backs onto an escarpment, at the bottom of which is a frozen river which runs through the city. all along the escarpment, to one side of the house, several adjacent city blocks are missing. empty, removed, and soon to be replaced. looking out from a window of the house on the hill, i can see new units being moved up to the edge of the escarpment in one of the nearby lots, slotted into place one after another like tiles, only they’re huge: entire properties, with buildings, pavements, lawns, sidewalks already assembled together on ultrawide flatbeds, pushed and pulled by purpose-built “mover” trucks that look like grossly oversized big-rig/tow-truck hybrids. they’re moving quickly; the whole block’ll be assembled by morning.

but something’s wrong; the newest piece to arrive doesn’t stop in time and smashes through the property markers near the escarpment. i look closer: there is one of those big mover trucks at either end, and something’s going wrong with them. the whole thing comes to a shuddering stop, and then the rear “pushing” mover-truck lurches back the way it came. the property/building tile-piece is coming detached from the other mover, the one near the escarpment. the truck’s grappling mechanism is going haywire, jerking up and down, barely attached to the property any more. the workers swarm around the malfunctioning movers and the piece caught between them, looking from up here like panicked ants after a kid stomps their colony. with a huge tug, the rear-facing truck pulls the property completely free of the one facing the escarpment and surges forward, running over some workers, and sending those who had been standing on the attached property flying through the air as their footing is pulled out from underneath. one worker gets thrown under the grappling mechanism of the other truck, which keeps moving up and down, crushing him repeatedly against the body of the vehicle. then the whole truck abruptly drives forward, rushing headlong over the edge and down, down, crashing through the frozen surface of the river.

in a panic, some workers leap to their smaller pickup trucks and head down a narrow, treacherous dirt path to the bottom of the escarpment. but they’re driving too fast; before it gets even halfway to the bottom, the first truck loses control, flips, flies through the air, and skids across the ice. a couple of passengers stagger out, even as a second, third, then fourth truck follow suit, each more disastrously than the last, crashing into the other trucks and the survivours who crawled out of them.

not a single sound of all the chaos and carnage enters the house. an unnervingly constant silence fills my ears throughout it all.

...the next morning, the view of the accident scene is blocked by a row of buildings; the lot next to our old house has been filled. “the helicopters must have set them down there last night,” someone says...

paper airplanes

2007-08-07T00:13:00.000-04:00

dream 2007-07-03

2007-07-03T16:31:00.000-04:00

on a whim, i'm in the midst of some bizarre movie-script barracks. it's basic training. we've got to go through all kinds of aptitude tests and training before we can learn first aid, but the sergeant and his buddies waste no time in getting us recruits our weapons, even bringing out the high-powered scopes and rifles for us to salivate over. i ask a couple of questions, so i am thereby marked as a troublemaker; sarge doesn't plan on giving me anything but seven kinds of hell.

i come across a scrap of a report in the washroom -- something that probably should have been shredded, as it gets my blood boiling. i confront the sarge with it: me, the angry, impotent bleeding-heart. "this is disgusting, but i bet you don't even care! i'm just some worthless wimp leftie scum to you, huh?"

"yer damn right!" he bellows.

i'm done, i'm out, waste of time. what in the hell was i doing, going into the army in the first place? that stuff stopped interesting me when i was in my teens, anyway.

so out of the barracks without a backward glance, into downtown: it's night, the streets are almost empty of cars. orange halogens spill down the sides of the old stone buildings that fill this part of town. across the street, under the shifting tree-leaf shadows, i'm into the park.

now this is more like it: people in all sorts of strange carefree getup, wandering, gathering, sitting, talking... no one imposing anything on anyone else. and of course my friends are there; gordex, armourtime, the dr, sitting on the grass, look up as i pass and greet me as if it is the most natural thing in the world for me to be there. i briefly wonder if they were waiting for me, knowing i'd bounce out of there in short order, or if they even know of my brief flirtation with the military. it doesn't really matter; there's little to fear out here compared to inside those walls. halfway across the park, i can see cheese running about, with a swishing of skirts and a bouncing of curls. just doing her thing.

here is freedom, and honest adventure, at the expense of no lives, and no mindless conformity. and we have many hours 'til morning.

north york blues

2007-03-01T21:32:00.000-05:00

long time passing

2007-01-12T23:23:00.000-05:00

Genius Kills Self
George Ferney, lifelong “prodigy at everything he touched,” was found dead in his Lake Erie cottage this morning. Police spokespersons said that the cause of death would not be disclosed to the public at this time due to privacy concerns, but that death had been conclusively established as self-inflicted.
Since his childhood in Buffalo, NY, George Ferney has been hailed by educators, researchers, politicians, celebrities, and some of the leading minds across the world as the greatest genius the world had seen since Mozart, or perhaps ever.
Although his rise to international fame was connected strongly with his virtuosity in all the arts, since his middle adolescence Ferney's energies had focused on the cause of the environment and the ever-increasing problem of global climate change.
There have been reports of a suicide note from sources closely connected with Ferney. Details are few but all sources have indicated that Ferney had for some time been severely depressed about what he perceived as his own incompetence. According to one neighbour, the note stated that Ferney hoped that others “more adept than I will do the work that I am unqualified to do.” When asked about them, Police spokespersons provided no comment to either confirm or deny these reports.

wow… that will definitely be a movie-of-the-week, thought Theo, flaked out on a 50-year-old couch listening to a CD -- a CD! hahah --
-- when his headphones cut out and the phone started blasting what sounded like white noise by comparison.
Andrew was yacking at him over the speakerphone. Something about green piss.

"That's it! I have had it with these muthafuckin' scorpions on these muthafuckin' planes!"

2007-01-10T11:56:00.000-05:00

First report! Here in Toronto!

News flash! 2nd incident!

Samuel Jackson must be scratching his chin right now.

Still reading?

Interestingly enough, the first scorpion attack came at the same time as some real news: the ongoing Iraqi trials of Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants continued ... but all charges against Saddam Hussein have been dropped. At first glance, that makes sense, right? I mean, he'd just been killed (in a manner that more resembled the kind of brutality that he was put on trial for in the first place). But this means that there will be no further investigation into his many atrocities, many of which occurred with Washington's blessing.

In essence, Saddam Hussein was tried and executed for one -- just one -- of his crimes. Never mind that many of the others he committed were while he was America's supposed bastion of secularism against the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. Never mind that there will no longer be any need for investigation into the details of these other crimes. That kind of investigation would turn up some interesting facts about the nature of his relationship with the United States, which remained friendly even while he was committing what Bush, Blair, et al. are only decades later calling genocide. It was only after he invaded another oil-rich ally of the United States that he suddenly became the bad guy.

We tried to use Osama bin Laden against the Russians, and he turned on us. ps. does anyone even remember him?
We tried to use Saddam Hussein against the Iranians, and he turned on us, too. But don't worry. He was conveniently killed before our tacit approval of his horrifying brutality could be properly investigated.
We got away with it. Again.

Videotape (new Radiohead song)

2007-01-05T17:36:00.000-05:00

The above video was shot at the Bonnaroo festival this past summer. I've downloaded some recent Radiohead concert bootlegs (because I'm a terrible, terrible pirate), and the new songs they've been playing are fantastic -- "Videotape" just happens to be my personal favourite. I don't know when their new album will be out (apparently sometime this year), but when it hits... yes! By all indications it will be stunning. Definitely something good to look forward to this year.

EDIT: Okay, I found another video, this one from Madison Square Gardens, and the audio on it is quite good (the crappy in-camera sound was replaced by a good bootleg sound recording from the same concert).

ps. I am beginning to realize how awesome Thom Yorke is.

and the future has become the present

2006-12-11T00:58:00.000-05:00

Andrew stopped and took a look at the contents of his toilet bowl. His hand reached for the lever and just rested on it.
Wow. My piss is green.
He withdrew his hand. Theo would flip out when he saw this.

Catherine wasn't quite sure whether she was coming or going. About all she could hold onto right now was the undeniable fact that she had done the impossible this past month. She caressed the bump of the RFID behind her left ear. My get-out-of-jail-free chip. I should call it that in front of Alex! Ha! She'd been told she'd be well-compensated, and this was certainly a welcome reward.

David and Diane were divorced. They hadn't spoken since the end of the legal proceedings. That had been forty-one years ago. And yet even at this late day, if one cared to look, it would be apparent that they were of a certain kind. Of course, no one still alive had ever met both of them.

David wrote policy. David wrote history. David wrote the Truth.

Diane wrote what she knew. Diane wrote what she saw. Diane wrote Lies.

For example, last week she penned a piece that contained this gem:

There had been mass riots ten years earlier, when the truth about 9/11 came out (the old, uncapitalized kind of truth). As a footnote to this world-shaking revelation, approximately half the inmates in every asylum across the Western world stuck their hands up like third-graders about to pee their pants and screamed "See?! I was right! Let me out!"
Long-suffering Kennedy enthusiasts tentatively started to look up, presumably thinking that maybe they'd get the next bit of good news.
They're still waiting, though.

She read it through once and then promptly burned it.

i get my vitamin c like the astronauts!

2006-12-08T00:16:00.000-05:00

drive-by posting

2006-12-07T11:44:00.000-05:00

and all I need is just to hear a song I know

2006-12-05T22:18:00.000-05:00

The sound of an accordion floated along the subway platform. A few loud chords grabbed my attention, though I usually associate these chords with organ and electric guitar. The unseen accordionist launched into Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come".
See, this is the kind of thing that sets me to wondering about the feasibility of impromptu in-public song-and-dance routines (whose chorus line was studiously ignoring each other up until that moment). I was grooving. I caught a lone fifty-something woman whistling along cheerfully, belying how uptight she had appeared to me at first glance. Ah! Music can give us common ground -- I identified with this woman (who, because she was as white as I, might as well have been from Mars) and all thanks to one of the most famous cultural exports of Jamaica, accordionized of course. See? Our ethnicity and cultural indoctrination didn't matter a bit!
A distant rumble was making itself increasingly apparent, when Jimmy Cliff abruptly metamorphosed into Neil Diamond playing "Sweet Caroline" on a cheap accordion. Wow. But then the train pulled in with an eardrum-shattering rumble and a howl of tortured brakes. I enjoyed every second of it.

myths

2006-11-30T23:49:00.000-05:00

fictions that can yet hold truths
used to convince self (private myths) or others (mass myths)
> likelihood of gradation between private and mass
use of myths not necessarily conscious
the range of possible messages, explicit or implicit, of a myth/group of myths, is virtually infinite, and therefore mass myths can be used by essentially all individual people as well as societies (peoples, religions, nations, "sub-cultures", towns/cities, et cetera)
> different groups can employ the same myth to different (even opposed) social ends
though often fantastic in initial appearance, myths are rooted in the world as it is perceived by their author(s)

this may need to get edited a bit down the road.

looking out the balcony window on a rainday

2006-11-28T00:20:00.000-05:00

[ceci n'est pas une photo.]
[dudes, this isn't a photo.]

this one's for Finnegan, sitting at his patio door

2006-11-27T12:51:00.000-05:00

"I saw him one day when he got outside. He didn't know what to do. 'Cold, what's that? What are those noises? It smells different! Everything's so bright!'"

pictures of a city, pt 4

2006-11-19T15:21:00.000-05:00

When we first got on the elevator, it went down one floor. It didn't stop, but after that we didn't know where we were; the floor display simply went out. We rode, further and further down, longer than should have been possible. When we finally lurched to a halt, it was no surprise that the door opened on a lobby that bore no resemblance to the one we'd left, or even to the building that we had started to doubt we were still in. We didn't get out, and after a long couple of minutes, the doors closed and we went up again. We stayed in the elevator as it stopped at floor after floor, each one seeming like a completely different building. We knew we'd eventually have to get out, but for then, we watched and waited.

pictures of a city, pt 3

2006-11-19T12:10:00.000-05:00

the rest of the city wasn't hidden by the fog. it simply wasn't there. i know not whether it was taken away from us or we from it. for anyone in this place last night, it was as if the universe was pared down to a quiet circle of land, hemmed in by an infinite darkness.

pictures of a city, pt 2

2006-11-19T11:26:00.000-05:00

it TURNED.
i've ridden this subway for a coupla years and it's never turned here. the fuck... we just got out of davenport station, and it's s'posed ta be straight down the line.
but we just turned.

pictures of a city, pt 1

2006-11-19T09:45:00.000-05:00

After months of hearing about this cool store, I finally bothered to go in. I found a couple of good t-shirts, but the whole place made me feel kind of uneasy. The store and all the people in it (shoppers and especially staff) were brutally hip. I don't think I'll go back soon. If this is all there is to it, why should anyone want to be cool?

somehow they got home: a suburban fairy tale [v2]

2006-11-14T04:59:00.000-05:00

Some left the house early, only to get sidetracked and then, once back en route, come across a spectacular accident scene. As two police cruisers blocked one side of the busy intersection, a car was being towed away, its front end crumpled, among glass and debris strewn along at least the next fifty feet of road. Another tow truck waited, but no other car could be seen.
To the left, a large wooden three-posted land development billboard on the corner stood half-demolished -- tire tracks in the grass led from the intersection, past a flock of election signs and one large rock, and through the billboard itself. The other car was at least a hundred feet into the grassy field beyond.
A fire crew was finishing laying down the powder used to soak up anything that leaked from cars onto the pavement. Near the bus stop, next to the ambulance, a small group had gathered. Friends they'd left behind at the house.

best Public Service Announcement evar

2006-10-23T13:42:00.001-04:00

Ok so back in 2nd year Bear and I got an idea. Bear had initially conceived it as a campaign stunt for a Bexy, but apparently it wasn't kosher. Come to think of it, I don't know if he even told Bexy about it. Anyway, he came to me at the beginning of Frosh Week and convinced me it had to be done on its own, for its own sake. But YorkU apparently didn't have any use for this attempt at raising public awareness. As Bear would say, "Balls to that, dude."

pissing off the Kerouacs

2006-10-23T11:24:00.000-04:00

So it seems that whenever I feel intimidated I act like a complete douche. Hooray.

snowfight 2004

2006-10-22T19:32:00.000-04:00

This was outside residence back in first year of university. Oh man, first year... Little did we know Adrian was gonna become a rockstar. I hope he's still as crazy.

travels

2006-10-20T17:58:00.000-04:00

svo hljótt

2006-10-18T10:57:00.000-04:00

Somewhere in this building, someone is drilling. All the way up here, it still sounds powerful. If you take a moment, maybe you can even hear it from where you are. I swear the whole apartment building is vibrating with the sound so loud, so relentless, conducted through the same thick concrete that separates all the units and all the floors. This ash-grey honeycomb vibrates and sets each room going at its own resonant frequency. And we're all so detuned it's starting to scare me. I know the whole building is starting to shake, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. In a few minutes this address is gonna be a pile of rubble on top of a drill that no one's turned off. And I'll still be nineteen floors up, suspended in midair, like in the Looney Tunes cartoons I watched when I was a kid. You don't fall until you realize you've got nothing under you.

we must do this again sometime

2006-10-17T03:02:00.000-04:00

Richard's life changed in a moment. That's how he tells it, anyway.
For a while, he was starting to get hung up, bad. His life had changed, but the first few months were spent pondering the countless if-onlys that had led to the change, and without even the least of which, he would never be where he is now. Pondering the if-onlys. For months, which is a bit of a stretch no matter how you cut it.
He could feasably have kept pondering them for the rest of his life. But he didn't. That's another bunch of if-onlys right there.
It doesn't take long to realize why he says his life changed in a moment and just leaves it at that.

the country is more than just the space between cities

2006-10-08T13:58:00.000-04:00

rushing headlong but looking sideways
as a dozen colours, maybe hundreds...
yes, ten thousand earthtone palettes per second,
the sum total of all the autumn days you never noticed,
blur horizontally in a naked honesty
that all the neon signs in the world could never hope to match.

and while your gaze stays fixed
where no reference point can exist,
your mind rides that invisible line on the edge of vision
where everything resolves into
six billion leaves, waiting
to fall softly to earth.

into the forest...

