February 28, 2005

Session With Lisa

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Lisa soaking her piercing

A photo of Lisa, lying on Trolley’s bed, treat­ing her sur­face pierc­ing with salt water after a mid-day burn. The light was already com­ing through the win­dow, but the smoke made the indi­vid­ual rays dis­tin­guish­able. I’m pretty sat­is­fied with the way the colours turned out, although the pic­ture doesn’t really cap­ture how much darker the rest of the room was. Definitely a very par­tic­u­lar mood, like being under a flour­ish­ing tree on a sunny sum­mer day, with the cool feel­ing of grass underfoot.

Lisa is one of those peo­ple with which one can spend time with­out hav­ing to worry about run­ning out of things to say. She can do enough talk­ing to keep a con­ver­sa­tion going, so as long as the vibe is right, there are no awk­ward silences. She gave me a super for the first time, and I could barely move after­wards (although this is also par­tially be due to the hydro I gra­ciously got through Adam). It was a lit­tle scary to feel so out-of-control, but every­thing was com­fort­able enough for me to keep it together. I was peak­ing for more than an hour straight, some­thing I hadn’t expe­ri­enced since I first started, what Scarface would call, “back in the day”.

It’s always inter­est­ing to meet some­one from a totally dif­fer­ent group of ston­ers. Each group has their own style, rit­u­als, eti­quette. One can tell a lot from how some­one rolls, how long they take before pass­ing, how care­fully they cor­rect runs, or sim­ply how they act when they’re under the influ­ence. The ses­sion becomes a way for peo­ple to share their tra­di­tions with oth­ers, to dis­cover the char­ac­ters of peo­ple that may oth­er­wise remain hid­den behind the guard put up in every­day life. By tak­ing part, one becomes open in let­ting oth­ers know that one is com­fort­able enough to even act out of character.

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February 27, 2005

Critical Emancipation

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Sometimes it feels like I’m wait­ing for inspi­ra­tion when I write. Like I’m wait­ing for a spe­cific mood, or a spe­cific song to come on and guide me through an entry. Lately, that inspi­ra­tion seems to avoid me. I keep try­ing to write about things that I feel I should write about, instead of the things I want to write about. Every time I search my head for the proper mood or mind­set, it’s only mem­o­ries that appear.

And they sur­face like pho­tographs, each one a still frame cap­tur­ing an expe­ri­ence, expressed in sound, warmth, light, and odour. I’m on the streets of Hong Kong again, sur­rounded by peo­ple, brows­ing through the knick-knacky stores with the heat of the sun soak­ing through my shirt. I’m skat­ing on the Canal, map­ping the imper­fec­tions of the ice as I glide across them, the night sky burn­ing with the orange of win­ter. I’m won­der­ing through the mall of my home­town, enjoy­ing the strange famil­iar­ity of a place I fre­quented so long ago, hop­ing I don’t bump into an ex. I’m in uni­form, clutch­ing the lapels of my blazer, as I step out from the heat of grandiose wooden doors into the snow-washed quad. I’m on the bus to New York, try­ing to fig­ure out which pas­sen­gers are com­ing or going, won­der­ing where my own jour­ney would take me.

I fight against these mem­o­ries, try­ing to write about some­thing more rel­e­vant. In the end, I write about noth­ing, and I can’t fight against it any­more. I have to write the things I want, inspired by the things I think. I have to let go one more time.

From myself, instead of others.

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February 24, 2005

Projection: Analysis

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Freud saw pro­jec­tion as a defence mech­a­nism, a way of deal­ing with the thoughts and ideas that make some­one anx­ious. By sub­con­sciously attribut­ing these unwanted thoughts and ideas on other peo­ple, one may be com­forted by the false fact that they are not alone, or that there is some­one else they can direct their anger towards instead of them­selves. While I don’t dis­agree with this approach to psy­cho­an­a­lytic the­ory (I’m gen­er­ally a Freudian up until his ideas on devel­op­men­tal life stages), this is a much more severe, and less com­mon, form of my expe­ri­ence with projection.

