Monday, December 30, 2002
Wednesday, November 27, 2002
Saturday, November 16, 2002
Friday, November 1, 2002
"Are you sure nothing's wrong?"
Friday, November 1, 2002
Thursday, October 10, 2002
When water flows this cold
When water flows this calm
Thursday, August 29, 2002
Friday, August 16, 2002
Wednesday, July 31, 2002
Friday, July 5, 2002
Sunday, June 23, 2002
Monday, June 17, 2002
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Sunday, May 5, 2002
Wednesdsay, May 1, 2002
Friday, April 26, 2002
Friday, April 19, 2002
Wednesday, April 17, 2002
Friday, April 12, 2002
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
Friday, February 15, 2002
It's snowing pretty hard tonight. Everything's a little brighter than it should be. It crunched satisfyingly beneath my feet as I walked in from the car. Our mild-mannered, wet city rarely sees snow, so four or five inches on the ground is enough to throw most folks off guard. I like that, personally. There's a sense of cooperation, a sense of many kinds of people people throwing aside schedules and differences to overcome something that affects all of us. School gets cancelled; bosses are understanding if you show up late; you notice that nobody really can drive too well. I'll never forget the short snowstorm two winters ago, when my car was one of dozens unable to get up the little hill on Granville at 16th Ave. At midnight - midnight - everybody in the neighbourhood was out on the street, pushing cars up that hill. It took me about an hour and a half to cover two blocks, but I never would have made it home without the strangely dedicated group of complete strangers in my rearview mirror.
beer in green bottles / drummers / "i don't have time." / cold grass / a fur-lined coat / cigars on the pier / pride / debt / defacing art / stories from failed musicians / rebellion / animal magnetism / "pet sounds" / cornrows / scouts canada / the freeway at 6am / healthy competition / an automatic door / holiday plans / auditions / cereal and milk / worlds colliding - happily / turmoil / kung-fu and a dogpile / cookies and cards / conductors' batons / morrowind / the fireplace at benny's bagels / white lies / "the winners' circle" / decision and indecision / jupiter room / the dressing room / a stomach / a postcard / "paper boats" / redecorating / dishes / eminem / resolution
Two things.
1. Live theatre can still be artful. Oh yeah! Everybody forgot about that while trying to make money.
2. Humans are just as territorial as dogs, really. It's a normal instinct. The difference is that we try harder to coexist peacefully, so we get confused by feelings like jealousy and anger. I think life would be way easier if we all just went around baring our fangs and peeing on each others' lawns.
I will tie three strings around my fingers.
1) The sad pastoral refrain of Ozma's "Restart."
2) A sea of red leaves today on Cambridge Street.
3) Her warm voice wishing me goodnight.
"Yeah."
Today I chanced upon the intimate thoughts of a man who I thought had so much more than me: wealthy parents and a lovely house in a rich neighbourhood, daddy's SUV to use and abuse as he pleases, charming good looks, power over women, sex and glamour. What I discovered is trite, but it astonished me: he is in pain. He is haunted. He can't breathe evenly at night.
I don't say it enough, but thank you, mom and dad, for raising me modestly. I have a simple life with everything I need to be happy. Thank you for the mistakes that you made; I will learn from them. Thank you for teaching me to love.
When water flows this clear
I want to turn on the tap
and have it fall,
drop by drop,
against my slippery back
swirling like fudge at my feet
I want to hold my breath and swim,
underwater lights casting the merry kicking,
to and fro,
of my naked legs
to faces watching from behind glass
I want to plunge headlong,
lost in delight
liquid bracing my chest like armor,
until I forget that
I could choke and drown in it
When I was not much younger
I made a telephone from two cans
And a hundred feet of string
Threw it into her second story window
And pulled until I heard something.
A few of my own rules to living a healthier life:
Punctuate your writing. Inflect your speech.
Jealousy is a carcinogen.
Sleep as much as your body wants to.
Anger is unproductive, and revenge is destructive.
Laugh at yourself whenever possible.
Believe in ghosts.
Use your heart and mind to create something great.
Give me daylight, give me sleep. Give me a cold kiss in the evening. Give me an old guitar in the muggy grass, a thin circle of smog in the sky. A word or two in Spanish. A small parcel of land, a street covered with leaves, a bicycle to stir them with. Give me lamplight and just one side of a piece of paper, and a voice to sing these imperfect melodies onto the blank page. Give me feet to press firmly against the blemishes in the floor, and a back to hold strongly to my bed at night. Let me read and watch and listen, and let me take the pictures in my head, and rearrange them - with care - for the ones I love.