2006-09-09T09:09:00.000-04:00

more and more ideas

2006-09-08T23:46:00.000-04:00

taking out the trash at 3am

2006-08-21T19:59:00.000-04:00

Rob’s decision to ride a bike for a living seemed perfectly natural to him. To the rest of the world, it marked him as probably insane.
Such is life. It’s such a funny thing, though, isn’t it? It never fails to disappoint whenever you try to plan it out, but somehow I never remember to plan for that part of it.
Those are the kind of thoughts that will pull you through Essential Deliveries on a Sunday night. Until 3 or 4 hours into Monday morning, and on a bike, of course. If the rush from spending a few hours in which you actually have some freedom on the road isn’t enough, the level of ambient radiated insanity from the clientele is high enough to send you into a psychological tailspin for the rest of the night.
This is, of course, half the fun of the job.
Rob was in the process of drifting between existential and absurdist thought when he heard the noise. Physically, just a second… he was just nearing the Little League diamond in North Downs, way the hell out in the ancient suburbs. And it sounded like, maybe, something was getting smashed around in the bleachers. Maybe some poor dude. Maybe…
One quick lesson is that if you can’t see anything because it’s too dark, don’t go looking. Doesn’t matter what you heard. The only downside is that no matter how old and seen-it-all jaded you think you’ve become, you still often wonder what it was for the rest of the night.
This particular sound was all but gone from his mind when he saw, across the parking lot of the gutted mini-mall further down the road from the baseball diamond, a speeding vehicle, careening just barely under control down the otherwise-empty street that intersected his 200 meters ahead. The only thing was, it seemed to be the size of a bus. Scratch that, it was a garbage truck, the kind that picked up dumpsters like the giant robot dinosaurs picked up compact cars on the countless televised demolition derbies he'd watched as a kid. From a fair distance away, he watched as the truck slowed to perhaps half of the legal speed limit, took the corner, somehow avoided tipping over, and began heading further up the street ahead of him.
Now that was a dead giveaway. In a significant percentage of the city, that kind of driving would be likely written off as simply free-spirited unwinding, a tired driver sending out an eloquently irresponsible fuck-you to the world that had made him or her a cog in whatever machine it had chosen based upon aptitude tests administered during early adolescence. If you’re gonna judge me like I’m still that person, fine, then I’ll act that age for you.
But as he passed through the intersection, Rob could clearly see the silver BMW parked on the side street, its hood and roof crushed along two lines spaced the same distance apart as -- wouldn’t you know? -- the slots on the sides of a standard trash dumpster.
Yep… the goddamn poser mafiosos strike again.
No part of the city produced so many coked-up, don’t-mess-with-my-shit-guy Dudes raised on Scarface and Get Rich or Die Tryin’ as North Downs did. The place also seemed to serve as a magnet to the rest of them, those who were unfortunate enough to have been born in more gentrified areas.
Rob knew the cops wouldn’t even show up to check this one out tomorrow. But there would be retribution nonetheless. Just not justice.
He flipped his bike up one gear and sped on towards his destination.

"the thunderstorm children still run free"

2006-08-17T00:09:00.000-04:00

even when right and wrong no longer matter
and the idol of perfection lies shattered,
the words, though blurted and broken,
mean so much more than ever.

though the city may raise up
all its skyscrapers and chimneystacks to menace us,
its highways and onramps as fences to our bare feet,
will we stop believing? doubting? singing?
or will we join our grubby hands,
to walk with our beliefs, our doubts, and our songs?
for then the buildings of downtown will part before us
and we will make our way through this madness.

we won't care if they see us
running off to somewhere beyond,
and screaming to them our defiance,
"you'll never take us alive, you bastards!"

where, then...
in that unmapped place,
where we'll wake up
after finally touching down?

we'll walk in the fields and forests
with new things found along the way:
a little loss,
a little melancholy,
a little wisdom...
a little peace.

once again, wishing for a built-in camera

2006-08-09T06:24:00.000-04:00

What must we have looked like? This intrepid group of sixteen crazy kids, drifting towards midnight -- vaguely keeping together -- across half-empty main streets, darkened soccer fields, under three giant power lines, through the university's new slapdash mini-suburb, and through the campus proper... finally assembling in the green space around the pond for a marathon game of capture-the-flag. We hassled and babbled about rules, sorted out our teams and sides, improvised flags from pieces of clothing we had on us, and set to work.
Yes, Matty, the pond is neutral.
I remember slipping through the nearly-dry drainage canal with Nick and climbing up the concrete slope on the other side, straight into a tangle of tall grass and weeds. From there on we were separated, and I made my way along the edge of the tall grass and where the university actually mows -- right next to the road. So every few minutes, headlights would flash by -- okay, there's this crazy asshole down on the ground next to the road, and it's midnight, and yeah he probably got shot... oh, okay then. Drive on.
No weapons in our battle. Funny how it's more fun that way.

they've been teaching the same lessons every day since i came to this school

2006-07-31T15:20:00.000-04:00

It's an uneasy truce. And the truly amazing part of it is this: one of the sides, if you can call them that, is rarely aware of the conflict as anything more than a few isolated incidents. Of course, the other thinks it understands better, with the certainty of knowing.

Neither one is right, and neither one is wrong.

Do you think of them as children, sometimes? Does that make it simple to proceed? Innocent, sweet, too good for all this crap that you've taken it upon yourselves to slog through? Do you honestly feel you're protecting them from things that are too difficult for them to handle?

And they, do they think of you as having grown up? Having reached the last plateau of human interaction? Do you think they feel your gazes from on high, where you sit at the cool kids' table atop a mountain that they can't or won't climb? You surely know how they criticize the very things about you that they envy the most and would flaunt if only they could.

But you envy them too, don't you? Those days when she tells you there's nothing wrong in that way that could tell any stranger how little she cares to hide that she's lying? Those nights when he sleeps in your bed, but with his back to you and without a word, mindful of the consequences of what he's doing? When you can't seem to make yourself do what you know is right, even after you've sworn to yourself on everything you believe in? In these times, it's like their lives exist in the blissful state known to children, and which you know you can never get back. They're still free and uncomplicated.

But every day, they see you live your lives... and deep down, they pray for some complication of their own.

We are none of us innocent, and never were.

as long as we keep dreaming there is still hope

2006-07-04T19:55:00.000-04:00

Last night as I dreamt more vividly than I'd lived the day, I knew the end of the world was nigh. I was racing around a hilltop in an industrial zone, traintracks atop it -- the world may have been about to end, but at least the trains were running as relentlessly as ever. I remember I was moving around a lot, but I don't think I was actually doing anything, despite all that effort. It was just a kind of treading water, all available energies channelled into physical and mental survival and coming up slightly short -- hope stretched further and further away from the present. Running up and down the hill, dodging trains, ducking into empty warehouses and abandoned factories, just trying to stay out of the reach of... something.
Taking a rest on the hill, I saw a woman walking alongside the track of an onrushing freight. It sounded its horn but slowed not a bit, and blew past her with less than a foot to spare. She didn't even break stride. And... somehow, the train became transparent, whether for real and all or just for me I still cannot say. But through the train I saw her turn slowly to walk across the track, and her eyes widened only a bit, in tired surprise, at the sight of these railcars, speeding inches from her face and blocking her path. Around there, we all knew we had to watch for the trains, and did so automatically, more out of habit than concern. But somehow, I felt then that I had to watch the sky. Where else to look for the end of the world? But maybe, just maybe, I would have seen the right signs and portents, not in the sky, but in the trains and the factories, in our empty streets and blank eyes. Ultimately, I couldn't say how the world ended. I only remember waking up.

..!!in an intastella burst i am back to save the universe!!

2006-06-20T21:18:00.000-04:00

I staggered out of my house without having had time for that shower I'd told myself would be a good idea the night before. And as usual I checked out the newspaper headlines while waiting for my bus. It was rather discouraging. Both of the major dailies and one of the two free papers featured headlines and oversized photos proclaiming Paris Hilton's visit to the Much Music Video Awards the night before. And the only coherent response to this that I could think of was "Why?" But somehow that didn't seem strong enough.

On the subway, half an hour later, the conductor announced that there was an emergency situation at the next station and that our train would have to wait at our current stop until it was resolved. After ten seconds, I realized that although it wouldn't be quite as convenient as transferring at the next stop as I usually do, I could get out and walk a ways to transfer from where we were stopped. Once out of the car and onto the platform, I could see what was going on in front of the train: two maintenance workers had lifted a grate cover in between the rails and were busy working away in front of this waiting train. How convenient, I thought, that there just so happens to be an emergency at the next station.

one corporation, not liable, under money:
Employee: I'm sorry, we can't accept this cheque.
Customer: Why not?
Employee: You've never written us a cheque for this much before, so we can't accept it.
(yes, this actually happened.)

signs of the times

2006-06-02T01:35:00.000-04:00

the clocks drift hours apart all the time.

people wake after sleeping for a day or more, and feel the same as if they'd slept only a couple of hours.

the phones never stop ringing, and they're all wrong numbers.

the traffic is always gridlocked, and there's an accident every few hours at every intersection.

no matter where you go, you can always hear sirens.

the air here is far heavier than our sense of rightness can support.

Mark Sayles isn't around much, any more

2006-06-01T23:11:00.000-04:00

"Well, I'm very proud of him."
- Sayles' father, after his son's disastrous first concert

"Even after that album of his took off, he didn't start living like he was this big-shot. I mean it, he was such a good boy."
- Sayles' stepmother

"Man, I wanted the money. But when I got it, I felt I just had to put all of it back into making something new, something even bigger and more ridiculously insane. And, uh, some drugs."
- Mark Sayles

"Now, I regret not being there for him. Maybe there was something I could have done to prevent his life from, er, coming to all that. But I was young then, and just as foolish as he became."
- Sayles' mother

"If you give a piece of any kind of art a ridiculous title, the general public will give you license to do just about anything. It's great."
- Mark Sayles

this story's not finished yet

2006-06-01T01:20:00.000-04:00

Through most of human history, lives have been short and miserable. Over the past few generations, they have become longer, but certainly no less miserable. Now, many of us want lives that are beautiful, even if they be short. Perhaps some day all lives will be both beautiful and long. That might be nice, but it would probably be best to concern ourselves with what we do have control over, rather than let the length or shortness of life dominate our thoughts.

dream 2006-05-18

2006-05-25T22:55:00.000-04:00

Didn't remember this 'til midday, sitting at lunch in a kitschy restaurant. M'excusez, svp...

In a building, concrete walls, dark wooden doors; I walk through networks of halls with no windows. My mind identifies it as Winters res, but the one of these past years of dreams -- recognizeable and very different, all at once. Something is particularly different this time. As I walk, I encounter people I haven't seen in res since first year. For some reason, I'm apparently living in a different room than I remember -- not the room of this whole past year. And yet, my keycard... as I wonder, realization races down the empty hall and hits me: I am dreaming, the first time I know it is so!
So in this dream I live in a different room. What about my card? I try it on the door of my dream room, a theory already in mind. And, yes, it doesn't work! Now to test the rest of it: I rush to my "real" room -- someone else's in the dream -- and my card works there. I haven't actually broken completely free of the dream rules, moving omnipotently through and shaping the world, but I've still achieved a minor miracle, the changing of one small detail. I've created my own personal loophole.
Elsewhere in the halls, I encounter Armour, just like when he lived in res in first year. I'm excitedly telling him about all of it, and he accepts it all -- even the fact that he's just a part of my dream, and not the real Armourtime. He seems genuinely pleased for me that this has happened, but of course that's really my mind giving itself a pat on the back... which I guess is why he takes being told he's not real so well.
One other thought has been with me throughout the dream: it's interesting how this place IS res to me, but when I think about this, it's laid out nothing like the actual place... yet I've dreamed it before and know it well.

three steps

2006-05-20T11:06:00.000-04:00

On the way to Downsview Stn., there's this concrete step-like structure built into the side of an artificial hill or berm next to the street. Three steps over a metre tall each. I have no idea what this structure is, as it doesn't have any signs or doors, or any visible machinery on or next to it. There are no buildings near it, either. My strongest memory of this place is seeing it from a passing bus while two girls standing near me spoke critically about an acquaintance of theirs. Today, over two years later, I glanced at those weird stairs, again from a bus, and realized that every time I do, the first thing that comes to mind is that overheard conversation, the details of this person's problems. It's almost as if the bizarre natures of this person and this thing have become one, each a representation of the same fundamental absurdity.

dream 2006-05-13

2006-05-14T10:40:00.000-04:00

We hung out until the wee hours, and even they began to grow before sleep came. Only one image remained on waking, and the rest was just an impression.

