May 31, 2005

The Difficult Things

1

God, I’m fuck­ing exhausted. The day was a mix of ner­vous­ness. Partly shy, partly anx­ious, partly caf­feinated. People test­ing me, peo­ple appre­ci­at­ing me, peo­ple who call me brother.

As much as I’ve grown, as far as I’ve come, there are still things that are dif­fi­cult to do.

All I want to do now is write, but I’m too tired. Life is mov­ing at a quick­ened pace. I came here to vent, but all I’ve done is barely scratch the sur­face. Oddly enough, I still feel bet­ter. I think of call­ing John, but I hear him explain­ing my thoughts to me, in my head, and sud­denly, every­thing makes sense.

It’s like Louise and cuts. When get­ting a cut, her first instinct is that it hurts, but when she real­izes that they’re sup­posed to hurt (what I see as the nature of per­fec­tion), they cease to hurt.

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May 29, 2005

May 24 2005

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[kml_flashembed movie=”/videos/events/maytwofour05/murphyspoint.swf” width=“480” height=“335” wmode=“transparent”/]

The long week­end was just plain relax­ing. It’s good to get out every once in a while, although once a year is enough for me to appre­ci­ate my clean room, my com­fort­able bed, and the com­pany of my kitty cat. Getting to know Chris, Aaron’s brother, was a treat.

Thumbnail: Burning log
Thumbnail: Wet and dry leaves

It driz­zled for most of the week­end, but it wasn’t enough to stop us from play­ing poker in our tents or under the tarp. As can be seen in the last photo, on the last day, the leaves were com­pletely dry under our tents (left side of the pic­ture) while leaves on the ground were soaked through (right side).

Thumbnail: Barbecue grill
Thumbnail: Coffee cake

Even camp­ing food is easy. Meals cooked over the fire are plate and utensil-free. Cake is eaten with hands, and one feels no more guilty in the com­pany of oth­ers than gorg­ing alone.

Thumbnail: Friday night
Thumbnail: Moonlight
Thumbnail: Night trees
Thumbnail: Tree canopy

I man­aged to get some great shots at night. I still won­der how I’d do with a nice dig­i­tal SLR though. The one in the bot­tom right cor­ner came out espe­cially well: the cir­cu­lar lens pat­terns of my Maglite can be made out in the leaves.

Thumbnail: Drive through
Thumbnail: Bowling balls

One of the best parts of camp­ing is pass­ing through all the lit­tle towns along the way. It always reminds me of the drive up to John’s cot­tage. The build­ings are homely and unique, with so much per­son­al­ity. We passed by an old, work­ing drive-through in the mid­dle of nowhere, and I had to get a pic­ture of the weath­ered sign. There also hap­pened to be a tiny, pastel-coloured bowl­ing alley, and we decided to play a few games. Funny how the one time we end up going bowl­ing is the time that Trolley couldn’t go with us (he’s never been bowl­ing, and we keep telling each other that we have to go with him sometime).

Thumbnail: Fungus growth
Thumbnail: Trillium
Thumbnail: Salamander

A growth, a flower, and a lizard. I have no idea what is grow­ing on the log, but I do know that the flower is a tril­lium, which is the provin­cial flower of Ontario. It’s also pro­tected, which means that one can get fined for pick­ing it (Any per­son who con­tra­venes the act is guilty of an offence and on con­vic­tion is liable to a fine of not more than $50,000, or to impris­on­ment for a term of not more than two years, or to both). The lizard is a sala­man­der, and there were a few crawl­ing around in the leaves.

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May 27, 2005

Wrinkle-Free Friday’s

2

How do I explain how good it feels to be iron­ing my clothes on Friday night?

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May 23, 2005

Living On Borrowed Time (Bonus)

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An old nurs­ery rhyme pro­posed that life is but a dream. If Dr. Leary were alive today, he would add, most likely in an LSD induced state, that we’re just an imag­i­na­tion of our­selves. I have a hard time agree­ing with either apho­rism, but even if they were true, it wouldn’t matter.

A cer­tain glut­to­nous cat once mused, exactly 19 years ago today, that life can be com­pared to some­thing found on the din­ner table. Perhaps the most famous com­par­i­son, how­ever, was by a tech­ni­cally bor­der­line defi­cient per­son who said that life is like a box of choco­lates, because you never know what you’re going to get. As things go on, one real­izes that there isn’t one com­par­i­son that’s more valid than another.