In our shrinking, interwoven world, it's an unfamiliar test of endurance to actually be unable to contact somebody for a number of months. Today I saw a few things that I wanted to share (a full-figured rainbow with both ends touching the ground! Am I getting old and tender?), but couldn't find the person I needed to share them with. She'll be back in awhile, I know, but for now I can collect images and bottle them in my memory, and write a few of them down on this page, in the hopes that they'll be broadcast to wherever they need to get in order for somebody to read them and tell her that I can't stop thinking about her.
I think I've completely lost my footing. It feels rad.
Sometimes when there isn't much to say, you can take your own pulse simply by listing words that have governed your life recently.
parks at night / sharing / noam chomsky / exclusion / freeways / frisbee / gelato / power struggles / deadlines / willpower / strep throat / temptation and frustration / talking in funny voices / a suntan / secret meetings / imported beer / lomography / swimming pools / politics / preparation / varsity clothing / lust
What is "wrong"? If a person does something fulfilling and undamaging, but it receives widespread disapproval, was it the "wrong" thing for that person to do? We might get a little more out of life by breaking the rules now and then.
I think that if scientists could somehow extract the portion of my brain that is devoted to thinking about just a few specific girls, it would be huge and red and swollen like an old tomato.
Holy shit, the ice cream truck just drove by.
I went to a rock show in Seattle tonight, which was great. The library at the University of Washington is a beautiful building - its exterior architecture alone could probably put anything on the UBC campus to shame. More interesting than the concert, though, was the drive there and back. Douglas Coupland has an excellent book about Vancouver called "City of Glass"; I highly recommend it to anyone. On one page, he talks about Seattle and our city's relation to Seattle, which I find particularly interesting. I've grown up in a wonderful city that favours its roads to coexist with nature, rather than dominate it. Vancouver is full of stoplights and devoid of freeways, and so I'm always a little bit in awe of the glory of American roadways, even outside of major cities. Expansive eight-lane freeways, roads cut into the sides of mountains, complex junctions with lanes stacked on top of each other - these things are still slightly wondrous to me. In the moonlight, driving home through the rolling valleys of Whatcom County was really enjoyable.
Spent an adventurous night at the laser show with two very dear friends; it was a great way to start the summer. As Mr. Bogart put it, "the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Here is a particularly stunning photo that only reinforces that thought [thank-you to Matthew Caws]. I think I could look at it for hours and just let myself wonder. Hold your breath for a moment, then be thankful that you don't have to.
I make a concerted effort to be conscientious and caring to the people around me. It's an important goal of mine. I think I have been working at this long enough that in 90% of situations, I am able to be the person I would like to be. Tonight I let selfishness get the better of me, and failed to be that person - and somebody noticed and had the guts to call me on it. I just want to say thank you.
i went to a lovely little christian rock show tonight (pedro the lion in langley), and afterwards we ran into them at a restaurant. that's my celebrity story for the day.
my perception of the world is strange lately. i find myself taking a lot of hot showers. i sometimes want to tell people to relax, but simply saying it wouldn't work. i spent the day transcribing a britney spears song for a huge corporation. i deal with people who have too much coffee and too little sleep. an ex-girlfriend harbours resentment for me. sometimes on the drive home at night, i pull over and go for a walk just to enjoy the moonlight on the farmland. i clam up in the presence of girls i really care about. i think constantly about people i haven't seen in ages. i enjoy country music if it happens to be playing. i long to watch hockey and drink beer and be the man i've always hated. i want to photograph natural disasters. i want to score films. in the car, i turn the heat up more than i need to. i don't read as much as i'd like to. i make crude comments about women. i'm not as conscientious as the people i admire. i still like claude debussy a lot. i let my creativity be stifled by work. i listen to certain songs over and over.
swelling... a comfortable swelling. nostalgia swelling, lost loves resurging, daylight saving, and i'm still trying. i think i'm like just about everybody who plays the game of pursuit: i keep trying until i know the answer for certain. if i think the answer is going to be yes, it is easy to try. if the answer is uncertain, i will keep trying, even though my head tells me that uncertainty usually means no. i almost need to hear "no" at this point, but lovely, kind-hearted girls usually can't say it.
If you're sitting here reading this, there are better things you could be doing with your time. Let me do you a favour.
Go to audiogalaxy.com and download bootlegs of the following songs by a band called Nada Surf:
Blizzard of '77
Fruitfly
Inside of Love
Killian's Red
Paperboats
Silver Lining
The Way You Wear Your Head
Treading Water
Arrange them in any order you like, ignore the poor sound quality, and listen to them carefully and repeatedly for the rest of the day. Learn the lyrics if you like. Remind yourself that you can feel.