Don't remember the context, but Armourtime is hanging out with a bunch of us in a place (his place?) that is almost, but not quite, like HomeFree. We're kind of bored, kind of restless, and so he produces a comb out of somewhere (probably nowhere) and combs my hair for maybe two seconds. I'm completely bewildered, and he just laughs. I know it's some kind of kindly joke, but I'm unsure as to the meaning.
We're all gathered in one place, and in the dream that seems strange, some kind of dangerous break from a life on the run. There's something that lurks below the surface in the waking world that has carte blanche in this dream place, and it's a different life altogether. Constant dull menace has replaced constant dull comfort.
We're in an apartment complex, making me think "Soviet Workers' Housing" even more than HomeFree already does. And yet, this tiny room is comfortable, if only because of the company, so I know this is important above all and to be nurtured... of course, right?

dreams 2006-05-06

2006-05-10T21:47:00.000-04:00

I'm watching a video feed, overhead real-time bird's eye view of an outlying area of a Middle-Eastern city, most likely somewhere in Iraq. On a dirt road just outside the suburbs, a truck sits by the shoulder, a few armed men gathered around it. As someone, civilian, bicycles past along the otherwise empty road, I hear radio chatter and a missile streaks across the screen, narrowly missing the truck and the cyclist and exploding maybe ten metres away from the road in the desert. The cyclist pedals frantically to escape, but heavy machine-gun fire -- from offscreen, again, but a different direction -- blasts his body off the bike and sends it tumbling across the road. But why has this person been shot, and not the armed men? They had started running as soon as the missile struck, heading off the road towards the suburbs, going from one backyard to the next through gates, over fences and hedgerows. Now the machine-gun tracers follow them, blasting fences to bits, tearing gaping holes in anything they hit. And I realize that this is no Iraqi suburb any more; they're now running through the North American Suburb of Myth, the land of soccer and SUVs. I can tell the machine-gun fire must be coming from low-flying helicopters, and these people might as well be sheep for all those flying metal tanks may care... I see bodies getting ripped apart and tossed across backyards when struck by these rounds -- those guns are designed to take out light armoured vehicles, this I know! my God, my God... In one backyard, I swear I see a gunman run past a kid just playing, oblivious and happy, but then the tracers come -- no, how can this be? -- and both just ragdoll under the impact. Then I see one of the choppers fly overhead and hover -- it's an Apache, I think mechanically: 24 missiles to unleash the very fire of hell, and a 30mm automatic cannon besides. The gunner looks around, the gun automatically pointing wherever the gear on his helmet faces; just look, press button, slaughter. Two people try to hide under a picnic table; he just looks down, gun swivels, brrrraap, they're gone.
Now the video feed is coming from a camera on the ground; marines are charging down the streets, bursting into house after house, this horrible pursuit now being taken to the next stage. It's madness and death everywhere, and I can't even believe I'm still watching.
But then the video stops and I'm sitting and talking with an Arab guy my age; he's weary and sad, but hasn't totally given up on the world yet -- he's trying to get through to me, at any rate, but I'm just reeling after all of this. "Everyone's raised to think that their people are the good guys," is all I manage to say. His expression is moral pity, but not any sympathy for me -- I should still know what's right, he seems to be telling me...

dreams 2006-05-04

2006-05-05T13:26:00.000-04:00

The southern shores of the now-wide, clear, sparkling, free-of-pollution Ottawa River near my house, boasting a stretch of well-used beach, a sunny summer tourist playground. And it's not Ottawa, or somehow we're bordering France; I can walk across the border from where I stand watching, a dozen or so metres from the shore -- and my heart full of fear, for I have in my hands a secret list of a half-dozen nations that France plans to invade imminently, and sure enough Canada is on it. However can we stop this expansion of a New French Empire?
Now turning away from the water and looking uphill, I'm walking away from the familiar Camp Opemikon Beach, and there's the dining hall at the top of the slope. My mother is here, organizing something, giving orders, and I'm totally out of the loop. Then a grey military twin-engine propellor plane flies over, shit, that was low. My mom is talking on radio to the pilot, telling him to come around for another pass, but lower this time. I'm getting nervous, more nervous every second, as the plane banks tightly and rustles the top branches of the forest around the camp. Again, lower! "That's too dangerous," I'm yelling but she won't listen to me, and now it's too late as the plane is flying over, too low, its wings clip the tops of trees and get sheared off by the trunks, then the fuselage ploughs through the forest and into the ground not even 100 metres away, a tangle of metal shards and wooden splinters. I'm shocked, horrified, they must all be dead, I think. I rage at my mother, who doesn't seem bothered. Then I see one figure in a messy flight suit struggle, hurt, out of the crashed plane. I run over to meet him and end up walking with him up the hill to the dining hall basement entrance 'round back. I'm still furious at my mom, talking wildly while the airman limps in silence, but before going inside he turns to me and says angrily, "Don't expect me to help you with this."

Elsewhere, a militiaman, rebellion fighter, war-weary sniper is setting up in a highrise, hunkered down and virtually invisible from outside in his abandoned apartment perch.
Then I'm in a military helicopter, flying over the city, watching a grinning, don't-give-a-shit maniac soldier traversing his heavy machine gun pointed out the side door, across the city, and letting off bursts of fearsomely powerful belt-fed rounds, rattling their way out of a giant military-green ammo crate, across the chopper floor, and into his monstrous weapon. Two loud clangs of high-velocity metal impact, two holes invisibly punched in the crate, smoke trailing out -- it's the sniper! It's gonna explode, I think, and apparently he does too, as he lets go of the murder weapon and rushes to the ammo crate, fumbling with it. What the hell is he doing? I wonder, then I see four giant bolts on the corners are now unfastened and, heave, he dumps it out the side door. It lands on a main road, skidding, sparking, into an intersection. I look on expectantly, waiting for the explosion I'm sure will come. The gunner seems unconcerned. A beaten-up bus has shuddered to a stop practically on top of the crate and I fear tragedy, but it doesn't blow and we fly beyond view.

Somewhere in the wilderness, in the merging of the Ottawa Valley and the Canadian Shield, I'm climbing a narrow path up the side of a valley. As I reach the forest at the top, there lies stretched out before me the river inlet at the valley's bottom, then at one end the lake that spreads further, into the distance. A crowd has gathered on the rocky peninsula on the far side, and the sun glitters on river and lake. This is no deserted wilderness, people dot either side of the valley -- I passed many on my way up here, and here I want to stay...

Even earlier, a vague dream forgotten til mid-afternoon: I start out in a York-CIA architechtural mash-up... in the maintenance tunnels I remember from otherwise-forgotten dreams, not York tunnels, but something totally other. Still dark and possibly dangerous, but more MY tunnels than Theo's at York, strangely (but familiar I guess because I've dreamed these several times). I'm in there with a friend, don't remember who, we're exploring when we hear people behind us talking -- we're caught, it's maintenance/security/doesn't-matter cause we're screwed. We book it and try a side door to hide or get above...
Then not long after, we're rushing through the tunnels once more, when we hear the voices again and it's too late, they're upon us, but we see them up close and it's just two random dudes, explorers like us; we nod in greeting and move on.
Later, I'm above, on my own, in and out of the buildings and grounds of the complex at nighttime. There's some kind of event going on, perhaps a gala -- I'm near the fringes of the activities. I encounter several well-dressed middle-aged folks, People With Credentials no doubt, but they're all pretty inebriated by this point. After speaking with a pair of them I come into posession of 16mm film canisters containing footage that would be utterly, undeniably damning to the current government should it be made public. My civic, moral duty is clear, but I know I'm in grave danger from ruthless power-mad officials and their conscience-less agents. I try to figure out some way to hide this thing, keep it safe, stay free, and get the truth out...

dreams 2006-05-03

2006-05-04T19:21:00.000-04:00

I'm taken out of my age-context, transplanted into high school library dreams. First, exploration of the unfinished building: high up in the metal roof beams, and no false ceiling to hide me. I don't feel alone or afraid; I'm sure that if I look around or call out, brilliant mad Theo will appear, eyes alight with the thrill of unsanctioned discovery.
--later, brief snippets of leafing through someone's forgotten CD slipcase binders, lots of selection... somewhere in the reference section...
Then, inside the finished library, discussing the pros and cons of the multimedia section with Rachel B. and the Doctor; "they're always scratched, every time," I complain, meaning the CDs (and really dreamthinking of SMIL). As Rachel speaks, I see it on a table, this book I didn't know existed. And how can this be? The Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band have written a book! A young music fan's primer to religio-political conspiracies (mysterious, morally ambiguous, long-dead popes and cabals of the power-hungry), all told through a musician's lens, complete with photos -- PHOTOS! I look to see if I can find a picture of the mysterious Efrim. The Doctor and I are enthralled; he's raving about their new album that's coming out soon in the dreamworld, and I suggest pooling our resources of rare music, and even Rachel is interested by this book -- apparently she's heard of them...
Earlier, vague memories of hangouts in a row of student-ghetto houses along a quiet midtown street, journeys back and forth between the different buildings along the sidewalk or through the backyard, it doesn't matter which. Another wishful hipster community dream.

curious about yellow

2006-05-01T17:20:00.000-04:00

It's strange, the kind of things we believe when we're young. We come up with some interesting notions, seemingly out of nowhere -- at least, to an adult. They seem like the best answers at the time, however. Sometimes, we believe them for years. It wasn't until she began driving lessons that my mom realized that a painted "X" on a road doesn't, in fact, mark where someone was killed. However, she could forgive herself, as her father had told her that story when she was young and impressionable.
I didn't have the excuse of a mischievous parent.
Perhaps it was a strange coincidence in my home town, but something struck me as odd as I sat on the toilet one day many years ago (this was where I did most of my deep thinking and, coincidentally, most of my trying of my mother's patience). I thought to myself, why didn't I see any yellow cars on the street? Oh sure, there was the occasional car or truck owned by the city or the newspaper or some other company, but I couldn't recall ever seeing privately-owned yellow cars driving around. I surmised (and this seemed to make the best sense out of a confusing situation) that yellow cars weren't legal on the road, except when operated by a properly-licensed organization. This was a regulation that I didn't understand, but the only reason I could think of to explain this confusing problem. And besides, I had just begun public school, and inexplicable rules had become the order of the day.
There was this one problem with my theory, though. This one guy on the other end of my street had a yellow car. A Corvette. It was his baby: he took exceptionally good care of it, kept it in the garage in the winter, under a sheet in the summer, and drove another car, besides. The yellow Corvette stayed at the back of his driveway all summer, covered and withdrawn from casual view. But every once in a while, he'd roll it closer to the front door, work on it for a day or two, and drive it around for a few hours. I couldn't help but be stunned by his boldness. I was a little worried, partly for him, and partly for the rest of us who knew about his illicit drives (for no-one talked about either him or his car).
One day, I worked up the nerve to ask my parents about this yellow car mystery. They told me that it was perfectly legal to own a yellow car. When I asked them why there were virtually none, they said that it was probably because it just wasn't popular. This made sense in a mundane sort of way, but from then on I felt as if the mysterious owner of the yellow Corvette had somehow let me down by not being the dangerous rebel that I'd thought he was.

Careful with that Clipboard, Creepy Dude

2006-04-29T18:49:00.000-04:00

2+2=0
stay in tune or the crowd will throw rocks
believe the news on tv
get a military haircut
put the flag on your porch
put the pin on your lapel
learn how to march
keep a file on your neighbours
watch some reality shows
beware of anything that sounds new
relegate Vietnam to the dead past
leave the dead behind
pray that your children will be beautiful and famous
buy matching handguns for you and your husband or wife
buy an expensive ringtone from an album you already own
spray insecticide on your lawn
worry, but don't think, about the price of gas
read the financial papers and pretend you understand the world
have a few beers and watch a game you can no longer play
report your housekeeper to immigration authorities once you find a better one
ignore the black-tinted windows on those cars
drink some bottled water

relax.
when you have nothing left to hide,
2+2=0

stop calculating and just figure it out, silly

2006-04-28T04:20:00.000-04:00

memories of the quad stairs couch and chair... midnight tunes and quotes from madman cyclist friends:
"I had a drink, I took a break, and then I drank again..."
"I haven't achieved 'banned for life' yet. And I want to. Where can I go that I can get banned for life?"
"His most important two influences were Nirvana and the Beatles. And his music was that. You're happy and confused, you're sad and confused..."

Just trying to get past and figure out the creepiness of that random guy that followed my friends and myself. As usual, reaching out for an answer to What It All Means. The answers can always be wrong, but it would be even more wrong to stop asking the questions.

dreams: 2006-04-18

2006-04-28T03:22:00.000-04:00

Large-scale cast of thousands dreams, new epic stories with almost biblical feeling.

We’re all in this government complex, on the monorail ride through and under the grounds, into and through secret buildings, dimly-lit boarding platforms glimpsed only for a moment. Good thing we’re strapped in, I think as we corkscrew through this dark tunnel, pressed into our seats -- I’ve found myself on Shock and Awe: The Ride. When we arrive at the end of the line, we’re suddenly let loose in the dark, empty bowels of the military-industrial complex. We fan out in boundless excitement and start to explore the tunnels...

Later, I find myself with the whole crowd of the past several years; we’re in the great Valhalla Mall of the gods, acting out a day of great events that will all be forgotten tomorrow, an end-of-days party so intense that it can never be remembered. And we all know that this is so, more to our advantage as it turns out. We’re running gloriously amok, throwing ourselves against the giants of the status quo in futile duels, cruising down the main streets in ocean liners while some moon the rest of the world over the side. Then, after the last mad rush of the night, we make our ways home from the mall, alone or in small groups. As I reach the far end of the Mall, I come across a girl my age sitting bright and alert in the pool of water surrounding a fountain. After some small talk I sit there with her and we wait for morning.

At last, the largest-scale event yet: I’m part of a giant cast putting on a space opera stage production. We come out of the audience, then blast through the outer hull of a spacecraft that fills the stage, tearing down this fourth wall and exposing the crew spaces within. Ships and people fly over the audience like an insane rock concert, as high drama is acted out in space suits and helmets. I have a small part, a spacewalking saboteur. It’s chaos, all of us trying to be coordinated with everyone and everything else while still getting the play’s meaning across; we’re all so overwhelmed by this spectacle we’ve created -- our collective production is now this machine just using us like replaceable parts, wearing us instead of enlisting us, but what else can a production this large be?

onward

2006-04-10T00:28:00.000-04:00

There stretches out in all directions a seemingly infinite desert plain. Someone is crossing, a figure dragging behind themselves a tube that is almost as wide as they themselves are tall. The tube stretches back in a straight line, its origin far beyond the reach of sight. The figure drags it onward, no destination in view.

Now see the broad rank of figures, all roughly abreast, dragging their parallel tubes. What could have started something like this, and to what end could this pilgrimage be going?

'Round and 'Round

2006-03-26T11:30:00.000-05:00

Somewhere between his eighth and ninth drink, Alan lost it. Mind you, he was not incoherent. He was in perfect control of his body -- at least, as perfect as it got during this long time that he had been drunk more often than sober.
You could get anything you wanted.
It probably wasn’t even the alcohol that got to him in the end. The thing that did probably didn’t even have a name. That’s the way it goes.
The eighth drink was finished, and put down. Then it, as well as half-empty ninth, the still-full tenth, and the table itself, went flying.
Alan stormed out, scattering other partiers like flimsy sailboats in his wake. Sheep. Fucking pussies.
Well, they’d learn not to fuck with him. All of them.

You could get anything you wanted.

