And knowing is enough
for mountains such as these
where nothing long remains
houses walls or trees

April 26, 2004

Ah, can there be anything better than the soft dulcet tones of Margot Timmins' voice on a Monday evening (fast approaching a Tuesday morning) as I sit and take pictures of my plastic Jesus in front of the lava lamp with a broken camera? Somehow, I think not. Tonight I find myself returned to a course of action I thought left far behind - the unabashed embracement of futility and pointlessness. It has been some ten years since I last spent some quality time acting upon my random whims and desires without allowing the clutter of thought and rationality creeping in.

This is not to say that I have been entirely unproductive this evening (witness that which you are reading at this very moment, for one), I've just been managing to have some fun all by my lonesome whilst doing it. To misquote Rene Descartes: "All the world's troubles come from man's inability to sit and be still in a room." To which I suggest the following addendum: "... and forget the world outside said room." Or perhaps a corollary might be more apt: "Unless, of course, man's activity within said room leads to the forgetting of the world and its troubles outside." Or not, you get the picture.

This is not to say that I eschew meditation and stillness - I just never was any good at it. Ask my family, they'll tell you I've been bouncing off walls for years. Hell, I even had a friend who tried to nickname me 'Tigger' in university; a moniker no doubt derived from my penchant for leapfrogging parking meters... and mailboxes. The name never really stuck, I suppose mostly because I've always felt myself to be more of an Eeyore at heart, though if you ask me, I'll tell you I'm Owl - just because. I never was able to summon stillness, it always creeps up on me unnanounced like the sudden scent of flowers on a summer breeze. Unsought, but pleasantly intoxicating in its subtlety; my eyes lose focus for a split second and time dilates, instantly expanding to fill me with an eternity of now - and then it is gone, my thoughts rushing back like air to fill the void left after lightning flashes, a catechism of cacophony that almost - but not quite - erases the memory of something I'm not supposed to know... yet. Every time it happens, there is a moment (just before the eternity of the split second that isn't) which is eerily akin to deja vu, except I don't know what is going to happen in the next moment, I only know that it is going to happen.

Reading over this, I notice how blitheringly obvious that must sound. Of course the next moment is going to happen - that's the nature of moments, really. They happen. I also notice I've used italics thrice in the last paragraph and twice where I shouldn't have. I hate it when I do that. There's nothing worse than relying on fonts for emphasis when one should be using words. If Strunk & White were here, they'd kick me.

***

The word at the end of this sentence is meaningless. - Christian Bok

April 18, 2004 - She's incredible math

Recently my brother gave me a few episodes of the Ghost In The Shell television series. I've watched a bunch of them so far - relax, this ain't a review - but tonight was the first time I sat through the end credits and listened to the theme song. Now, I don't know how many of you out there watch anime, but the lyrics to these songs are generally quite hilarious in that they basically don't make much sense at all.

Actually, most anime don't make much sense at all, either.

I am aware that my being somewhat outside the adolescent Japanese male target demographic (or, I suppose, the burgeoning otaku market), I can't expect anything more than the most perfunctory stimulation from these shows. Note too that I have worked as a teacher of English as a second language for quite some time now and so should have a keen - I daresay 'authoritative' - understanding of the prelidiction for the use of English in Asian media simply because it is 'cool'. Taking these two points into consideration, I suppose I should be less apt to take such great pleasure from the mistakes of others, but I do.

Time for a little interjection or two: one, I'm not saying that all Asian media is like this, or even that all Asians think English is cool. I'm using a sweeping generalization; it's my web page, these things happen. If it offends you, kick me the next time you see me - but before you perform percussive maintenance on my hemorrhoids, think of the number of nonsensical phrases you've seen on T-shirts and such produced in Asia. Besides, Western cultures do it too... how popular are Chinese characters for tattoos right now? Heck, I see folks sporting the character for 'dragon' almost every day. Why? Because to folks who don't speak the language, it is foreign and exotic-looking, ergo: cool. I get students asking me all the time why a person would want to have some random word as a tattoo. It's a valid question. If you stop and think about it, it's pretty much the same thing as, say, a Japanese person getting the word 'caribou' etched into their epidermis. Works both ways. And two: yes, I said "perfunctory stimulation". That's not what I meant. Minds out of the gutter, people.

I love that my little interjections are greater in bulk than the rest of today's entry so far. I'm sure it doesn't say much for my creative focus, but it sure speaks volumes about my train of thought.

Moving right along, the point to this whole preamble (yes, there is a point, believe it or not) was just to say that I was watching the credits and listening to the song and I was struck by one of the lyrics, so I thought I'd share it with you. I call this a preamble as it was meant to be just that: a short little blurb before launching into a longer and more involved topic. I have, however, long since forgotten what exactly this topic was going to be - it might've been about how dusty my apartment is, how great overtime is in playoff hockey games, the nutshell I found in a chocolate-covered almond, or even about how I almost fell out of my chair after dozing off while typing this. Then again, maybe it was something else entirely.

April 12, 2004

You know, I'm starting to get tired of this whole apologizing for not writing thing. This is certainly not to say that I feel it unnecessary to offer an admission of error or discourtesy accompanied by an expression of regret (or better yet, an expression of regret for a mistake or wrong with implied admission of guilt or fault and with or without reference to palliating circumstances), quite the opposite in fact. However, I am aware of the basic human tendency to ignore or disregard repeated stimuli - meaning that if you, dear reader, find yourself perpetually wading through a morass of excuse and apology, you will likely turn elsewhere for your daily dose of distraction. Which, at the end of the day, would basically amount to the same thing as me not writing anything at all - minus, of course, the need for the aforementioned apology - as you wouldn't be reading it anyway. This, in turn, would spare me having to suffer all manner of sadness and chagrin at the prospect of composing further apologia before beginning the discourse I had originally intended.

So... it's your fault I'm not writing, really.

Wow. I disappear for a few weeks and I come back with this. I'm a regular sonuvabitch, ain't I?

April 1, 2004

Well, It certainly would appear March was a useless month. Whatever happened to "In like a lion, out like a lamb"? From where I'm standing, it seems a whole lot more like "The whole damn month's a tree sloth"... but maybe that's just me. I wish I could say that the whole month prior was merely a preamble to this update, and that the joke's on you, but that would be unfair. Come to think of it, were that the situation, 'insane' might be a more appropriate term.

I don't use the term lightly, either. I've been sitting here for a while trying to settle on an alternative - 'obscure', 'abtruse', or even 'obfuscatory' were considered momentarily before being discarded for various reasons. No, I think that any person planning an April Fool's gag a month in advance might legitimately be considered a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Actually, now that I've thought about it a moment longer, the vernacular 'full of shit' would probably be the most accurate. However, all logorrhea aside, the truth of the matter is that I - again - have left this endeavour by the wayside. For this, I apologize.

And then my head hits the keyboard, so I opt to retire for the evening.