Projection (or pro­jec­tion bias) can be defined as uncon­sciously assum­ing that oth­ers share the same or sim­i­lar thoughts, beliefs, val­ues, or posi­tions on any given subject.

In this case, the fault lies in the assump­tion, and the assump­tion is based on the fact that many believe oth­ers to be like them­selves. One may present this as a deduc­tive log­i­cal argu­ment, like so:

Premise 1:
I have felt this way in a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion / I would feel this way in a cer­tain situation
Premise 2:
Someone else is in this situation
Conclusion:
Therefore, that per­son must feel the same way that I felt / that per­son must feel the way that I would feel

Although audiatur et altera pars is not nec­es­sar­ily seen as direct proof of a fal­lacy, the implicit premise involved in this argu­ment is also the most impor­tant one.

Implicit premise:
All peo­ple think the way I do when put in the same situation.

This hap­pens to be the premise that is false. It is also often implied, not on pur­pose, but because (and I’ll haz­ard an opin­ion here) humans are nat­u­rally ego­cen­tric. Many make solid judg­ments on things that are purely sub­jec­tive, tak­ing their view as Word. An exam­ple of this is some­one say­ing, “This song is good”, instead of, “I think this song is good”. Sometimes this is the inno­cent result of lazi­ness (of which I can be guilty), but in many cases, it’s due to the fact that the per­son actu­ally refuses to believe any­thing else to be true.

It’s in the case of the lat­ter that assump­tions can lead to pro­jec­tion, what I find to be an extremely frus­trat­ing thing to deal with. If I don’t talk to some­one, that doesn’t mean that I never want to talk to them again. For some­one to assume this to be true of me, based on their own thoughts and ideas in the same sit­u­a­tion, and then call me out on this, is ARROGANT. When I’m freshly out of a rela­tion­ship, I feel stronger and inspired. For me, this is an inher­ent side-effect of break­ing up. A break-up occurs due to the fact that there is unhap­pi­ness in a rela­tion­ship, and when the rela­tion­ship ends, there is a tremen­dous free­dom from this unhap­pi­ness. For some peo­ple, the oppo­site is true, and for one of these peo­ple to “com­fort” me because they think I feel worth­less and doubt­ful is INSULTING.

I’ve worked hard to be a bet­ter per­son, to out­grow the weak­nesses and faults that I’ve grown up with. For some­one to believe that I have a weak­ness or fault that I’ve cast aside, sim­ply because they haven’t yet, is just plain sad. This one hits me espe­cially hard because it triv­i­al­izes the tremen­dous amount of effort I put into self-improvement.

And as a result of what? Careless assump­tion. I’m not ego­cen­tric enough to believe that oth­ers think the way I do.

All I ask is that oth­ers do the same.

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February 22, 2005

Projection: Prologue (Vent)

7

Let me make this per­fectly clear.

I am not like you. I do not think the same way that you do. Never. Ever. EVER. Ever believe that you under­stand, or assume that you know, how I’m feel­ing or what I’m think­ing just because you are, or have ever been, in the same situation.

To believe that you under­stand, is arro­gant. To assume that you know, is an insult.

You’re usu­ally wrong anyway.

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February 21, 2005

Memories Of Manson

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I was lis­ten­ing to Manson’s sec­ond album, Antichrist Superstar, for the first time after a sev­eral year hia­tus on the bus to work this morn­ing. I was reminded of how much I went through with this album, for most of high-school and nearly two entire rela­tion­ships. How com­fort­ing this music was for me, on the jour­ney home from my exhaust­ing classes and elit­ist class­mates. It’s the only good album Manson ever put out, and also hap­pens to be the only album that Trent Reznor pro­duced for him. I’m will­ing to bet that it isn’t sim­ple coincidence.

I never really get a chance to lis­ten to these songs; even though I con­sider the music to be metal, the songs are too dark and moody to fit into my metal playlist. It’s the same thing with Tool. Aside from Opiate, which was just an EP anyway,Tool’s music has never fit into any spe­cific genre to me. They have a metal feel and pro­gres­sive rock ele­ments, but are never enough of one or the either to fit into any of my playlists.