No one knew how it happened. Maybe some of them saw the bits of broken glass, the spilled alcohol, when they got to the dance floor. Not even a tenth of those that did notice even wondered what caused this minor inconvenience. They had more important things to do.
The place was definitely getting hot, with more and more pieces of clothing being left on empty chairs or with zoned-out friends in the booths. The progressively less-clad dancers seized the vibe with both hands and refused to slacken their grip.
No one saw anything. Maybe they couldn’t remember, maybe they didn’t want to. Maybe some of them would admit to hearing the seven especially loud beats, all of which were in time with the music.
No one could deny, however, the empty seven-round clip found by the door, or the seven bodies found on the dance floor after the song ended.
For a while, there was shock, outrage, horror. What kind of person would do this? Why? That could be me lying dead, shot and trampled in the confusion.
The matter of who it was that got killed proved to be difficult. No one could seem to recognize any of the bodies. That’s not to say that they had been injured beyond recognition. No one could put a name to any of the faces. None of them could dance, drink, or fuck any more, so what was the use for a name anyway?

By mutual agreement, the dance floor was deserted before long, and the partiers embarked on a migratory mass bender. By the time the hangovers and burnout had faded enough, many found it within themselves to return, partly out of curiosity and partly out of habit.

The dance floor was empty, sparkling, and new.
And everyone marvelled at the changes. And everyone that could do so got up to dance. And everyone began to have a good time again.

After the first few songs, it was like they’d never been interrupted at all.

After Dark

2006-03-26T11:22:00.000-05:00

            Going over his photos during a moment of relative quiet and indefinite (but definitely too short) duration, Robin noticed that nearly all of the people in them could pass for movie stars.  He wasn’t sure of the last movie he’d seen, couldn’t think of any he wanted to watch, even.  But the movie-star look was unmistakable, no matter where, when, or how many drinks into the evening.  It was something in the eyes, he surmised.  Or maybe -- yes, perhaps this was closer to truth -- something absent from them.
            Not that anyone else cared for such mental diversions, here.  In a world where nothing holds up to close scrutiny, you learn how to avert your eyes and suppress your musings without even being told.
            Robin had long felt that no one else would care for his photos.  Maybe because mine all look different, but theirs all seem the same.  Flipping to the next photo, he could hear Lily’s voice as clear as her face that grinned out at him.  Elitism doesn’t become you, Rob.
            He couldn’t help smiling back.
            They’d met a long while ago; there had been a sort of interest on his part, a bit of infatuation -- the usual for around here.  Then, as nothing came of it, he couldn’t recall seeing her for a very long time.  They’d both gotten swept up in the flow, and as the pace of the party picked up, neither bothered to look back for people long gone.
            Lily had later called it “the longest blackout you could imagine.”
            And neither of them had realized until they met again, perhaps a thousand years -- or maybe the blink of an eye -- later.
            Robin wasn’t having such a great time.  It had come to that damnable dilemma: down some more drinks, or make his retreat -- where to, it didn’t matter.  He cursed his indecision -- anyone else in his position would already have gotten a couple of shots by now, he figured.  So why do I hesitate?
            “I just don’t really want to,” a vaguely familiar girl’s voice just next to him was saying to her friend.  He looked over that way.  “Not now.”
            “Lily--” her friend said from behind a bottle.
            Lily… wow, it’s been ages.
            “Don’t worry about me.”  The girl took a step away, cast a quick look at Robin, then turned and headed for the washroom.  His gaze rested on her for a moment.  Did she recognize me?  There was something about her that was different, he knew, but he couldn’t put his finger on what.
            The other girl had noticed the object of Lily’s gaze.  “Hey, you’re kinda cute,” she said. “Want a drink?”
            What a jerk, she thought as she watched his retreating back and finished the drink herself.
            He wasn’t sure how he’d found this hallway.  He wasn’t even sure if hallway was the right word for it.  He couldn’t see a roof -- the walls stretched ten feet up, and above that was only blank darkness.  He was colder than he remembered being in a long time, but that was just fine with him.  This chill did wonders for his head.
            Robin contented himself with sitting halfway between the two walls, looking down the pathway that stretched on seemingly infinitely.  The walls were blank gray and unmarked, with just a few doors breaking the monotony.  The one just to his left was open, spilling some warm light into the otherwise monochromatic corridor.  And just beside it, the only evidence that he wasn’t the first person to have discovered this space, was a message scratched into the wall: Matte Kudasai.  He had no idea what it meant, but he appreciated the effect.
            Then another point of light appeared a hundred feet in the distance, and a figure was silhouetted in front of it.  The figure paused, then started towards him.
            “Hello?”  Lily’s voice rang through the empty space between them.
            She’d had no more idea where they were than he did.  But he could sense the same curious fascination that it held for him was just as strong in her, witnessed in the fact that neither of them had made any attempt to relocate somewhere else.  Also in the fact that neither of them had propositioned any drinking, drugs, or sexual experimentation.  Come to think of it, he thought, we’ve been talking for a very long time.  And that fact nurtured a kind of excitement he felt he vaguely remembered.  A nervous excitement, but one totally without fear.
            “Look up there,” Lily said.  “What would everyone else think of that?”
            “I dunno, but do you think we can really tell them?”
            They both laughed and grinned.  “Nah.”
            Lily pulled out a camera and snapped his picture before he could even pose out of instinct.  “Gotcha.”
            “Hey, wait a second, I wasn’t ready.”
            She just looked at him, her lips twisting upward a fraction of an inch.  Right.  That’s the point.
            “Oh my God, a distraction!” he exclaimed, and grabbed the camera out of her hands.
            She scowled with just as much menace as if she’d smiled.  “Jerk.”
            A picture spat out of the camera.  Without looking at it, he snapped one of her.  After the flash, he caught a glimpse of motion through the viewfinder as he lowered the camera.
            Her fist caught him right in the nose.
            They’d stayed in that strange hall until the cold finally became too much.  Sitting in a fairly busy stairwell later on, they examined the photos.
            “What the shit is that?” Lily said, upon seeing the one she’d taken of him.
            “What?”
            “Look at the top.  Those look like… you know.”
            Stars.  He flipped to the next.  Her picture too.  I haven’t seen the stars since…
            “Lily, what the hell are we doing here?”
            Neither of them had an answer, but once those thoughts started, the party couldn’t force them out of their minds.  Robin found he was spending less and less time taking part in the party than ever, and when he was there, it was always with Lily, but they  never stuck around for long.  Neither of them ever so much as suggested leaving, but it just always ended up happening.  So instead they spent their time with exploration and discussion.
            But no matter how long they walked, no matter how far they went, no matter how many empty rooms and eternally-forgotten dark corridors they explored, they never found that roofless hallway ever again, and they ended up stumbling upon the party every time.
             They walked into the dance floor, refreshed and contented enough that Robin turned to Lily with a smile that didn’t fit in with the sweat and thump of bass.
            “Wanna dance?”
            She put on a mock scowl.  “To this?”
            “Nah, just however we feel like.  And if we bump into people…”
            “They won’t even notice.”
            They laughed and moved through the jostling crowd, limbs flailing, fingers snapping, making up words to sing along with.
            And then the music changed.
            The bass, the synth drums, the screeching, all gone -- replaced by the sound of a single piano.  The crowd about them muttered in confusion and annoyance, but soon even that faded to a murmur.
            Lily and Robin locked gazes, stepped closer together.  Realization began to dawn.
            As they took each others’ hands, they became aware that the very world around them had changed somehow.  They weren’t the only people who had started to think.  Everyone around them began to echo through the room.
My God, what time is it?
I never even knew his name…
Mom will be wondering where I am…
I shouldn’t have done that.
Fuck, I’m so wasted… I need to get away from these people…

            They were aware of all of it.  The wide eyes all about them told of the same.  But something was different with them.

So what if I don’t dance seductively with him?  
So what if we don’t fuck every night?
 
So what if I don’t have to give a shit about makeup any more?
So what if we actually love to just talk sometimes? 

It doesn’t change the fact that this is a more constant love
than most other people will ever know.

For less than a second, everyone stopped talking. For less than a second, the light seemed less harsh. For less than a second, everyone actually listened to the music.
For less than a second, there was clarity.
Then, with the scratch of a needle and the thud of a new beat, the coalesced vapour of thought dissipated in the indoor twilight.
And no one noticed the empty space that had appeared in the middle of the crowd, for it was soon filled again.

writing exercise: going somewhere?

2006-03-23T00:13:00.000-05:00

EXT. ROADSIDE - DAY.

The wind howls and snow flies through the air, as the city is in the grips of a brutal blizzard. MARK, 22, disheveled, haggard, and bundled up, struggles under the hood of his car, which sits immobile on the shoulder of this road near the edge of town. He gets up, bangs his head, and then stumbles out from under the hood, which slams down. He pulls out his cellphone and dials a number, but it doesn't work.

As he wanders too close to the road, a passing transport truck HONKS and drenches him with splashed road muck.

MARK

Dammit!

He tries to wipe himself off, but is completely soaked. A car approaches, and he flags it down. The car pulls over and the driver, DIANE, rolls down her window.

DIANE

That your car? Need a boost?

MARK
(frantic)

Yes, no, uh... It's my car, yes, but I
think I'm out of gas. I need to get to
the set-- I'm on a movie shoot, see?
Could I get a lift to a bus station?

DIANE

I suppose... What about your car?

MARK

I can always get it later. Please, I need
to go, this is my career on the line.

DIANE

All right, hop in.

MARK

Okay, just let me...

He rushes to his car, pulls out boxes marked "PROPS MASTER", and hauls them over. Halfway there, one of them pops open, and dozens of guns spill out.

MARK

Shit!

DIANE

Oh my God!

She speeds off, leaving a furious Mark in her wake. He is frozen for a few seconds, then, seeing another approaching car, he grabs a gun, runs into its path, and flags it down. He runs up to the driver's side, pointing the gun at the terrified driver, BEN.

MARK

Out of the car, motherfucker!

launch (2nd take on an idea)

2006-03-14T02:11:00.000-05:00

Port Sector was wreathed in a perpetual fog. You couldn't see most of the sector itself from outside. For that matter, you couldn't see more than 100 feet if you were inside it. The whole enveloping cloud was intermittently lit by the sporadic shuttle engine flares inside it, and the sector always rumbled as if from distant thunder. If you lived inside the fog- and soot-shrouded neighbourhood, you just got used to it. Or you left.

It wasn't a regular flight. Joel had caught only a glimpse through the haze, which had been enough for his trained eyes to notice the underslung weapons pod, hugging the shuttle's fuselage close but not quite close enough. Still, armed irregular flights were more the norm than an exception around here. Besides that, he'd just got a delivery to make, and oh yeah, the boss wanted it done yesterday.

dream 2006-03-12

2006-03-12T14:28:00.000-05:00

A group of us are chilling in some kind of res building or apartment or hotel. Just some good hangouts in a few rooms. Casually, I’m looking outside and I see a giant llama in the chain-link-fenced parking lot of a nearby building. We gather at the window to watch. It climbs on a parked car and looks like it is about to go over the fence. Then it backs away and wanders around some more. Maybe 15 metres away, we notice another llama, almost as big, and also in that parking lot. Suddenly, they both vault the fence and are loose.

Up in the room, we’re freaking out -- this is too cool, man. Crazy giant llamas roaming around, who knows what kind of havoc will ensue?

Some of us make our way outside, where it is now nighttime. We find a large-scale hunt under way. A perimeter has been established, the street blocked off with fire engines, lights flashing about us.

Man, now those llamas must be freaking out.

A group of people go in behind a dark storefront to the rear parking lot. I don’t even know if the llamas are back there, but everyone seems certain.

Then, the branches of the couple of silhouetted trees in front of the store start to move, curling and uncurling. The building itself seems to grow, stretch upwards -- and I realize that those aren’t branches, and that’s not the building that’s growing, it’s a giant elephant that was asleep on the shadowy roof.

I don’t know how they’ll deal with this one.

I'm in your picture... in it.

2006-03-12T01:18:00.000-05:00

Earlier tonight, I went for a walk. I ended up sitting drinking a bottle of Mountain Dew (yes, the kind with the mad amount of caffeine) under a tree in the middle of that rarest of things here this week: a dry grassy field. As I just sat and took in the view, I noticed someone walking along the nearest path, a good 30 metres away. He seemed to be holding a camera to his eye, pointed at me. Or was he lighting a cigarette? There did seem to be an intermittent glow playing on his face.

He started walking again, going along the path into the parking lot beyond. Then, in profile, I saw him raise a digital camera, pointed at the base of a lamppost, and check the image using the colour viewfinder.

Not long after, as I walked back to residence, I glanced back and realized that I had been completely in shadow the whole time, as the tree I was sitting under was surrounded by near-absolute blackness -- or so it seemed from under the lamps that lit the path. I made it into his picture and he'll never even know anyone was there.

the road to montreal

2006-03-12T00:12:00.000-05:00

Panorama of the bus, early early on friday morning.

I shot a roll of film on that bus trip. No more photographs taken on the rest of the weekend, though; I wrote instead.

As a side note, we went to Foufounes Electriques that night, and I just a couple of days ago discovered a Nirvana bootleg from a show they played there in 1990. I'm stoked.

Aidan had a pretty good time at Foufs, too. Sort of kind of.

I think we all have stories to tell. I'm seriously thinking we should assemble something for a podcast episode on this.

Bear sure had some good times in Montreal. More material for storytimes (if he remembers it).

Adil, as well as Aidan and basically all of the amazingly talented musicians I know, will be playing at a sweet show at the Underground on Tuesday the 14th. Hopefully I'll be able to get a stereo patch from the soundboard to a DAT recorder that I need anyway for film sound effect gathering for a couple of productions I'm on. They gave me the equipment for almost a week; I'm pleasantly surprised at this. Hopefully more recording (for film, sound effects library, music, or the podcast) will be happening.

Are we there yet?

dozing on the couch // listening to Sigur Rós: 2006-02-15

2006-02-16T08:45:00.000-05:00

box sketch

()

this world slowly becomes less real, and imaginings sharper than ever. i find myself briefly in the presence of an academic who is going on about the cultural significance of the picture i found on a box at work last summer. i've stumbled into some 10-second anthropological lecture dream fragment-- then it's gone, i'm elsewhwere.

after the first half of the album ends, i'm fully awake again.

i missed the first bus but caught this instead

2006-02-13T23:25:00.000-05:00

there, standing inside the bus shelter and looking into the dark window-scape in front of me, i could see two people together -- a man, sitting, and a woman, standing close, in contact. he seemed to be nuzzled against her stomach, his head leaning against her -- warmth and comfort, before my eyes. and then i noticed how their oneness was more than just my reading of this scene, how their forms blurred, merged below the waist. i shifted on my feet slightly, then saw that as she stood, solid, on the sidewalk outside, he didn't. i looked over my shoulder and saw him in the flesh, seated alone on a bench inside.

so much for the tender scene. should i have then been disappointed?

looking back to the window as the bus arrived and the people around me began to move, i saw her hand stroke his hair before she turned away.

