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the tide you swim against will carry you back home

3

How quickly my world fell apart. How sud­denly things have changed, never to be the same again. No one blames me for being unable to cope when so much has hap­pened all at once.

When diag­nos­ing the sever­ity of your mood, the pro­fes­sion­als always ask if you have a plan. Even the two cops who show up at your door at mid­night cause your friends fear the worst will pose the ques­tion. I guess a plan is the sign that you’re in imme­di­ate dan­ger, and I had three.

It means I get to be self­ish now. I get to do what I need to sur­vive. I get to think of myself for once in my life.

Even if my friends have never been through this, even if they don’t under­stand, they still care, and they prove it to me with every lin­ger­ing hug, every meal they leave me, every call to ask how I’m feel­ing, every mes­sage left to let them know if there’s any­thing they can do, every reminder that they don’t want to lose me spo­ken through tears from those I’ve never seen cry.

I used to have noth­ing but guilt for wor­ry­ing them, but now I under­stand that guilt is the last thing they want me to feel. They only want me to be okay. They’ve done so much to make me believe this, and that’s exactly what I need right now.

Date  May 17, 2012
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morbid self-attention

2

My life has taken another turn again. The days can go on with reg­u­lar­ity over and over, one day indis­tin­guish­able from the next. A long con­tin­u­ous chain.

—Taxi Driver

Time loses all mean­ing when you can’t sleep more than two hours in a row, and every­thing else becomes mean­ing­less along with it. Some days I can’t eat, exer­cise, or face the world. All I can do is won­der when it’ll all end, and fight every thought that tells me to give up.

They said the med­ica­tion may make me feel worse before I start feel­ing bet­ter. This is how I dis­cover rock bot­tom is always rel­a­tive. A strange lit­tle hole I find myself in, where the days grow brighter with the chang­ing of sea­sons, insom­nia means I never miss a sun­rise or sun­set, and I have noth­ing but free time, but none of it mat­ters.

Date  May 14, 2012
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pharmaceutical intervention

2

Sanity is sup­posed to come from lit­tle por­tions of Cipralex, but I have to sur­vive long enough for the doc­tors to find the right dose. It may well be sev­eral months before they dis­cover what works, and every day in between ter­ri­fies me.

Until then, I can’t sleep, I can’t come, I can’t eat more than half of what I used to before get­ting full, and I can’t go with­out Gravol to fight the nau­sea. The side-effects are sup­posed to be bet­ter than the alter­na­tive — and I sup­pose cot­ton­mouth is good way to get me to drink more liq­uids — but every wretched day makes me ques­tion whether this unique form of hell is worth it.

This used to be one of my great­est fears, and here I am faced with it cause I couldn’t han­dle life by myself anymore.

Date  May 7, 2012
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what fool hath added water to the sea?

2

O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain,
That shall dis­til from these two ancient urns,
Than youth­ful April shall with all his showers

—Titus Andronicus

I lost my life as I knew it, piece by piece, over days and weeks and months. Now things will never be the same. In moments of cri­sis, every­thing has been dis­tilled; what’s gone is gone for­ever, and what remains is what I will carry for the rest of my life.

And as the threads unrav­eled, I tore myself from the world away, my face unable to bear the bur­den to others.

Date  May 5, 2012
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Do we have any movement from the Baratheons?

0

Our nights are filled with alliances made and bro­ken. I’ve never been par­tic­u­larly good at nego­ti­a­tion or betrayal, and that’s prob­a­bly why my house is usu­ally the first to go in the Game of Thrones. I’ve become that guy who sucks and con­se­quently poses no threat at the thing every­one is into, but still plays cause it’s always worth see­ing the bluffs and calls, the bold alpha strikes, and the devel­op­ment of grudges.

I’ve never got­ten along with the caf­feinated, shaky, socially awk­ward guys who fre­quent the rare binders at the comic book store, per­haps cause they remind me too much of an ado­les­cent ver­sion of myself. But this is our own ver­sion of geek­ery, with our own rit­u­als, and the com­pany is never any­thing less than entertaining.

movement from the Baratheons

 

Game of Thrones

 

Seth equipped

Armed with Valyrian steel blade and mes­sen­ger raven, for con­trol of the fief­doms and the king’s court.