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February 19, 2005

Paint Chips

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Paint chips 1

Paint chips 2

Paint chips 3

Trolley and I went to get some paint chips. It wasn’t too long since my last ses­sion before we left. In the store I was sur­rounded by colour, a pedestal of float­ing gradients.

We move in a lit­tle over a month. I think I’ll do my room in a dark blue, and two walls of the liv­ing room in light beige. Trolley’s think­ing either light grey or deep red for his.

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February 19, 2005

Post-Breakup Phase

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Anyway, what I was try­ing to say is that I’ve been really moody lately. Extremely moody. Almost on an emo­tional level.

Another post-breakup phase. I go through this for a few months after break­ing up with some­one, but it only started to hit me recently. Funny how I’ve only now had enough rela­tion­ships to actu­ally real­ize this. I look at my monthly archives from the begin­ning of the blog and most of them begin with some emo­tional, con­fused line. In fact, this entire blog started as a way to vent these post break-up thoughts and feel­ings, until it became some­thing more than that. Now I’m falling back into that trap. I’m start­ing to do stu­pid shit again, things I wish I didn’t do, afterwards.

Every day, in my head, I plan out my entries for the next week. Yet, every time I sit down to type, I’m never in the mood to write. It’s just the same shit, over and over again.

The dif­fer­ence is that this time I know what to do. I’ve been look­ing for too much mean­ing in too little.

I want to get out. For the first time in my life, I’m sick of this win­ter. I want to sit in the sun. I want to be amongst others.

I want to lay on the track, feel hot steel scream­ing at me
Expose the bones on my back, let me show you what I mean.

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February 18, 2005

The Healing Button

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Ugh. I feel tainted. Moody. It feels like no one likes me. For the first time in a very long time, I feel alone.

I just started three dif­fer­ent entries, but didn’t fin­ish any of them. I’m not even in the mood to write this. I’m just sit­ting here with the lights out, two Candellas perched on top of my desk, and the first vol­ume of Buddha Bar resound­ing in the room. My head is numb, my throat dry, my cat uninterested.

This has become so bland. The same things over and over again. Where did my humour go? When did things stop chang­ing? Maybe I need a break from this.

Tomorrow, I’ll fin­ish this tomor­row. This is just a mood. I’ll explain when I’m not as tired. I’ll go to bed with this music on, dream­ing of quaint European archi­tec­ture and par­ties I could host to this sound.

Maybe I’ll feel bet­ter when I hit, “Publish”.

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February 17, 2005

Couple From The NAC

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A cou­ple emerged from two heavy doors at the National Arts Centre (Human Resources entrance) as I was on the 95 today, pass­ing down the Mackenzie King Bridge. One was a woman, very slen­der, who looked as if she was in her early thir­ties but was prob­a­bly in her late thir­ties. The man was what some­one would con­sider an appro­pri­ate match, being slightly taller than her, and dressed in the same half-casual jeans-with-overcoat style.

For a moment, they stood out­side the doors, appro­pri­ately adorn­ing their shuf­fled coats and scarves accord­ing to the late win­ter weather. They looked as if they had emerged from the res­o­lu­tion of an emo­tional fight, or some very guilty sex in a broom closet.

Their first steps were almost lan­guid, but I could tell that it wasn’t a phys­i­cal exhaus­tion. They were pac­ing each other out, wait­ing for the other per­son to talk first, and their foot­steps were how they sub­con­sciously spoke to each other. It was as if they both knew that they had done some­thing wrong. Whether it was inten­tional or not was unclear, but it was cer­tain that nei­ther per­son was more at fault than the other.

They con­tin­ued walk­ing together, west­bound, with that slight dis­tance between them that’s reserved for cou­ples who are either try­ing to hide their phys­i­cal long­ing for the other or try­ing to express their angry emo­tions. I could tell that the silence was com­fort­able, as nei­ther of them spoke, because there weren’t any right words to be said at that moment.