2006-01-15

2006-02-13T15:46:00.000-05:00

I was in a midtown street scene. A well-known street, but small, the kind that usually has more foot traffic than cars; lined with small but busy storefronts. Amalgam of the Byward Market and Bloor Street. This time, the crowds dominated everything. I was with someone, maybe family, and we seemed to have to go with this crowd. At least I thought so. As I made my way down, I realized that--
with everyone moving the same way,
with no cars driving,
with groups of people running about the middle of the street to some hard purpose,
with most of the shops boarded up,
and most of all, with those demolition charges,
danger was upon us; this was some kind of evacuation, being played out by its own twisted rules.

We found ourselves in a line for something. Once we got near the front, we saw that it led to some guy in front of a store that he and his buddies had seemingly broken into; they were selling cigarettes, but just a few at a time. I sheepishly shrugged when I got to the front and he offered me a couple out of a pack. My companion and I both declined; neither of us smoked. He looked ready to swear up and down and rail against our obvious stupidity, but thankfully no one on this street had time for any unnecessary words.

Further down, some kind of home-made tower of demolition charges was being set up near a storefront. I gathered that it would be to block the street with rubble once everyone had got past this point, or once there was simply no time left -- what were we running from, anyway? -- but the people setting up these demo charges weren’t soldiers or people in uniform -- come to think of it, I hadn’t even seen any cops.

Right in front of us, a couple of people were setting up a smaller column of demo charges. This seemed to be some kind of paper/cardboard box structure, with I-guess-explosives inside somewhere. It was leaning up against another building. The person lit the bottom of this paper structure. It caught fast, but no one in the little crowd seemed ready to move away. I yelled at my companion, who got too close, seemingly unconcerned. I got her further away, then it blew. Kind of anticlimactic, really -- it didn’t even damage the storefront, but it knocked over a lamppost -- and the way it fell, it almost hit me. So much for my concern for safety.

dream last night

2006-02-05T19:00:00.000-05:00

I’m with a group of friends; we’re all flaked out around a couple of picnic tables behind this building on the top of a fairly large hill overlooking the city, kind of like the Wormhole picked up and deposited in this high place. Most of the people are just like the Wormhole crowd, but Kiera is there, too. She’s never met them before, and I’m so glad to be introducing her to this gang.

A large swarm of hot-air balloons is coming in our direction from the city. They’re moving pretty fast, too. Reminds me of that balloon festival in Ottawa, but these are a strange sort of balloons -- smaller, faster -- racing hot-air balloons, not the large lethargic ones. One of them comes down towards us and lands on a raised platform at the edge of the summit just beyond the trees. As it nears, all of us recognize the two people inside -- intrepid adventurer friends, sometimes with us, mostly gone out into the wide world beyond the horizons. They land and come over to talk with us.

As we all talk and hang out, just exchanging pleasantries, Kiera and I look at the balloon. It is a small, extremely functional affair, the balloon itself round and completely transparent. Kiera makes a few remarks to the ballooners that demonstrate more than a layman’s knowledge of their machine. Then she goes into the building behind us. I follow, finding myself in some kind of restaurant or lounge. She is talking with a bunch of her Ottawa friends inside. I don’t feel like I fit in with this group at all, so I go back outside to my friends at the tables.

I sit down and start listening. The ballooners say that they’ve come here to offer their services to the people that run the place behind us -- they say it’s a prison and that’s just the way it is, I guess. They want to offer day trips over the city or something. Why prisoners would be allowed on those, I don’t know. In any case, we all see through that explanation and know they’ve come to break someone out. This is understood across the board and our conversation turns to prison breaks that we know of. The one that comes up is the story of a guy who just came into this very place incognito and walked out with a prisoner. I wonder who they’ve come to break out of here. For that matter, I don’t know whether or not we ourselves are inmates here.

I think this would have made more sense if it was a dream

2006-01-30T16:22:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I was walking along the path north from Winters. A few feet into the field to my right was a line of trees. On the ground below them I saw three squirrels. Normally, this would be strange for a January afternoon, but we have no snow here any more (as I write this it is warm enough to walk around outside without a coat). I've been noticing a lot of squirrels around campus lately, and they've been acting in a manner that suggests ownership of this space. We're all so busy fighting Lorna Marsden for this same area, calling it our 'Student Space,' that we've forgotten about the squirrels. They don't have to live by anyone's rules, least of all President Marsden's. These three were acting exceptionally strange. Considering that York is home to the weirdest, most aggressive squirrels out of any place I've been, these particular ones were the most fucked-up squirrels I've ever seen in my life.

One of them was gnawing all the bark off the broken branch. I stopped to watch, as this creature tore into its task, much as hyenas do to a carcass. After a few seconds it noticed me, and turned towards me a gaze that was less of a situational evaluation than an outright threat. 'That's right. I'm chewing through a branch. Get lost, because your flesh is a lot softer.'

After several harrowing seconds I remembered the size difference involved, and moved my attention to the next squirrel. This one was intent on getting into an overhanging tree. Instead of climbing up the trunk, which was about eight feet away, it seemed insistent on jumping a foot or two into the air to claw at a small, unsteady, swaying branch. The first time, it ended up hanging by its forepaws, swinging back and forth from the end of a branch that could not remain stable while supporting any animal larger than a mouse. Eventually, the squirrel had to let go. It tried and failed about four more times, and never did end up trying the trunk, probably because--

At that moment, a male voice cut through the quiet outdoor ambience, coming from somewhere up in McLaughlin residence, directly behind me.

'Hey Squirrel Boy! Get a room!'

What the eff.

real, but passed

2006-01-30T01:25:00.000-05:00

we walked through the field, the world around us vanishing in fog at 50 feet. above us, power lines hang suspended from nothing, disappearing into grey blankness to either side of our path. nick and gordon are mesmerized. i can hear the hiss of mist being evapourated by the sizzling high-tension cables. it's going to be a good walk home.

coming out of kinston on the train.
passing through a space that looks wild, trees and bushes poking through the rough blanket of snow. beyond their brown tangle rises a mirror-image cineplex odeon sign.
when I was born, this place was still mostly wild -- now it's beaten-down, mundane; a surface and not a land at all.
still a long way to go for that.

jesse: 'at least they get to watch the trippy borealis'
nat: 'if they can see it...'

tuesday, wake-up

2006-01-30T01:16:00.000-05:00

I'm in that curious non-York again. North of Winters, the pathway leads to that mysterious (to me) other building and goes either around it or through that courtyard area that stretches under a part of it, to where the two rejoin again. I want to visit all our half-remembered nooks and great spots over there again.
Then I'm on a bus with some friends. We're heading south on the huge road that passes the campus -- it's not Keele, though -- and it's really interesting just to look out the windows. There were some really nice shops and restaurants, a very nice, alive -- ALIVE! -- part of town, and not the edge of nowhere at all.
Then various scenes; I don't know if they're in this other York or not, but I find myself in a world that I've been a part of for a long time already. Matty H. is talking to Raymi on the internet, and she's actually talking with him, too. It's far more mundane than her blog, though -- is that good or bad?
Walking along an east-west thoroughfare, it's dusk-turning-to-night. Now we're all gathered by some strange outdoor machinery apparatus, all high-tech but with an air of Rube Goldberg whimsy. Coach is talking about this guy, Mexican (I think), "Bambino" -- I only know him by reputation -- not sure if he's dead or just gone away, but Coach sure misses him. Apparently, he was one-of-a-kind.
I suppose we all are, just not the kind that matter to the Coaches of the world.

dreams from friday 20th, written following sunday

2006-01-28T21:19:00.000-05:00

Back to yesterday, I remember being back at that amazing Ope, this time overrun by only those aspects of it that I don't remember fondly. This place that I explain to Winters folk as my Winters-before-Winters is now revisited in its most bureaucratic form. A large meeting of Staff and Administration and Desk People, in a building like the new Accolades. I wonder why I've come back this summer. Kiera and Tyler and Roy and Sean and Lisa and Rob and everyone, every single amazing person I'd worked with weren't there. Why was I?
The senior people present ended up speaking in no uncertain terms about god, or God as they envision it. Some younger staff member in the audience rose up in opposition, kind of showing off, though, and then the whole thing just went to hell.
I ended up, completely frustrated at another ruined thing, at home. But then Ben from Winters, and Warren from Ope, who have never met, are visiting for a while and sleeping over at my house, and amazingly enough, getting along great with my parents.

dreams from last saturday, written on waking

2006-01-26T22:07:00.000-05:00

I'm in a small party; I don't know anyone there but neither they nor I mind that at all. It becomes more and more an emotionally bewildering thing. I find myself, not moving myself, but spinning around, tracing an invisible circle on the floor, my head always facing towards its centre.
Then we’re all flaked out in various places in the room. I try to put on some Godspeed that’s on the computer in that room but everything I choose is some kind of remix. Even though I should know that Godspeed has never been remixed, I accept this.
--then it was like some kind of epic, morally ambiguous, legendary tale from a civilization that passed a thousand years ago, but you know how parties sometimes seem in memory.

Some time later, I’m with another group. We’re in this indoor space, sort of like the small Accolade, ACW, Accolade West, but all inside. It’s this museum that we’re trying to escape from, don’t know why, it’s semi-lit, actually kind of reverent. I jump down from a balcony onto a stairwell-- and it’s like I’m jumping onto that inclined red wall with all the running-shoe skid-marks on it, in the real Accolade, sliding down to where there should never be a bench any more. We’re trying to get out, but this deserted place we hope to leave is more beautiful than frightening. We’re going on through this place, further and further, but we don’t ever seem near an exit. I’ve got that still-moving-through-the-deep-heart-of-the-museum feeling, exploring this dangerous freedom.

Outreach Night

2005-10-28T22:53:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, the same distance
becomes longer.
When the far-off rattle of a train
weaves its way through the city.
When I can take comfort
in the willow trees.
When friends become
strangers.

Climbing the stairs
and I’m thinking of
rooftop explorations,
boastful indiscretions.

Last night
I was ten seconds
ahead of the future.

But now I’m reaching the second floor
And it feels like
it should be
the fourth.

Heaven waits
past the fifth floor landing
But that door
has been locked again.

Back in my room
the mirror is clean,
clothes cover the bed,
and narcissism reigns.

The first lesson is that you can’t trust yourself.

A knock sounds
invisible and impatient.
I can guess whose hand
and the present rolls into focus.

But now I am reminded
how the past is subjective.
I cannot remember
if I said it or not
or whether or not
it was heard.

We make our
short-lived goodbyes.
Urgently chasing
our own happiness.

In the shower,
I curse the rain outside.
I’m trying so hard,
running in place
on slick bathroom tiles,
trying to emerge clean.

The second lesson is that no matter how clean you get, you’ll always need to wash again.

The stars must be there, still,
somewhere behind the pink smudge.
Luminous brushstrokes of light and vapour
fill a sky that I now ignore out of habit.

I am
fixed
on playing catch-up.
Not just for this
lost half-hour
but for the past month.

Lengthy strides are punctuated
by glances at the time,
and anticipation creates the illusion
of deep space.

It’s a fair walk
but what a flight of fancy.
Past the front lines
marked by construction fences.
Behind them
uniform ranks of houses,
sentinels
keeping watch on the road.
What once was ordered
is now swathed in a sea of mud,
pockmarked with footprints
holding murky pools.

Eyes ahead.

Not the time
to look at the past
while on the way
to meet the future.

The third lesson is that everything seems to mean more than it actually does.

I’ve been told
that it’s different each time.
The crowd, relations,
always a new arrangement.

And maybe
it’s a trick of the light,
how our bodies shrink
and our heads
exaggerate.

I see friends
transformed.

Two bright young women.
Two aged and young men.
One pair has ensnared the other
but which holds the leash?

In the verbal scrum
I am cast about.
Friendly words hide the sight
of a scrambling heap of egos,
one clawed down
that another may rise,
only to have its foundation
ripped

away.

The balcony is cold,
and I find no warmth inside.

And now, some words from our generous sponsors.

Dude, this one. This one!
Heeeyy…
How’s it going?
I don’t know what you’re doing… but I like it!
Why does the conversation keep going like this?
Who cares?
Aw… you guys look cuuute…
Yo! Hold up!
Okay, this is your song.
Ten minutes.
Where’s your offering, man?
It’s just gross.
Well, I could drink it for you.
I knew you’d have it!
Hey, can I borrow that?
You see, that is the Battle of Balls-Deep!
What the fuck did you just do that for?

And now, live from a dirty closet, we’re back to our program.

We just got our second wind,
and it’s an hour after midnight.
But it doesn’t feel like
nearly enough.

Strange,
contemplating
while the DJ plays
a game of musical chairs.

It’s still the same room,
but it seems somehow wrong.
The world, tilted,
one degree off-axis.

I’ve run through
an election-year’s worth
of televised debates
in twelve seconds.
But the words
that would have made
a gracious departure
are only showing up at 4am.

The fourth lesson is that chance always trumps fate.

I should be asleep.
As it stands, I’m halfway back.
And once again
the sky is smeared with grit.

I’m being called home
in the company of
far-off train whistles,
a row of willows,
and an automatic door
with a mind of its own.

I guess the real lesson is that nothing ever works the way it’s meant to.

then and there

2005-09-15T00:26:00.000-04:00

I see them,
the people who get stoned and go to museums,
they suffer attacks from eight-year-olds who've smoked too much pot,
they carry fully stocked bars in their backpacks,
they run wild after midnight through community parks,
they tailgate each other on the way to McDonalds,
they listen to their best friends break down because it happened again,
they trip drunkenly over the same tree root every night,
they claim to have been born thirty-five years too late,
they find their dreams so awful that they can only give four hours of every day to them,
they felt they'd never be loved until they were also mourned.
Those of us who've had the pleasure to have seen or heard of them
pull onto the comforting shoulder,
cast our headlights heavenward,
and fuck the four-way flashers!
I don't know where we'd be without them.

sitting in a hallway

2005-09-14T19:25:00.000-04:00

Thrust into a world of open-air smiles that hide minds most at home in halls of concrete, I find myself wondering about the necessity of appearances.

We don't fool everyone else, and we certainly don't fool ourselves.

How many times do we ask each other "how are you?" or something like it? How many times do we hear a response other than "fine" or something like it? That's just what's expected as an exchange, programmed and automatic. Do we want to hear anything other than that, though? If so, why ask?

If we ask someone how they're doing, it should be because we're willing to listen to whatever they have to say.

packing it all in

2005-09-07T15:56:00.000-04:00

We watched them deconstruct the skyscrapers, piece by piece. We tuned in for the last TV broadcast, grinning knowingly at the reassurances given us. We saw them fold up the billboards and leave town. We ate chicken soup as the big boxes were flattened to the pavement.

There were no tears; there was no joy. I don't know about you, but my grim satisfaction gave me no peace.

The physical icons were gone, but I yearned for more. I wanted to tear down the monuments that no one had ever seen - the most real of all.

lost in the summer haze

2005-08-14T19:49:00.000-04:00

cut to:

2005-08-14T18:34:00.000-04:00

Everywhere I go, I see people acting out the roles that they have assigned to themselves. They settle into a template that they have adopted, and try to ignore the fact that there are countless others stamped of the same mould. So many people think that they can choose a mask to put on that will make them unique. All that they accomplish is to hide what actually does make them unique.