Date  April 23, 2012
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a path you didn't choose

4

People are for­go­ing their heavy coats for light jack­ets, even a litte skin. But win­ter still lingers in the crisp air, a reminder that it hasn’t been long since those frigid nights, but that it’ll soon be warmer and brighter. On the right days, I can wake up with the warmth of the sun on my face, drive with the win­dows down, and eat din­ner in the daylight.

The cats sit intently by the back door for hours, lis­ten­ing for any birds come home for Spring. They haven’t heard any since last year, and for Byron, that’s pretty much a life­time. Nowadays, I mea­sure time by how much heav­ier feels every day. There’s a com­fort to be found in know­ing that your cats are grow­ing and healthy.

cats eating

 

It feels like so much of what I used to cher­ish has fallen to the way­side. Like I’m relent­lessly try­ing to catch up on sleep, on time spent with friends, on gui­tar prac­tice, on var­i­ous projects, on get­ting to inbox 0. With time now such a valu­able resource, I’ve been re-evaluating things to sal­vage as much as I can. Figuring out the dif­fer­ence between what I truly enjoy and what I enjoy because I think I should, between what I need and what I want.

It’s strange to think that I’ve ended up here, and yet it’s hardly dif­fer­ent from where I was not so long ago. Life is always inter­est­ing, no mat­ter what age you are, and regard­less of how you think you’ve set­tled into it. If you’re doing it right, at least.

Date  April 15, 2012
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little victories

3

Remember when I used to write about every­thing? When there were a mil­lion dis­trac­tions to keep me warm, and all the lyrics cap­tured a moment I never wanted to for­get. The chang­ing sea­sons, the goose­bumps beneath my fin­gers, the taste of affec­tion; it all lived on in my songs, and I wanted noth­ing more than to put it all on paper.

I’m try­ing to get there again. Not with dra­matic, sweep­ing changes, but by rebuild­ing brick by brick. I can make it if I focus on putting one foot in front of the other, liv­ing day by day.

a snowy end

 

So I’ve been cher­ish­ing the lit­tle vic­to­ries, cause they all count. And luck­ily, life is full of them.

Date  April 11, 2012
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Categories  Daily Life Photos Thoughts

this is my happy face

4

All i want to write about lately is sun­sets and awk­ward hugs and redis­cov­er­ing coconut mac­a­roons and under­wear and sec­ondish chances and grow­ing old and jus­tice and my new aware­ness of food indus­try issues and the smell of out­doors no mat­ter what the sea­son and want­ing to see Germany and my new Magic decks and that last date and how hard it is to do Street Fighter IV com­bos and pic­tures like this

golden girl

 

and not hav­ing to wear a coat any­more and hand­shakes after really close games and peo­ple being nice to me and feel­ing more com­fort­able with barre chords and what Geneviève wears and Breaking Bad and Nick Drake’s life and root beer floats and the sound of a melod­ica and pretty cats and open­ing boost­ers and the lux­ury of say­ing no and how weird it feels to drive some­where in your PJs and intro­duc­ing oth­ers to that aloe drink and the same old mem­o­ries that I still cher­ish and mini-Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and walk­ing base­lines and being sur­rounded by such good peo­ple and hav­ing a PS3 and the time com­plex­ity of sort­ing algo­rithms and won­der­ing if it’s too late to call and how excited Ryan gets when I visit and the songs I want to write and my mem­o­ries of America and scented oils from the Body Shop and choco­late beers and the image of a gauzy dress in the sun.

Date  April 2, 2012
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Protected: retail therapy

4

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Date  March 30, 2012
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missed connection

0

(I was going through some old e-mails when I found this missed con­nec­tion post I wrote years ago. Aside from get­ting in touch with the per­son I was writ­ing to, one per­son replied, “I am not her… but I read this page hop­ing that one day some­one would post some­thing this nice about me after a ran­dom smile exchanged on a street cor­ner. Well Done.” Don’t we all.)

I was walk­ing north on O’Connor around 5pm yes­ter­day, lost in a thought, when I turned the cor­ner and saw you look­ing at me.