Even an out­spo­ken Queensbridge rap­per has flowed, “You a killer or a hus­tler, dealer or cus­tomer / Gangsta or buster, young­ster or old nigga / A weed head, a coke snif­fer / You rich or a broke nigga / Know you all relate to this shit that I wrote nig­gas / Life is what you make it nigga”, and I tend not to disagree.

For me, it now seems like life is sim­ply a test.

More impor­tantly, how­ever, from here until the end, no mat­ter what, life is gravy.

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May 21, 2005

Preview: May 24

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Thumbnail: 12 eggs in a pot

Went camp­ing over the long week­end. Pictures/video to come soon/eventually.

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May 19, 2005

The Fourth Morning

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I was going to write about how I slept well for three nights in a row, but the third night turned into this morning.

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May 17, 2005

The Friend With No Calendar

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I value the friend who for me finds time on his cal­en­dar, but I cher­ish the friend who for me does not con­sult his calendar.

—Robert Brault

I called Pat yes­ter­day. In the past, I’ve always let him call me, since he’s invari­ably more busy than I am. Even if we try to make plans to hang out, we usu­ally leave off with him get­ting back to me as soon as he finds out when he’s avail­able next, due to the fact that he likes to be booked a month in advance. This time, I wanted to be the one ini­ti­at­ing, because I real­ized that out of all my friends, I see him the least. Even if we hang out once a month, which may be con­sid­ered quite suf­fi­cient, that’s only 12 times in a year.

The thing that makes it awk­ward is the fact that I don’t know the make-up of his social cal­en­dar. I don’t know how much of his life is devoted to Jen or allo­cated for other friends. Usually I only see him between events, and he’s always rush­ing off to do some­thing else. The last thing I want to do is be a self­ish per­son and smother him, espe­cially a per­son whose time is as valu­able as his. This is actu­ally one of the things I worry about, when I know that I shouldn’t (John has recently helped me real­ize that I over­an­a­lyze things). I trust that Pat will let me know when I start tak­ing up too much of his time.

In either case, as usual, he’s going to call me back to have din­ner at the Black Tomato. I had to rec­om­mend that we go, because I always enjoy myself when I patron­ize that restau­rant. I also chose to have a meal instead of doing some­thing else, because food is one of Pat’s hob­bies. He treated me the last time we had dim sum, when it was actu­ally my turn, so I’m hop­ing he won’t put up a fight when I go to pay for the bill. In addi­tion to the great fusion food, I’ll have the chance to order a glass of Wynns Coonawarra Estate caber­net sauvi­gnon which I haven’t had the plea­sure of tast­ing for a few months.

A chance to catch up, a chance to get to know Jen bet­ter, a chance to try out some new food. It’s going to be good.

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May 15, 2005

Cornus Canadensis

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Many things to say, but this is the most rel­e­vant right now. This also hap­pens to touch on almost every aspect of my life, and I find myself con­sid­er­ing things from a gigan­tic range of angles. Unfortunately, I can only briefly touch on each of them, in an effort to stave digression.

The first and most impor­tant goal I’ve ever had was to gain a healthy amount of con­fi­dence by the time I was middle-age. This was so that I could enjoy at least half of my life as a strong indi­vid­ual. I set this goal because I real­ized that I had an unhealthy amount of self-doubt, which con­tributed to a depress­ing life and lifestyle, as well as unre­al­ized potential.

This meant fight­ing off the inse­cu­ri­ties that were bred into me, which amounted to most of my child­hood. It hasn’t been easy in the last cou­ple of years, but it’s worked. Every six months, I’d real­ize how much I grew. This time, I real­ize that I’m there.

I finally feel like I’m in con­trol of my life. I speak to peo­ple dif­fer­ently. I think dif­fer­ently. Instead of avoid­ing con­flict, I can meet it head on. For me, this was prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult thing to do ever imag­ine doing. I would plan my life around such an avoid­ance, from my friends to my rela­tion­ships. I had a con­flict pho­bia, an illog­i­cal fear of a spe­cific sit­u­a­tion, but I fought against it and won. In psy­chol­ogy, peo­ple over­come their pho­bias by remain­ing relaxed in the face of their fears (because one can­not men­tally be relaxed and scared at the same time). I had the oppor­tu­nity to do this, by plac­ing myself in uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions over the last four months, and approach­ing them cere­brally at the same time.

I also have to say that a major con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the suc­cess has been going through the D/s lifestyle with Loo. Having a sub­mis­sive as expe­ri­enced as she was, plac­ing her trust in me, gave me a sig­nif­i­cant boost in con­fi­dence. She once pointed out to me while watch­ing Secretary, that Edward Grey’s con­fes­sion to Lee Holloway about pre­vi­ously being shy was a very accu­rate detail. In Loo’s expe­ri­ence, many put in a dom­i­nant posi­tion are able to break out of their shells, and I never under­stood or believed her until now.