I watched them in fas­ci­na­tion as they con­tin­ued down the street with their hands in their own pock­ets. Each of them under­stood exactly what the other was think­ing, but were hes­i­tant to say any­thing before know­ing how the other felt first. When they spoke next, it would be in one-word sen­tences. Their faces showed how much they had been through together, and how much was at risk at that very moment.

But it was how their silence spoke vol­umes of how well they knew each other that made me won­der if I would ever feel the same.

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February 15, 2005

Double Standard: As Hypocrisy

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While John was here, we got into a dis­cus­sion about hypocrisy. Being the com­plex per­son that he is, he admit­ted that he sees no prob­lem with act­ing in a hyp­o­crit­i­cal man­ner. In fact, he tried to con­vince me to feel the same way. “You’re let­ting your morals get in the way of advance­ment”, he would say. I don’t heed any of this advice, of course, because our mind­sets, goals, and rela­tion­ships are founded on two dif­fer­ent sets of val­ues, this being one of them. Having built the first twenty-four years of our lives on this foun­da­tion doesn’t make it dif­fi­cult for us to change them, but makes us indif­fer­ent to change instead. As much as we like to con­sider our­selves dynamic indi­vid­u­als, able to adapt to a sit­u­a­tion in the best man­ner pos­si­ble, this is lim­ited by our desire (or lack thereof) to do so.

In any case, I find it dif­fi­cult to be a hyp­o­crit­i­cal per­son, and in turn, I find hyp­o­crit­i­cal peo­ple dif­fi­cult. The most aggra­vat­ing are those who are hyp­o­crit­i­cal crit­ics. I don’t have a prob­lem with peo­ple point­ing out my flaws. I have them, and I admit it. It’s the first step towards self-improvement. It’s also great for gain­ing per­spec­tive, for learn­ing how dif­fer­ent peo­ple inter­pret things (because I know that many see prob­lems where there are none).

I do, how­ever, have a prob­lem with the peo­ple who freely give crit­i­cism, when they can’t take it them­selves. These are the hyp­o­critial crit­ics; the peo­ple who judge oth­ers past them­selves, when they are the last ones who should be pass­ing judge­ment on any­one. This hypocrisy may stem from some­thing as com­plex as inse­cu­rity, to some­thing as sim­ple as upbring­ing (espe­cially as a result of par­ents who refuse to admit fault to their chil­dren). It becomes espe­cially impor­tant in equal (non-authoratative) rela­tion­ships to rec­og­nize the bar­ri­ers that get put up by such a dou­ble standard.

Funny how an autho­r­ata­tive rela­tion­ship taught me this.

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February 13, 2005

Winter City Nights

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The back of Social

A shot of the rear entrance of Social, a restau­rant I’ve only dined in once, but have passed by, wish­ing I was inside, many times. I like how the mood in the shot is warm, against the implied cold from the Christmas lights. One could sit here at any time of year and soak up the seren­ity, where a song by Sigur Rós (at night, when it’s com­fort­ably crowded) is as rel­e­vant as a song by Edith Piaff (par­tic­u­larly in the fall, when the skies are grey) is as rel­e­vant as a song by Iron And Wine (dur­ing the early days of sum­mer, when it’s still cool in the evening).

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February 11, 2005

::Sniff::

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I swear I’m miss­ing some underwear.

For the longest time, I had enough box­ers to get me through the week at least, but now I find myself hav­ing to do laun­dry before Saturday comes around. I can’t imag­ine any­one actu­ally tak­ing them, although every time I lose an arti­cle of cloth­ing, I always sus­pect the most recent ex-girlfriend first. This isn’t for any spe­cific rea­son (in fact, I’m pretty sure none of them have ever actu­ally taken any­thing), and is prob­a­bly just a para­noia cul­ti­vated through group hug con­fes­sions.

That, and know­ing how impor­tant smell can be to some­one. Ashley, in par­tic­u­lar, used to take my under­shirts on a reg­u­lar basis. She’d tell me to wear them for days (good thing Asian peo­ple don’t sweat), and we’d have a rota­tion thing going on where I’d give her a new (used) shirt when I couldn’t see her for a while. She told me that she’d fall asleep clutch­ing them, although the smell would never last longer than a week.