I'm tired of all this posturing. Stop. Stop practicing the look that you put on for everyone else in front of your bedroom mirror. Stop hiding behind a two-dimensional character lifted from a circular-filed screenplay.

Why can't we be comfortable being ourselves? It's the only part that we can play with absolute conviction, anyway.

downtown or the edge of town?

2005-07-20T20:50:00.000-04:00

So which side of the balance do I feel like swinging towards today? It doesn't matter because sooner or later, rebuffed, I'll swing the other way.

Some of you live in there, moving around on the cracked sidewalks lined by stalls and innumerable hidden-gem cafés. This is your home, and all the precious characters and transient down-and-outs are just a part of the scenery laid out to add colour to your world. You walk by the punked-out kids who hang around the shopping centre entrance and know that you've got a smarter kind of independance than they have. And anyway, their non-conformity is just another thing for people to belong to.

A lot of them are fleeing from that other place, out there where the rest of you live. Maybe they'll have to return home to it, or maybe they've left for good. But no matter how far they go to escape the physical trap, they know they'll never stop being trapped in their minds. If you grow up in a gilded cage, you live like you're in one for the rest of your life. The only way to destroy that prison is to destroy the mind and soul it exists in. I'm awed with how well so many of you are doing at that. Some have found ways out, but they're only temporary, and those safety harnesses snap them back into the numbing cushion of reality before long. Still, those midnight rambles beyond their world are all that keep them semi-conscious during the day.

And I'm sitting in limbo, wondering which way I'm going to turn next.

On Canada Day

2005-07-02T17:00:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting here, waiting for my bus. It's taking me downtown. I've been waiting for this bus all day long, but have been doing most of that at home. It's been a day of false starts.

From the underpass, I see the lights of another bus going the other way. Packed full of suburbanites, taking them back home from the day's revelry and drunkenness.

It's a quarter after eleven at night, and I'm waiting to go downtown.

All the buses are going in the other direction, and they're all full.

roads, trails, bent blades of grass - they all mean the same thing

2005-06-12T02:35:00.000-04:00

Joe was cruising.

The highway unrolled in front of him, sped under his wheels, and was relegated to the rearview mirror and memory.

With the experience of long practice he maneuvered his car around a minivan that lumbered up a hill in the roadway. Cresting the top, the road undulated further and higher up ahead. Beyond the high barrier walls on either side of the highway stood the tops of the city buildings, but above the furthest rise ahead of him there was only sky.

Joe accelerated up the hills and coasted all the way down, notching his speed up every time. As he got closer, he noticed there were no cars coming in the opposite direction any more.

Strange. Maybe an accident - if that was it, it was a bad one.

Nearer to the furthest hill, he saw a huge traffic snarl that began halfway up its slope, and continued for who knew how far past the top. Applying the brake gently and with increasing force, he coasted into a spot at the back, only to notice something even more peculiar. People were getting out of their cars and standing at the top of the hill.

This was beyond odd. Something must have played hell with the traffic on the other side of the hill. Joe yanked the parking brake, shut off his engine, and got out of the car. The heat and humidity blasted him immediately after opening the door. Shading his eyes from the afternoon sun, he walked up to the group of people at the top. They ignored him, their attention focused ahead, and as he looked he saw why.

Not even fifty meters in front of him, the highway simply ended. For fifty meters there was a tangle of stopped cars. After that, there was just a tangle of branches, a line of trees forming the front rank of a forest that stretched across the highway and as far as he could see in either direction.

He didn't stop, but just kept walking down the hill. He passed by the legion of stopped cars, then came to the line that divided ashphalt from earth. Pausing only a moment, he stepped into the forest, dropping his keys to the ground.

dream up, dream up, let me fill your cup

2005-05-24T22:46:00.000-04:00

Another thing that has recently come to mind:

Maybe all of these things that I'm remembering never really happened, and for some strange and odd reason I'm imagining them, coming up with new ones every day, and yet creating my own false sense of déjà vu. How do I know what happened yesterday? For all I know I could have made it up a moment ago.

Part of me is saying that thoughts like these are dangerous, and that I'm not going to do myself any favours pursuing them. But I can't seem to help it. Am I compelled? No, that's ridiculous. I think what I think.

I just remembered about five different dreams in the span of fifteen seconds, now. Only one was a repeat from a recent remembrance. But I can't tell when I dreamed them, or if I even did before now.

Six.

What the hell is going on?

Seven.

"Get out of town, think I'll get out of town." That's where I was in this last one, sure enough.

Eightnine. Ten.

It's all so disturbingly familiar.

what is to save us from this madness?

2005-05-23T20:32:00.000-04:00

Over the past three weeks, something very strange has been happening to me. I've never had a thing like this happen, and I have no real clue what's caused it. I've been remembering things long forgotten - dreams I had years ago. Every day, it seems, I remember at least one part of a dream that has laid unnoticed in a dark corner of my mind since the day I woke up after dreaming it, however long ago that may have been. These are dreams that I've never thought about before, and now, they're all coming back to me at once.

Most of what I'm remembering is visual - places, spaces that I've created and moved through in my mind. Most of them are based in some way, shape, or form on areas of downtown Ottawa. It's recognizably the same sort of space - it has that feeling of familiarity in my mind, but the physical specifics are often very different. And sometimes, of course, this non-Ottawa serves as a sort of gateway within my dreams to places far removed from any sort of world that I have ever known.

I remember one quite clearly. I was moving alongside that stretch of land just south of Ottawa University, where the Transitway and the Rideau Canal are side by side. Yet, it was a blasted red wasteland of old brick buildings. A few surviving walls or sections of houses poked stubbornly out of the rubble, outstretched like refusing fists towards the unearthly sky of blood. And yet... as I walked through this bizarre landscape, it changed before my eyes - a shroud was pulled away and where moments before was desolate ruin, now was a land of unrivalled richness and natural beauty, the kind now relegated to fanciful tales, full of magic and life. But I couldn't stay long...

views from a mall restaurant

2005-05-08T16:29:00.000-04:00

At one of the tables, a young boy and his mother sit side-by-side. She doesn’t speak to him, but occasionally glances up disdainfully at the television, which is currently tuned to MuchMusic. The boy, however, is intent on finishing his meal, not noticing the TV that his mother seems so concerned about. His soft drink bottle is still mostly full, even as he finishes his meal.

The boy doesn’t have too many worries. He’s an only child, which means he gets attention from his family. This attention usually takes the form of material objects or monetary expenditures, however. He doesn’t actually do much with his family. The mother spends more time with the boy, as the father works long hours. She wishes to protect her only child, and is always on the lookout for negative influences. She tries to shield him from what she deems corrupting. However, she spends more time trying to protect him from negative influences than she does being a concrete positive influence.

Across the center aisle that bisects the mall, one of the nurse/receptionists is helping to close the medical office that she works in at the end of the day. She is rather short and has reddish-tinted hair. Her expression is happy enough when talking with her coworkers, but blank, almost bored, otherwise.

This young woman is unhappy with her life, albeit subtly. She is searching for something; she just isn’t sure what. Her relationship with her boyfriend is stable, yet she feels unfulfilled. She tries to put on a brave front with friends (which she wishes she had more of) and coworkers, but doesn’t feel challenged enough in her life.

A young guy in his twenties comes in. He has a rather thick neck and a rounded head with his hair shaved short, about a centimeter in length. He wears a couple of large rings on his fingers. He buys only a Labatt Blue, and sits down. Drinking his beer, he pays a lot of attention to the TV, which has a Shawn Desman video playing. After a while of watching TV, he pulls out his cellphone, and begins a conversation with his friend. At one point, he discusses what seems to be an issue with a girl, accompanied by frequent glancing at the TV once more.

He has a job as a security guard, but he wants something that pays better. He feels that this job is one way that he is made insignificant, when he deserves better. He wishes he had more control over his life, and ends up being rather overbearing or controlling in his relationships. When he’s feeling down about himself, he’ll whip out his trusty cellphone and call someone, just to be involved with something.

Another man in his early thirties is sitting at one of the tables, doing work. He has somewhat receding/thinning hair. He wears his unzipped coat inside the building, and has a large bag on the seat opposite him. He has a large textbook, paper, and a pen on the table in front of him, and is reading the book and taking notes. Long periods of working intensely are broken only by occasionally staring intently at the TV, but never for long.

This man is very focused on whatever he does. This is what allows him to succeed at his academic and work endeavours. However, it causes him to suffer somewhat in the interpersonal category, as he does not seem to be laid-back enough for many people. Because he cares so much about the task at hand, his day-to-day life is more stressful than it is for other people.

The security guard was just coming off of a shift. It was a daytime shift, which was a pleasant change from the regular odd hours, but he still wasn’t feeling too good. He had just learned that, what with cutbacks, the security firm may be letting him go. So he went to get himself a beer and seek solace. Sitting down, he started watching TV out of habit, but inside, he was reflecting on how his life was going. Something about his girlfriend was bothering him. Something was needling at his trust, and he wasn’t sure why. He decided to call his friend Tony, just to discuss how things were going with the job, and eventually to bring up his misgivings about his girlfriend. He probably wouldn’t be able to help much, though – Tony was a sheep. Still, he was someone to talk to.

so be good to me and I'll be good to you

2005-05-08T16:18:00.000-04:00

Why must we be against American culture? It's so easy to identify a whole country with "low art," but I thought we Canadians prided ourselves on our rationality. This isn't rational - it's a kind of gut instinct fed by a deep-seated insecurity. So many of us have become obsessed with being quietly "better" than America (as if America is a culturally homogenous) that they are practically screaming it.

As well, being "better" than America seems to be good enough for us. Once we deem ourselves as having surpassed America in some respect, then no further improvement is seen as necessary. America is a country, not a benchmark - certainly not the standard by which to judge the rest of the world.

Score Another One for the Bad Guys

2005-04-28T20:06:00.000-04:00

Who do they think they are? The thought came almost automatically. And then it was followed by its faithful companion. Why the hell do I keep doing this to myself?

Although she could think of several answers, Sarah could find none that held up to scrutiny. Especially right now. She had discovered quite some time ago that her mind was never clearer or sharper than in the hours after sex. Although it was never any help to her; quite the opposite. Another thing that she had discovered was that it didn’t pay off to think here. She couldn’t help it, though. No matter what happened to her, it was her own fault, somehow. But for some reason, she just couldn’t stop.

She picked up her form-fitting black dress from the chair and slipped into it. Surveying the empty room around her for the first time since she and James had gotten there, she sighed. She didn’t think she’d been here before, but she’d seen all too many rooms like this. She’d gotten to them in different ways, but once inside, everything was all the same. Well-lit, clean, with pastel walls and floral upholstery on the furniture. Picking up her heels, she noticed the strap on the right one was snapped. Damn. She pursed her lips, paused a moment, then flung it across the room.

It left a hole in the wall, and a bit of white dust settled to the floor. Plaster… a façade, just like everything else here.

She padded across the carpet to the bathroom. The cold tiles leeched the warmth from her bare feet. Checking in the mirror, she quickly touched up her makeup, then made her way back to the bedroom.

The king size bed was unmade, as they had left it. She almost opened the door, but decided against it. What was the rush? Running on automatic, she stripped the bed, and then made it again, sheet by sheet, layer by layer. When she was done, she almost laughed. Ready for whoever needs it next, I guess. I wonder why I even care.

Once she had left, she walked down the dark hallway in the direction of the party. No matter how far away she had gone – or was gone, for that matter – Sarah always knew where to go, and how to get back to the party. At least she could take pride in that much.

The cold floor was beginning to become more than an annoyance. Hearing faint voices from a down a hall that opened to her left, Sarah turned and headed in that direction. Not having gone far, she came to a door with light spilling out underneath.

She opened the door on an empty foyer. Sofas and bookcases lined the walls, and a mahogany coffee table with a half-full bottle of rum and some glasses sitting on it was in the centre of an elegant rug. A few clothes were scattered on the sofas and even the floor, and she saw at least twenty pairs of men’s and women’s shoes. From the adjoining room, the door slightly ajar, came soft human noises: giggles, breathing, moans.

Sarah rolled her eyes, went to the table, picked up the bottle, and took a drink from it. She grimaced, put it back, then bent down and started checking shoes. The noises from the other room never abated; rather, they seemed only to increase in intensity. After a minute, she had found a pair of stilettos that fit her feet. She had just finished putting them on when the door to the other room opened, and a young man walked out of there. He was naked but showed no sign of embarrassment. When she remained silent, he tilted his head at her.

“Are you coming or going?” he asked, brushing his hair out of his eyes.

She looked him straight in those eyes. What was it about boys like him?

“That depends. You?”

“Depends.”

She smiled, walked up to him, and put a hand on his chest. She could feel his heart rate jump up, and that sealed the matter. She ran the tips of her fingers down his torso to his waist, then withdrew them. Through it all, he didn’t even flinch; he just looked at her through half-closed eyes.

“Get dressed, then.”

Moments later, they were walking towards the dance floor, his arm around her waist. He looked at her.

“Do we have to do this dancing crap?”

She smiled coyly. “Well, you’ve got to do these things in the proper order. I won’t do anything without dancing first.”

God, listen to me. Why do I keep letting guys that I know that will be no good seduce me? Even if they don’t know I’ve let them do it, I have anyway. I can’t even say no to myself, let alone them.

“Yeah, that’s a good philosophy, I guess,” he said after a moment, and grinned.

They continued walking, as the music ahead of them got louder. He gave her ass a squeeze. She cocked an eyebrow at him, then looked ahead and smiled wryly.

today

2005-04-21T10:39:00.000-04:00

Today, I am writing, packing up to go home, and going to see some films. And I have to say goodbye to this place and the people that make it what it is.

brass knuckles

2005-04-20T18:46:00.000-04:00

Awareness flowed into that timeless stratum where he could view time, sensing the available paths, the winds of the future... the winds of the past: the one-eyed vision of the past, the one-eyed vision of the present and the one-eyed vision of the future - all combined in a trinocular vision that permitted him to see time-become-space.
-Frank Herbert, Dune

It's stopped raining for now, but the sky's still very grey. The temperature remains pleasant. It's a downcast kind of day, but I feel pretty good. Everything's getting greener, the trees are growing leaves, and there's a whole summer ahead to enjoy. Here I am, at the beginning of it - and I know how special it is. I don't feel like this very often, and it's hard to explain.

left hook

2005-04-20T15:09:00.000-04:00

"It's the Golden Country - almost," he murmured.
"The Golden Country?"
"It's nothing, really. A landscape I've seen sometimes in a dream."
-George Orwell, 1984

My friend just got a special issue of the music magazine Mojo that is all about psychedelic music. Fascinating history, and incredible stories. We read that for a while, then went wandering across campus in the rain. It wasn't raining very hard, mostly just misty. We found this clearing in a woodlot that we'd visited before had become a giant green-tinged pond. It was so beautiful, and it brought back so many memories for me. We wandered a bit more, then circled around and made our way back. I don't care that it's raining; it's such a nice day today.

right uppercut

2005-04-20T11:27:00.000-04:00

Good times last night and more to come today, I'm sure.