So now that I’m here, where do I go? I’ve accom­plished the biggest goal in my life, some­thing I’d planned on work­ing on for the next ten years, and it feels like I’ve lost a major part of my rea­son for liv­ing. I feel like an astro­naut who dreamed of land­ing on the moon as a child, only to accom­plish the goal and real­ize that he had never dreamed of any­thing else.

I sup­pose I still have the rest of my life to decide.

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May 14, 2005

Stream Of Consciousness

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This is going to be one of those stream of con­scious­ness things that I haven’t done in so long. I find myself not­ing what to write about next, and even though it’s a great way to get out the things I want to say, I’m too focused on a sin­gle topic to really feel satisfied.

Actually, I’ve mostly been too busy to write lately, a prob­lem I never thought I’d have. When I’m not too busy, I’m too tired. Been golf­ing, clean­ing, get­ting my hair cut. Speaking of which, I requested a male “styl­ist” the other day, as opposed to Josee. I wasn’t sure if this would be a rude thing to do, but I’ve spo­ken to a lot of peo­ple, women included, who believe that male hair­dressers do a much bet­ter job than their female coun­ter­parts. It turns out that quite a lot of peo­ple go exclu­sively to male dressers. I never would have under­stood why (it seemed like a rather silly thing to me) until I had my hair cut by one. I only needed to tell him that I wanted a trim, and he did a per­fect job of it, some­thing that Josee needed about three appoint­ments to fig­ure out.

Today is poker night at Pat’s. I’ve never played Pat before, but I’m scared to death of fac­ing him alone. As a socialite, he can read peo­ple like a book, and I’m sure he’d quickly pick up on any tells that I have. Just means that I’ll have to play extra tight, and throw in an occa­sional bluff to throw him off. Actually, it’s limit hold’em so I can afford to play a lit­tle more loose (but still not as greedy as Darren).

Hoping to talk to John tomor­row. He’s been mov­ing around cities, and only set­tled into a steady sum­mer apart­ment this week. I tried to catch him up on things ear­lier, but there just wasn’t enough time.

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May 13, 2005

The Second Introduction, Part 3

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Part 3 went well enough that it doesn’t even deserve it’s own entry. All I can say now is that I’m cau­tiously optimistic.

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May 11, 2005

Housewarming ’05

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It’s a new week, and I finally feel like myself again. The only time I have an unsta­ble mind is when I wake up between two and four every night. All the thoughts I push to the back of my mind come flood­ing back, and I have trou­ble falling asleep for another hour or two. Other than that, I’m okay, more or less. All it took was a house­warm­ing party and a week­end of no worries.

Thumbnail: Corona bottles

Thumbnail: Cat and kitty

Trolley and I started prepa­ra­tions on Friday. We were expect­ing 14 peo­ple (with three not drink­ing) and we got that exactly — Pat, Jen, Jeff, Pita, Mike, Iain, Aaron, Karen, Kat, Sebastien, Eric, Jen, Trolley, and I. In all, we had four bot­tles of Keith’s (left over from poker night last week), three bot­tles of wine, a 12 of Corona, and two 5-Liter Kegs of Grolsch. In addi­tion to this, Aaron ended up bring­ing six more Keith’s, while Mike gave me a mickey of Smirnoff, and Pita sup­plied a 12 of Blueu (the dis­tin­guished Quebec vari­ant of Blue). A few major drinkers pow­ered through the alco­hol, and while we ini­tially believed our­selves to be over­stocked, we ended up with only a few Blue and the wine.

It was a pretty good mix of peo­ple. While I was grilling burg­ers on the new bar­beque, peo­ple were min­gling, hang­ing out on the couches, catch­ing up on hockey on TV. Some were even soak­ing up the sun in my lit­tle back yard/patio, which has an accom­mo­dat­ing set of stairs and a few lawn chairs. There wasn’t as much seg­re­ga­tion, and I think that Aaron, Trolley, and Pat helped blend the two (and a half) groups a bit. For a suc­cess­ful party, I’m always sure to have all three in atten­dance. To my sur­prise, we all ended up play­ing some four-player Gamecube games towards the end of the night, some­thing I wasn’t sure that every­one was inter­ested in.