Michele was dif­fer­ent. She didn’t have any nat­ural scent, and told me that my shirts would never stop smelling like me. I sus­pect that she had a much sharper olfac­tory sense.

Sam I could smell through the pages of a book she once gave me: a copy of Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. She picked it up at a book sale, and read it in one day. By the end she was cry­ing, and thought I would enjoy it. Every time I turned the page, it was like she was sit­ting in front of me again, cof­fee smell on her breath.

Louise was dif­fer­ent still. She had a great scent that was a lit­tle sweet, under the Cool Water by Davidoff she would fre­quently wear. She didn’t seem to care for my nat­ural body smell as much as the arti­fi­cial “male” scents, such as the Gillette series of prod­ucts. Jacky once told me that she was using a stick of the same sport antiper­spi­rant that her ex used because it reminded her of him. When I actu­ally saw the stick, even already know­ing that it was a stick of “guy antiper­spi­rant”, I was still sur­prised at how male ori­ented the mar­ket­ing was, with high con­trast flu­o­res­cent stripes and bold fonts. It looked a lit­tle odd when she put it on, hold­ing the stick with her dainty hands.

I find that most girls are like this; they pre­fer the man­u­fac­tured smells of an after­shave, body wash, or even deodor­ant. Instead, Ashley taught me to appre­ci­ate an eau de nat­ural. I remem­ber walk­ing up to her house, after not see­ing her for a month, and being able to smell her from out­side the door. I would miss her even more just stand­ing there, almost as if this made her ethe­real pres­ence tan­gi­ble. Ever since, I’ve believed that the scents we pro­duce are more impor­tant than the ones we put on. They’re unique to one per­son, and never go away.

Unlike my underwear.

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February 9, 2005

The Tricks Of Jungle Artists

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I was lis­ten­ing to a jun­gle remix of The Perfect Drug by Nine Inch Nails, when I real­ized that jun­gle artists can carry phrases with their beats instead of the sam­ples. Since most of the sound in drum and bass comes from the way the DJ plays with an alter­nat­ing kick drum/snare break­beat, the (more dis­cernible) empha­sis shifts to the style of the beat rather than the singer or melody. By syn­co­pat­ing the break­beat for a few bars in a row, the final bar can have no syn­co­pa­tion and give clo­sure to the phrase. Genius.

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February 8, 2005

Everything Felt Different

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Last morn­ing, the sky was a swirl of ash and dusty pink. The air was still, the breeze was warm, and every­thing felt dif­fer­ent. It was as if we lived in a snow­globe wrapped in tie-dyed tis­sue paper, trav­el­ling on our way to work, watch­ing the early morn­ing sun­light come up with the wan­ing of the win­ter days. The rays would pierce the clouds like a child pass­ing a flash­light through the thin spots in his blanket.

I can only hope for the same today.

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February 6, 2005

The Next Level

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I used to seethe, stew, and mar­i­nate. If I was in a bad mood, I wanted to stay in a bad mood because, some­how, I would want to make it worth it. I fig­ure that if some­thing is bad enough to make me sour, I shouldn’t be eas­ily taken out of that frame of mind. It’s the same with for­give­ness. I’m slow to anger, but once I’m there, I’m extremely slow to for­give, for the exact same reason.

For years, I would lis­ten to music to help me wal­low in these emo­tions. It would cra­dle me, fuel me until the emo­tion burned out. Listening this way, with a surge of sen­ti­ment, would let me feel the notes, and I would savour every sec­ond, minute, and even­tual hour of it.

Lately, though, I hear music dif­fer­ently. It inspires me. It moves me. It helps me out of an emo­tion, instead of into one. And it feels like this change is a reflec­tion of how much my life is chang­ing now, how I’m begin­ning to see the entire world around me in such a pro­foundly dif­fer­ent way.

As if every­thing that’s past is pro­logue to this.

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