Highlights:
The Baby Elephant Walk.
Orange Crush is awesome. But two Orange Crushes are better.
We went through the gate to Narnia, and it's summer there, now. My first time there, and everyone else's first time when it's not been winter.
We saw the city on the edge of the underground lake. (Actually we were just lying upside down on a hill. But it was totally awesome.)
We looked down the hallway of trees. That always looks cool.

diary of a flake

2005-04-14T15:44:00.000-04:00

He struggled with the clanking plastic bags.

"Oh, heavy drinker, I see," she said.

"Nah, not really," he replied. "I'm just lazy. This is the result of several months accumulation. I've been sadly remiss in my recycling duties for the past three months, which means that I now have to dispose of these more discreetly than I'm doing right now."

She paused. "Are you an English major?"

"No. I just like saying things that make me sound smarter than I actually am."

They keep missing you when you're around. But they never miss you when you're away.

2005-04-14T15:34:00.000-04:00

He didn't consider himself a cult leader. And they didn't consider themselves his followers.

"After all," one of them said, "one of his biggest things was 'associate with people like yourself.' And that's what we did."

"He didn't change us in any way. He just recognized what we were and let us be comfortable in that."

"Not everyone could do what we've done. There's just something about how we live that is just... beyond... normal experience."

"you can do a lot while retaining 'lazy fuck' status"

2005-04-09T20:14:00.000-04:00

Hooray, my exams are done! Actually, they were done yesterday, but I was too busy doing nothing to actually write about it. So just now I figured I'd write about doing nothing. This is actually a challenge.

You see, as my screenwriting prof told me, if you're going to write a movie about boredom, you can't let the movie itself be boring, cause basically it'll suck. All right - touché, salesman. Touché. So I figure same applies to blogging about nothing. If you write about the fact that you did nothing, your entry better damn well have some substance to it.

One thing I've realized is that I've been sleeping a lot during the day. And I don't mean sleeping in. I mean passing out in the middle of the afternoon. I've been doing that every day since Tuesday or Wednesday this week. Yesterday, I fell asleep to a screamo album played at a decent volume, after I'd come back from finishing my Film & Video Production exam. I woke up, looked at my clock, which was reading just after two in the afternoon, thought I'd missed my exam, and freaked out. Hugely. For about five seconds. Then everything was cool again.

I've been having some interesting dreams, both during the night, when I should, and during the day, when I should be actually doing stuff. Weird dreams, and I could tell some of them here, but I don't fully remember them, and so they'd be boring. One that I had today was extremely embarrassing, albeit funny in an American Pie-esque way. So no details.

Maybe this tiredness has something to do with the late nights I've been pulling. Or my shitty eating habits. Probably the second. So yesterday I resolved to eat more protein. And that's what I've been doing. Although really, I'm not sure how well I'm doing at that, since it's late now and I needs to gets me some dinner.

if you had the power not to feel, would you use it?

2005-03-26T20:45:00.000-05:00

You were the tree that fell in the forest - and they were the people that weren't there to hear it.

Every window is a piece of opaque plastic. But people don't even notice that they can't see outside. And not one of them is broken. Because of this, I find myself more shut in than if there were no windows at all. If you could tear down the walls, those dark squares would be invisibly suspended in midair.

A pane of glass can make you seem on the other side of the world from someone, when you're only feet away. And when you're a world apart from someone, that pane of glass in your monitor brings you together.

This is the sound a butterfly makes.

profoundly silly

2005-03-23T19:35:00.000-05:00

I think that all of us have moments where we ask, "Is everybody insane or am I?" I just had one of those. Mental focal points like these aren't usually the result of one big thing, but rather of so many facts, ideas, words, and gestures that it seems as if the whole world is organized in some horrible pattern and you're seeing it for the first time.

Of course, it doesn't last, and you revert back to just being your normal self. (But in that state, you'd refer to it as sticking your head back in the sand.) That's the thing. Each mental state paints itself as objective truth, and the other as a fabrication, a rejection of reality.

Which is better, anyway? To know or to be ignorant? Some say that knowledge is power. Others say that ignorance is bliss. Maybe they're all right.

I had a conversation almost two years ago with a friend of mine. We were talking about these sort of things, and she asked me, if I had the option, if I wanted to know everything.

Everything sure is a lot.

After a few seconds of thought, I replied that, yes, I would. I'd much rather know the truth, good or bad, than be ignorant. She said that that was a very scary idea. I think that she was saying that there are some things we can't know, and it's the not knowing that makes life what it is. If everything is given us, where is the struggle?

I guess I could run with that thought.

What is more important? Having knowledge, and not using it, or searching for knowledge, when your only knowledge is that you don't know?

Participation at last!

2005-03-22T00:19:00.000-05:00

We had never seen anything like it before. I had no idea what this being was made of. It was in the same room as we were, and we couldn’t see it at all. Then one of us stretched out her hand. It broke the vertical surface of some till-then invisible liquid. There was nothing that we could see that contained it. The hand moved through air, and then, creating ripples, into this thing. She took a step forward, immersing her face, and started to blow bubbles.

This was when the thing was friendly.

By the end, we found ourselves running up a steeply inclined hallway, in some kind of weird hotel. We were holding bundles of papers in our arms: printouts, notebooks, reports, scribbled notes… But it was there, trying to stop us. We couldn’t see it until it let fall from itself litres of water at a time, which soaked the papers we were holding. We were suddenly struggling with far heavier loads.

When we got to the top, and rounded the corner, we found ourselves in an empty restaurant type lounge, the sunken dining area of which was covered in about a foot of water. The temperature in there was falling rapidly. We had to hurry, throwing all the papers – everything that anyone had written about or because of this creature – into the water, before it froze. Only then was the danger removed.

Three of us were walking through the wasteland at night. All around us was an industrial debris-strewn landscape of grey. We were walking along near the top of a ridge, which peaked to our left. We were just walking, but I wanted to leave that place.

I climbed to the top of the ridge. Far beyond, I could see a smooth inwardly sloping tower, with a beam of red light stretching upward from its top. I moved to walk towards it, but my companions told me not to. It was someplace we couldn’t go.

I noticed a line along the top of the ridge. On the other side of it, a fine grey dust had accumulated on the ground. I picked up a rock and threw it in front of me. When it crossed that line along the ridge, a small distortion spread in the air around it, like a ripple. When it struck the ground, a red glow surrounded it for a moment.

I jumped through, and though I created a bigger disturbance when I crossed over, I didn’t feel a thing. When I landed, the red glow started at my feet and climbed halfway up my legs before dissipating. I half expected to start becoming invisible or to disintegrate and become more of this grey powder that had cushioned my landing, but nothing really happened. I said farewell to my friends, and started walking towards the tower.

When I got there, I found an entrance at the base that led to curved stairs down below. Not far down these stairs, I came out into a semi-crowded sort of subway or tram station. I got on one of these trains just before it headed out.

Once outside, we were on streetcar rails set in a busy city street. Ahead of us, a large bridge spanned a river that flowed through the city. As we were crossing the bridge, I realized that this wasn’t where I wanted to go, so I got off once we got to the other side. I was still trying to find some sort of “way out” (way out of what, though?), and I noticed a big cargo yard next to the bridge and the river. In this yard were many containers of the sort used on trucks, trains, and boats. I wanted to explore, but along the guardrail on the side of the road was an electric fence. So I walked along the roadside across the bridge, until I finally found my way back to the subway station.

Inside, one storey above the platform level, not far from the ticket booth, was a stairway that led into the next part of the building, which appeared to house a school. However, the stairway had a metal gate in place, so that no one could move between the school and the station.

I was standing so that I could see the landing on the floor above in that stairwell, where students were going to and fro. Two of them seemed to get into some kind of altercation, which rapidly escalated to the point of one of them pulling a kitchen knife on the other. (It is probably worth noting that the guy who pulled the knife was a Frosh here this past year.) I looked around, but nobody in the station seemed to have noticed. Frantic, I watched the events unfold. The two struggled together, the knife-wielder slowly closing the distance between his weapon and his opponent’s face. Suddenly, in a flurry of motion, they were apart, then the attacker started slicing the other guy’s head. At one point he seemed to be trying to cut his ear off. I screamed for people to stop them.

I don’t know what happened then. I can’t remember a thing.

The next thing I do remember is making my way around to the other side of the station with a group of people. We had some kind of lighting kit with us, with a light and collapsible parabolic reflector on a pole. We found a large stairwell that extended for about five storeys above us and at least as many below.

We needed to fix the light, though. I started fiddling with the cables, attaching another light. When I went to join the cables, I found that they weren’t power cables, but RCA audio/video cables. When I looked again, there were two microphones, not two lights, attached to the pole.

We went down one flight of stairs, stepping past some rather bohemian-looking guys and girls half-sprawled out on the lower landing, and found ourselves in a vast underground excavation project. It appeared to be the construction of a new subway line. We weren’t the only people there. There were lots of construction workers, but also just as many people – just ordinary people – down there taking tours. I passed the guy who works the door at my college’s pub on Thursdays, and we greeted each other friendlily.

A train came, and a bunch of us got on. Eventually, we came out above ground, and when I looked around, I found that I was travelling with my family now. We were on our way to a movie theatre. My sister was saying something about the (to her mind) excessive profanity in entertainment these days, and some twentysomething guy started to make fun of her. I told him that things were cool, and just to leave her alone. Then we arrived at the station by the theatre.

I don’t know what we were going to see.

no more illusions

2005-03-14T18:50:00.000-05:00

We held up the dreams that we presented to the sky. That was all we had left to look up to. The rest of our idols had worn down to the dust of another age. We had built them up, but then they just tore themselves down.

She used to walk through life looking upward for answers or downward in shame. Now she looks all around: to where she’s been and where she can go – or even to just appreciate the scenery.

When he dies, his last thoughts will be of those he knows – friends and enemies, all those who were in his life. They help make his life what it is.

Going All the Way

2005-03-13T19:37:00.000-05:00

It was a good night. Shuffling down the street, Tom knew this. It was one of the few things he did know at that moment. Everything else was lost in the haze of the evening’s indulgences.

Those lights were so bright – he hadn’t noticed ever before. And the shadows they cast, they seemed alive. He knew them all by name.

There had been friends, drinks, girls, more and more…

The street stretched on in front of him like a tall hallway, its ceiling lost in shadow. He could feel himself moving along it, but nothing seemed to get any closer. Tom couldn’t tell if he’d been walking for a few minutes or a few hours. That really didn’t bother him.

What bothered him was the fact that he felt himself coming down. When he’d started walking, he’d stood hundreds of feet above the cracked cement, and was still able to count every chip in its surface. Now he felt himself diminish, receding towards the ground, which seemed to blur and become an abstraction.

Fuck that noise. He pulled his last joint of the evening out of his pocket along with his lighter. He’d been saving it for a good time, but this was a necessity. When he got where he was going (where was he going, anyway?) he could always roll a few more.

The alley to his right beckoned. Taking off his backpack, he sat down and lit up. Shit, that was really harsh. He had just the thing for that. He reached into his backpack, pulling a bottle of beer from it. Twist the cap, tip it back. That made two left.

Like the passing of his own personal civilization, Tom left behind the telltale traces to be swept up in the flood of time: an empty bottle with the butt of a joint in the bottom. And, a few feet away, a twist-cap.

But he didn’t go back the way he came. At the other end of the alley, he saw a subway entrance. Fuck yeah. Sure as hell beat walking in the wind. Making his way towards it, he tried to remember which one it was, and which way he needed to go. But he couldn’t quite tell where he was, so he shuffled the question off to the side of his mind.

Down the stairs, down the halls, towards the noise, and onto the platform, where a train was just opening its doors. He made it on just before they closed and found a seat. As the subway began to move, he saw that his car was empty.

Where was he going, anyway? And where was everyone? And… had he even paid a fare? He must have, but for the life of him, he couldn’t recall having done it. The train steadily picked up speed. Head spinning more and more, he managed to form one last thought – this is not so good.

Black.

Up. Through the open door. Onto a deserted, semi-lit platform. Fall. Puke. Better. Up again.

He found himself walking down a hall. Where to, he had long ago given up wondering. It was lit by intermittently spaced naked bulbs directly above. Then from up ahead came the sound of footsteps. In heels.

The door at the end of the hall opened. There she stood, framed and silhouetted.

“Hey.”

“Oh,” he managed, “Hey…”

She paused, tilted her head. “You lost?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. Whatever, though.”

“The party’s just down that way,” she said, with a nod of her head to the hallway behind her. “Come with me.”

He made his way towards her, knowing she studied his every step.

“I’m Amy,” she told him, extending her arms towards him.

“Tom,” he said, returning the hug.

“Do you have anything to drink, Tom?”

Wordlessly, he slung his bag off his shoulders and unzipped it, revealing the two remaining bottles. Amy smiled at him and pulled both out. He couldn’t help but be infected by that smile, and replied with a grin. He put his bag back on, and she handed him a drink. They opened the bottles, tossed the caps, began walking, and drank.

After a moment, he laughed softly. She looked at him questioningly.

“What?”

He shook his head, smiling. “Oh, no, never mind.”

“What?!” She was laughing now, grabbing his free hand.

“Hey!”

She led him through a side door.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“The party can wait for a few minutes, don’t you think?”

have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

2005-03-07T18:14:00.000-05:00

I often dream movies. In shots. In such cases, I am not a participant; I am a disembodied observer.

A group of pranksters were setting up a slingshot stretched across a town street. When they had tied both ends to lampposts, they pulled it back and launched this great gob of goo into the crowd walking down the street away from them. Chaos. Everyone began running towards the castle on the point beyond the town. People were running along the top of the aqueduct that lead to it, against the flow of water.

The slingshot people started launching boulders up onto the aqueduct, whose momentum carried them up the incline to the castle.

Out on the water, the pirates were watching. They made their way past the castle on the point, watching everything unfold, and headed into the bay.

In another place...

It was a very baroque room. It had character, of a studied, regal, and somewhat menacing kind.

It also had a wall that wasn't.

Where the rest of the room was ornate, this wall was conspicuously blank. Defying all expectations of what the room should be like, it was as if this wall was not a part of the room at all. Perhaps that was the best description of it.

It seemed to those who had gathered there that something had sliced through the middle of the room, leaving this blank grey surface as a divider. No one went near it, they just stayed by the opposite wall. Then someone decided to try to bounce a ball off it.