Thumbnail: Barbecue thermometer

Thumbnail: Crystal lowball glasses

Thumbnail: Moonray solar-powered lanterns

All-in-all, it was a good party, even if I was too busy run­ning around, mak­ing sure every­one was well fed and thor­oughly drunk, to hang out with my guests. I even got a few house­warm­ing gifts. Trolley and I built the bar­beque Pat gave us in time for the party, and Iain got me a nice set of crys­tal low balls (which have a nice weight to them, but need to be hand washed). Aaron gave me a set of six solar-charged patio lanterns that really make my yard stand out from the rest. I couldn’t ask for more.

Pita crashed that night, but not before I got him burned for the first time. I think his mind was a lit­tle too rigid, and he was ana­lyz­ing things a lit­tle too much to be able to relax and enjoy it. He stayed for the rest of Sunday, and we played the old Gamecube games we used to enjoy back when we were still liv­ing together. I had such a good time, that I was able to really for­get about every­thing else that’s going on right now. It was like a lit­tle get­t­away in my own house.

I needed this weekend.

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May 8, 2005

Virgin

3

Do you remem­ber your first time?

It was her first time too. Her face con­torted, a regret­fully painful look, but quickly relaxed as her eyes rolled back. You were scared when she bled, but she begged not to stop. How strange it was to be so close to some­one, so face-to-face. You thought you knew what inti­macy was, until you were inside her and kiss­ing her lips simul­ta­ne­ously. Shhhhh, they’re right under­neath us. You never imag­ined it’d feel so hot.

Do you remem­ber her first time? It was safe because her sis­ter was busy enough with her own boyfriend. You went beneath her skirt, recall­ing how dis­tract­ing such a sim­ple piece of pleated, plaid mate­r­ial could be when walk­ing behind her in the hall. She made no sound, and you began to doubt whether she was com­fort­able anymore.

Do you remem­ber her first time? It was at the end of sum­mer, when the days were get­ting shorter. You had the win­dows open, and waft­ing through the room was the smell of healthy trees and sun­set air. Even though the breeze was cool and dry, she was hot and sweat­ing against you on her brother’s bed. You were lis­ten­ing for the swing and slam of the back screen-door, but all you were think­ing about was how good it felt to finally touch her bare, sticky skin. There was no ner­vous­ness any­more. She trusted you with devo­tion, as you guided her through her blos­som­ing sexuality.

Do you remem­ber her first time? It was your first time too. You had always wanted to save this for mar­riage, but you were both caught in the moment, and her dirty mouth wouldn’t stop prod­ding you. She once told you how she had always imag­ined being tied up, some­one tak­ing this from her by force. It was too late now, and she wanted this as much as you did. Her screams were almost rudely loud in your ear, but there was indi­ca­tion of pain in her voice. Afterward, she had take a moment to col­lect her­self before she could speak, mak­ing a remark about how com­fort­ing it was to still feel you inside her.

They say that we always remem­ber our first time.

But do they remem­ber you?

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May 6, 2005

New Developments

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New devel­op­ments have left me with much to say. My mind feels like it’s going 80 thoughts per minute. Chaos proves to be a use­ful writ­ing tool. For now, rest.

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May 5, 2005

Broke Down At Work Today

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I haven’t cried in a while, and I think it was just build­ing up, which would explain why I felt so much bet­ter afterward.

I just kept work­ing. One can be sad, stressed, wor­ried, even to the point of tears, and carry on with the rest of daily life. Crying is just a phys­i­cal reflex of a state-of-mind.

Two peo­ple may have noticed, but nei­ther of them said anything.

Thank god I don’t have to deal with the bull­shit of hid­ing this from someone.

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May 4, 2005

The Second Introduction, Part 2.5

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Sometimes I think I see the let­ters on my desk rat­tling to the bass, but when I look, the let­ters are still. I sus­pect that my eyes are twitching.

It was a heavy day. I’m too scram­bled inside to eat. I know I’ll be hun­gry first thing in the morning.

“Malice”, he used. Not great, but good, and cer­tainly more than I deserve. I’m still paranoid.

Through every­thing else, some­one is test­ing me. Testing my new found seren­ity. Testing the very thing that I’ve been fight­ing against, for the last few years. The only per­son who can bring me to a desire for phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of my rag­ing frus­tra­tion (aside from peo­ple who smoke around babies). On the bus, I uncon­trol­lably pic­tured wrap­ping my fin­gers around her neck, and stran­gling her. I know that that’s bad. Sometimes my own thoughts scare me. I’m not a vio­lent person.

The world is a twisted, twisted one-act.

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