You gave me an unin­hib­ited smile, the likes of which seemed to con­vey a strange famil­iar­ity. Like we had seen each other at an office party but were never for­mally intro­duced, so we knew of each other’s exis­tence but were too shy to be the first one to say any­thing, and rel­e­gated our com­mu­ni­ca­tion to giv­ing each other quick glances when pass­ing each other in the hall.

It made me think of this line that Emilio Estevez says in St. Elmo’s Fire:

There are sev­eral quin­tes­sen­tial moments in a man’s life: los­ing his vir­gin­ity, get­ting mar­ried, becom­ing a father, and hav­ing the right girl smile at you.

Okay, so maybe Joel Schumacher got the entire con­cept of St. Elmo’s fire wrong in the movie, and sure, Andie MacDowell’s role was as chal­leng­ing as putting but­ter on bread, but she was per­fect for it. She had a fresh face with the right amount of charm and mys­tery to be the love inter­est of the guy who played the pop­u­lar jock in The Breakfast Club, and for a moment yes­ter­day, YOU WERE THAT GIRL. If that makes me the crazy, obsessed waiter-cum-law stu­dent then so be it. At least I wasn’t the wild frat boy with a bas­tard son who couldn’t hold his life together that Rob Lowe won the Razzie for, right?

You were the girl who defined one of those four quin­tes­sen­tial moments, and it came at the right time, as I had just spent so much time curs­ing Ottawa for hav­ing such incon­sid­er­ate dri­vers and inac­ces­si­ble down­town park­ing. I was the guy you smiled at who prob­a­bly lives a lit­tle too vic­ar­i­ously through 80s coming-of-age movies cause I was never cool enough to have any “real” prob­lems, and your smile stopped me in my tracks. By the time I gained the clar­ity to turn around, all I could see was you walk­ing away, in a long black coat, black hat, with red hair.

All I need now is to lose my vir­gin­ity, get mar­ried, and become a father. Maybe you could help me with those too.

Date  March 18, 2012
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hope springs eternal

2

I awoke after five min­utes — or five sec­onds — to a changed world. For a moment, I was free of feeling…love, hate, jeal­ousy. And it all felt like happiness.

—Maurice Bendrix, The End of the Affair

a fresh start

 

A fog hangs low in the streets, illu­mi­nated by the indi­rect rays of an unrisen sun, leav­ing every­thing was awash in grey instead of white.

The sea­sons are chang­ing. Winter is offi­cially over. It never recov­ers from a day like this, when the inevitabil­ity of spring can be felt on your skin, as tan­gi­ble as any snowflake or rain­drop. This is when I can look for­ward to sleep­ing with the win­dows open again, a rit­ual made only sweeter by it’s ephemerality.

And with that moist smell heavy in the air, I for­get all else.

Date  March 15, 2012
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booster draft

0

Today, I got to intro­duce some very good friends to each other. Everyone got along famously, although it couldn’t have gone any other way with these guys.

It was the first booster draft for three of us. I was mas­sa­cred in every game, and didn’t have any less fun los­ing to such great sports.

Magic: The Gathering booster draft

Two Innistrad and two Dark Ascension. Oh what glit­ter­ing golden sym­bols lie beneath these wrappers.

Unfortunately, noth­ing inter­ested me when we were pick­ing out rares1, so I got noth­ing for the deck I’m cur­rently build­ing, and no direc­tion for a sec­ond deck. But as Aaron said, even if you lose, it’s cheaper than a night of poker. Sometimes you lose it on the river, some­times you draw 13 con­sec­u­tive lands, and some­times you OH GOD WHY ARE MY CREATURES DEAD ARGHGHHGHGH LETS PLAY AGAIN.

  1. And there wasn’t a sin­gle green rare — exactly what I was look­ing for — out of 17 rares. I have no idea what the chances are on that, but I know they’re not big. [↑]
Date  March 11, 2012
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The Little Man Must Go On

2

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Live accord­ing to the sea­sons
In the town where I was born
Things have gotta have a rea­son
The sun don’t come before the dawn

(Thanks again, Antje.)