The ball simply passed through the surface without a sound. Wordlessly, the person produced a second ball, and tied a length of string to it. He threw the ball, holding on to the end of the string. After the ball and half of the string had passed through, he gave a tug. The string remained taut and he couldn't pull any back through the wall. But he kept pulling harder and harder until it finally snapped. They all left the frayed tail end of string sticking out and never returned.

"the world is endin'!"

2005-02-25T21:00:00.000-05:00

Why do we love to immortalize our icons with photos of them with cigarettes? And I'm not just talking about Hunter S. Thompson.

Do we really like seeing them with an instrument of their own impending doom? Shades of the tragic hero.

Is it attractive to associate an icon(oclast)ic figure with self-destruction? If it is, why is that? I think we all really need to look at that. I know what Fight Club has told us about self-destruction, but that's a book and a film (and apparently now a video game) - not a way of life.

I mean, that kind of behaviour has its own sort of appeal. Sometimes. But it's one philosophy you can't live to the fullest. The reason should be obvious.

The Exit Light

2005-02-21T14:21:00.000-05:00

Chris fancied himself a writer. Maybe that was because no one seemed to listen to him any more. He was always on the periphery of the party, now. The action no longer seemed to hold the same appeal – at least for participation. He still wrote about it, though.

Notebook under his arm, he realized that there was something vaguely poetic about walking across the dance floor, unmoved by the shifting mass surrounding him.

Of course, by the time that thought finally crystallized, he’d left the dance floor behind. In the place of its fading noise, he tried to remember the words to some song. He couldn’t remember it ever having been played at the party, and he couldn’t think of where else he could have heard it. Just my imagination. In his head, another neuron flared.

He walked on until he found the stairwell. After going up a couple of flights, he sat down on the broken heater in one of the landings, settling his notebook on his lap and pulling out his pen.

What was that song?

The door half a flight below him was pushed open, and a young couple entered, unaware of his presence. Gathering up his book, Chris made his way up the next flight, catching a last glimpse of the two of them – the girl, seductive, and the boy, lascivious.

The laughter of their supposed discretions pursued him further upwards. He’d lost track of how many floors he’d climbed when it came to him that he just wanted out. This was a thought that had never occurred to him. He didn’t even know where “out” was, but he knew that’s where he wanted to be.

He kept climbing.

Why can’t I remember that song?

Some time later, he came to a door marked simply “Mechanical Room.” Trying it, he was rewarded with a blast of stale hot air and the metallic rumble of machines. Boilers of some kind, it seemed. While passing between these, he heard the door close behind him. He walked back to try it, but the handle refused to turn. Making his way around the room, he found another door.

This one opened on a small white stairwell that went up one flight of steps and then turned abruptly to his left. The once-white-painted cinderblock walls had been covered in various messages and drawings of paint and ink. The air was rank with pot. He turned to look at the door as it closed behind him. On it were drawn flames, and, crudely, the number 666.

From up the stairs and around the corner came the sounds of people approaching. A door opened, letting their conversation in. He walked up and turned the corner.

At the top, a few steps up from where he was, two girls and four boys had entered the stairwell from a side doorway, and were walking down the steps. They grinned at him mischievously.

“Hey dude,” one of the girls said.

But he looked past them, out the other door at the top of the stair.

It let in the moonlight reflected off of snowdrifts.

Chris walked past them, nodding in acknowledgement of their greeting, and pushed the door open a bit. Then he turned and looked at the six of them, who were forming a loose circle on the landing.

“The stars are so nice tonight.”

“Yeah, man,” one of the guys said.

As he turned to walk out the door, he caught a bit more of their conversation.

“Look, guys, she’s in the corner again!”

“Man, this is such an episode of ‘Danger High’.”

Walking out under the stars, Chris began to sing softly.

“Mirrors on the ceiling,

Pink champagne on ice, and she said:

‘We are all just prisoners here,

Of our own device…’”

assessment

2005-02-20T00:35:00.000-05:00

A friend made me realize that 99% of what I write in here is essentially worthless.

Probably true.

By extension, probably 99% of what I do with the rest of my life is worthless too.

But I'll keep doing it. Otherwise I'd be someone else.

Another Story from Inside

2005-02-19T00:00:00.000-05:00

Tessa was dying. Ben knew that.

As surely as he couldn't remember the sun, he couldn't remember a time without her. Despite the fact that she was younger than him (a fact which amounted to naught there), she had been at the party much longer than he had. She couldn't imagine living without it, and now it was killing her.

Ben had fallen for her, he didn't know how long ago. He would have said "God knows how long ago," but he knew that they had no God. God simply did not exist there.

A newcomer on the scene, Ben had learned everything he knew from Tessa. She had relished combining her party life with that of a mother hen of sorts - one that had no problem with incest.

Neither of them were sure if they could call it romance. Not in a place like that. It was what it was.

Ben knew it wasn't going to last. Every instant, every hit, every drink, every fuck, everything brought Tessa closer to the nothing that surrounded their world. She had lost control before they ever met, and he knew she was going to crash. But he couldn't leave her.

As he walked with her away from the noise, away from the crowd, and into the familiar stairwell, his left hand held his pipe in his pocket while the right had his lighter flick-flicking out in front of him.

Minutes later, he watched Tessa, the hash burning away, the pipe to her lips. After taking a hit, she held her breath and leaned forward to kiss him. He let it all in, the smoke crossing from her lungs to his - but Tessa dissolved the bond in a fit of coughing.

"Sorry..." she managed, offering up the pipe and lighter to him.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," she replied between coughs, and smiled.

He lit what was left in the bowl and, closing his eyes, took as big a hit as he could. It didn't help that he could still see her. All the times he'd found her passed out. The time she'd choked on her own vomit. All those times that he was holding onto, despite the party's efforts to make him forget. How could he forget? Those moments had become so many he couldn't distinguish individual instances any more.

He realized he was just inhaling ash and opened his eyes.

And saw Tessa's staring into his. She seemed to be in one of her lucid moments, now.

"Ben... do you love me?"

He stopped. Put the pipe and lighter down on the step.

"Ben..."

He took her head in both hands, brought his face right up to hers, and kissed her. For what seemed like-

eternity.

Which perhaps it was.

"But do you love me?"

Back to the (n)ever-changing present.

"Tessa... do we even know what that means?" The only answer he could think of.

"No... I guess not," she replied, her eyes already starting to glaze over. "Come on, Ben, let's get back in there. The vibe should be getting good around now."

He picked his implements up from the stair and they returned, hand in hand. Maybe this would be her last round. She was already talking about the amazing coke that Brad had stashed away under a certain couch. He knew he couldn't stop her. And that was what made her.

Interior

2005-02-18T04:29:00.000-05:00

The party had been going on for as long as everyone there remembered. They couldn't tell whether that was an hour or a hundred years ago. Nor could they tell where it was. People came and went - where to or from, no one could recall, let alone say. It was a party and they were there. That was all that mattered.

It was a party of ever-changing constants. Some people had been there the whole time (for lack of a better expression). Some had just "arrived." But the party stayed the same. You could get anything you wanted.

Elise wanted everything. James wanted Elise. Katherine wanted both James and Elise at once. Brian wanted to get high and forget his troubles. Simon wanted to beat the shit out of Brian. Jennifer wanted to watch him. And then afterwards she would fuck Brian. Ad infinitum.

No one knew how big the building the party was in was. There was a main room with dance floor and alcoves. There were side rooms, hallways, stairwells... places for secret trysts, sessions, orgies... the inevitable tears. Anything the mind could think of doing, someone could find a space for it. But everyone gravitated around the party itself. Where else was there to go? There was no exit, no outside - and no one cared.

It was as if no one ate or slept. The building and all the people in it were alive with a permanent buzz of substances and sweat. Emotions ran continually at peak amplitude- things were usually consistent -and sometimes into the red. but occasionally something snapped

Jane had been dancing with Rick for a while. He wasn't a great conversationalist, but she could live with that - at least until she grew tired of him. He was a good dancer, though, and besides that he was fun. What more could anyone expect, really?

After coming back from the washroom, where she'd done a couple of lines with Jasmine, Jane went over to the bar to get a Rum & Coke. By the time she finished it and got back to the floor, Rick wasn't where she'd left him. Turning to a side exit, she caught a glimpse of him being led by the hand out the door into the dark hallway beyond by Jasmine.

Following at a discreet distance, Jane caught their excited whispers and hushed laughs down the hall ahead of her. They turned aside at a numbered door, and she waited a couple of minutes before pushing it open and proceeding warily inside.

The door opened on a small lounge, with Jasmine and Rick's clothes already strewn about. Murmurs and laughs came from the hall beyond the brightly lit kitchenette. Jane paused next to the counter as footsteps approached.

Jasmine rounded the corner, nude, and her eyes widened as she came face-to-face with Jane, who immediately closed the distance between them. With her left hand, Jane brought Jasmine's head towards hers and kissed her full on the lips. With her right, she grabbed a steak knife out of its rack on the counter and plunged it into Jasmine's side, between her ribs, and into her heart. What little noise escaped the union of hers and Jasmine's lips was little more than a gasp.

When she entered the bedroom, she found Rick lying naked on the bed. She ran up and straddled him, bringing the knife to his neck.

"If you move," she panted as his eyes snapped wide open, "I'll fucking kill you."

She proceeded to get into position, preparing him and adjusting her dress and undergarments with her left hand while her right never budged. After several minutes, when she was about to come, she sliced as deep as she could. She remained mounted for a few seconds more before disengaging, dropping the knife and shedding her bloodstained clothes on the way to the bathroom.

Jane remained in the shower until it was so foggy she could hardly breathe.

When she emerged the bedroom was spotless, without a trace of blood or violence. No body, no clothes, no knife. She found a clean dress that fit her in the walk-in closet. She took the care to turn out all the lights as she left.

When she returned to the party, it didn't matter how long she'd been away. Nothing had really changed.

Jane realized that no one would even remember them, anyway.

...haunted

2005-02-15T23:05:00.000-05:00

It has finally started. The parallels are seemingly infinite - and mathematically, they could be. Infinite space to place them - does that imply infinite space between them too? Or maybe it didn't start here; maybe it has merely been waiting all along, inside me, passive - like me - until the catalyst arrived.

I can't put the book down. I keep returning to it, looking inside of it for something I feel like I've lost ages before I was even born. What it is I'll find I don't know - but I'm beginning to feel that it will never even come close to filling those spaces...

A quote from a review has been hammering away in my head recently: "A love story by a semiotician." I could have sworn it was about this book. I looked over all of the review excerpts, time after time, trying to find this elusive phrase. I knew it had to be about this book, as it was the only thing I'd read recently that had anything to do with semiotics, but I couldn't find this phrase anywhere. I found it interesting that I would "lose" a quote on a book that has distorted reality at its very soul, at the bottom of those dark, twisted corkscrewing tunnels through solid rock strata down into its hard-water-soaked colder-than-ice heart. Stone heart, but an empty heart. No blood, although there is plenty of allusion to it in those pages. You could stab them and they'd bleed ink. Wait, I've already said something like that before. But it was nothing like this.

I finally thought that maybe I could find the quote on the Internet. Looking it up the first time, I realized that I'd messed it up. My memory was playing more games with me. After pruning a word from it, I had results, indicating that, yes, it was from a review of this book. I rushed upstairs to find my copy, feeling that somehow, something had changed. The trip up to my room from the basement seemed somehow different this time - some kind of subtle shift, or maybe it's all in my head again. A lot of things are, these days.

When I picked up the book and turned it over, right there on the back cover was the phrase I'd been searching for all along. The first sentence in a quote that I remember reading several times during my search. Was my own personal reality that divorced from the rest of the world?

It's finally getting to me. Or maybe it's been getting to me all along, and I'm only now finally admitting it.

I've admitted the empty space into my own heart. What makes one empty space different from another?

What's missing.

delayed reaction

2005-02-14T16:19:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on a train while reading House of Leaves:

Why are so many people so obsessed by the world of L.A. (a small world somehow bigger than our world)?

Well, why do so many people kill themselves a little bit at a time with various substances?

I don't know the answer to that question, either, but something tells me there's a connection.
_____________________

It just occurred to me that all philosophers are amateurs. How can it be otherwise? There is nothing official, or even scientific, about philosophy. Each philosophy is a house of cards, in which people live their lives. So be careful.

incomplete

2005-02-09T19:34:00.000-05:00

I met Eric a few weeks ago. I was exploring a construction site in the area that had been intriguing me to no end. I wasn't sure why I went in there. But after I met Eric, he told me the answer. It's interesting that someone can have the same restless curiosity and appreciation of strange beauty as me. I had thought that I was alone in that.

Eric used to be an accountant. When he was twenty-six he abruptly left his job, his home, and his girlfriend of three years. When I asked him why he just tossed his life, he said, "That wasn't my life. Those were my circumstances. If I'd stayed much longer, I wouldn't be really alive any more."

That night, in the construction site, I was just poking around idly when Eric and I stumbled upon each other. He was looking around for a suitable place to bed down, while I was framing up a shot of what looked like an empty elevator shaft on my SLR. When we both realized that the other was harmless, we got to chatting about what the hell we were doing there. I think he was impressed that I fancied myself a photographer - even more so that I hadn't gone digital. He got talking about how this place was a work in progress, and that's why he dug it. I realized that's exactly what drew me to it in the first place. Leave it to a total stranger to make you realize what you're thinking.

He told me about another site he'd seen that he really wanted to get to before "they ruin it" by completing construction, and he said that with the floodlights filtering through it I could get some great shots there. The next night I took the bus to meet him at this place. I brought my camera, as well as two rolls of film and a few bottles of beer. After I'd shot the rolls, we sat down to drink and we shot the shit. It turns out that after he "dropped out," Eric started wandering around the city, sleeping only in construction sites that he could break into at night. He's twenty-nine now, and although he looks ten years older, he swears he's never felt more youthful.

When I asked him how he managed to survive when he had no job, he just shook his head and smiled a bit. I asked him what that was supposed to mean, and by way of reply he pulled several folded sheets of lined paper out of his coat and handed them to me. I read the pencil-written text for the next ten minutes or so. I was absolutely enthralled. Here I was, in the company of an enlightened soul, a philosopher-tramp.

It turns out that Eric writes whenever he has a chance. He'll write anything - short stories, non-fiction, manifestos, editorial work. He freelances and is published by some small papers and magazines. This gives him enough money to eat. What really got me, though, was his admission that he writes far more than he publishes, and that if he had his way, none of his work would be published at all. "Whenever I know I'm going to need some more damn money, I'll submit a few things. But only when I have to. Getting them out in the popular media just cheapens them. Besides, most of my stuff is unfinished - I write best that way."

I could write a book about our conversations, but I'm sure he's going to actually do that before I could motivate myself to bring pen to paper. I know if he writes that, he'd die before it got published. I know I wouldn't want to publish it either if I wrote it - a little bit of Eric, rubbing off on me. Right now I'm just trying to get into this creative process, this state of mind that this man lives every day.