How did I lose another week? Another week of that snow smell and gui­tar lessons and Nordique red­heads I never asked out again. Lost to the trap­pings of life. So much has hap­pened, and yet noth­ing has changed, though things will be dif­fer­ent soon enough. And while I wish I could say that I had more to say about it all, I don’t.

teas in spoons

 

tea-table

 

tea served

Sublimity in a teacup.

Over some ancient moon­light white tea, Heather asked how my belief in Taoism was going. It made me real­ize I hadn’t thought about it in a while, which is exactly the point. I’ve been try­ing not to try to act, and just been act­ing. Doing my best not to over-think things. Taking it one call, one con­ver­sa­tion, one day, one week at a time.

Date  March 4, 2012
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don't let the past remind us of what we are not now

6

It’s been another crazy week. Between the appoint­ments and the hang­outs, I haven’t had a night to myself.

One thing I wish I had more time to appre­ci­ate is the weather. The most recent bliz­zard draped the city in snow wet and heavy, and all I want to do now is go out and shoot with a nice piece of glass that goes wider than f/2.8. I keep promis­ing myself I’ll do it next snow­fall, but life always seems to get in the way.

baby playing peekaboo

 

The over­stim­u­la­tion has left me with my guard down, and I’m stuck in my mem­o­ries again. Left remem­ber­ing old con­ver­sa­tions, nights lost to the senses, and my regret at not men­tion­ing how much I liked those nails done up in white and nude.

It’s not my fault. Honest. I get pulled into it in the most inno­cent ways. That song will come over the tinny speak­ers in the pro­duce depart­ment when I’m pick­ing out toma­toes. Or I’ll be on the 12 home, going through ran­dom songs in my col­lec­tion to try out my new mon­i­tors, when I catch some­one shar­ing what I always saved for us.

I’m start­ing to under­stand how help­less I am to change the past, but at the very least, I can change myself. And that’s often good enough nowadays.

Date  February 26, 2012
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sine wave

2

It’s per­pet­u­ally night in my lit­tle nest. A gui­tar is never more than an arms length away, and two cats are always will­ing to curl up against my body under the sheets (though never together); some days it feels like these are the only things I need in the world. Perhaps I’m lit­tle too com­fort­able here, where I can watch the snow fall out the win­dow, and sel­dom have to ven­ture out of my com­fort zone.

I’m con­stantly start­ing over. Throwing away a page so I can have a blank can­vas. Losing another friend to adult­hood, then find­ing new ones in the most unex­pected places. Riding the oscil­la­tions of a sine wave.

The only thing that’s con­stant is how much Byron is grow­ing, his paws and tail hav­ing sur­passed Dolly’s in girth many months ago, and I can’t wait to see how big he’s going to get once he’s fully into adult­hood. I relate to my friends only when one of the cats is afflicted with acne or her­pes or an upper res­pi­ra­tory infec­tion, and I have to play mother to a kitty who can’t fight the sick­ness by them­selves. Dolly has been espe­cially sen­si­tive lately, and needs a lot more atten­tion and affec­tion, still jeal­ous of the new kit­ten in the house.

cats sleeping butt to butt

Butt to butt.

Lisa keeps me sane nowa­days, a role she’s par­tially taken over from John ever since he became a dad. She’s the voice of female rea­son in my life, the only excuse I use to watch great movies now, and the one who talks me down from drunken e-mails to ex-girlfriends. But some­times I need more than half a Lisa and half a John, cause not every­thing can be solved by a stolen con­ver­sa­tion or bury­ing your face in a cat’s belly.

I’m learn­ing that life goes on, whether you’re ready or not. You can only con­trol so much. This real­iza­tion is the rea­son I don’t worry about the future any­more, even when it feels like I should be worried.

I’ve also dis­cov­ered that my writer’s block hasn’t been due to a lack of things to talk about, but the fact that noth­ing I write is sat­is­fy­ing any­more. I’ve lost my rea­son. The only thing I’ve fallen in love with lately has been my set of extra-light chrome flat­wound strings, cause they have such a crisp sound off the nail, but main­tain a warm, aus­tere overtone.

I used to go to bed and dream, but nowa­days, my mind is empty. I don’t know what to make of it all any­more. Can’t fig­ure out if I’m stand­ing on a crest or trough.

Date  February 13, 2012
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