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perpetual eve

6

This day is the same every year. The streets are dead and filled with slush, the stores all closed. No mat­ter where I am, it seems peo­ple are look­ing for a chan­nel on TV to watch a corporate-sponsored count­down, and I always feel alone even though I’m sur­rounded by friends.

If it’s the same every year, it’s strange that my mem­o­ries of New Year’s Eve are so mixed. Jocks harass­ing me on the bus. Bundling up in big coats to share petit coro­nas out­side. Panic attacks. Blonds and red­heads. Rich foods and too much drink. And some­how the peo­ple I love and the peo­ple I hate end up at the same parties.

Sometimes it reminds me too much of my child­hood. My fam­ily hosted the same count­down party every year that became the only real time we spent with other peo­ple, and the only time we ever caught up with our “friends”. Numbers would be shouted in uni­son, cham­pagne would be toasted, noth­ing would change. An empty rit­ual for empty peo­ple. Maybe that’s why I never feel like I belong any­where on this day. It’s like I’m wait­ing to feel what every­one else around me is feel­ing when the ball drops.

Date  January 1, 2012
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it is impossible to stop the motion of snow at night

4

I got what I wanted for Christmas.

Piles of it. Sheets falling from the sky, melt­ing instantly on your wind­shield, forc­ing the traf­fic to 20kph on the high­way. So much that you have to brush off your car if you leave it parked for more than a minute, but the sky glows orange for you to savour every second.

house in the snow

 

Not that I cel­e­brate Christmas, but I do enjoy the trap­pings of the sea­son. The lights and the dec­o­ra­tions and the spirit and the snow. I’m just sick of the con­sumerism. It seems per­verse to see all this fancy paper wrapped around a box only to be torn off and thrown away. To see peo­ple scram­bling to buy things just to have some­thing to give. I’ve got it just right, where I don’t exchange gifts with any of my friends cause I don’t want either side to feel obliged. I’d rather give a present when the time is right for both peo­ple, and save my money so it’s some­thing spe­cial every now and then. The last thing I want is to be a scrooge, but the older I get, the more I feel like that’s what I’m turn­ing into.

The hol­i­days are the only time I truly veg out. I watch more TV on Christmas day than in the entire year com­bined, marathon reruns of Dog the Bounty Hunter and Parking Wars and Cake Boss. Shows that are fas­ci­nat­ing in short bursts with the right com­pany and snacks, but never good enough to make a point to watch on my own.

trees and night

 

I was lucky enough to spend some qual­ity time with a cheap elec­tric gui­tar. The body was dusty, the strings were dirty, and the into­na­tion left some­thing to be desired, but the action had me feel­ing like all the time I’ve spent with a stiff steel-string acoustic has paid off. About a month ago I put down a $200 deposit on the nylon-string beauty I’ve always wanted (with the promise that I’d get my deposit back if I didn’t like it) so I could wrap my arms around the body, run my hands across the glossy fin­ish, and feel the fret­board beneath my fin­gers. Guitar has been my only ther­apy lately. The only thing I can throw myself into and for­get about every­thing else, the only part of myself that I can tan­gi­bly tell is improv­ing, some­thing I need to be feel­ing right now.

I’ve never been this uncer­tain about the future, and it’s freak­ing me out. I already had a feel­ing 2012 was going to be a new start. My projects would be done by the end of the year, I’d have a nice lit­tle break, and I’d be ready to begin again. Now I’m forced into that real­ity, and life is soon going to be very dif­fer­ent. I don’t know if I’ll be able to han­dle it, but I sus­pect I won’t have much of a choice.

Date  December 27, 2011
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a horse is not a home

6

Toronto may be my mis­tress, but I still flirt with the idea of mak­ing her my wife. Wondering if I can escape the life and the mem­o­ries I have in Ottawa. I make the trip a few times a year, and some­times it feels like it’s more often than I see my friends here. If I still call Toronto home, maybe it’s time I should make it my home again. But I know it’s a dras­tic step for the sake of closure.

Christmas gathering

 

Sweet and creamy…Simon’s two great­est alco­holic adversaries.

It’s strange to have too many peo­ple to see and never enough time. Growing up as a socially awk­ward guy, it’s a prob­lem I never imag­ined I’d ever have. There hasn’t even been enough time for myself, although I sup­pose that’s the way I wanted it. I just don’t feel safe when I’m by myself nowadays.

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Date  December 18, 2011
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this is interlude

1

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I wasn’t ready for the snow. I pic­tured myself at home with noth­ing bet­ter to do than sleep in as it was falling, but instead I’m too busy to enjoy it. Now there’s noth­ing left of the snow that has fallen, cause fate seems to be con­spir­ing with the weather to make this Christmas any­thing but white.

Unfortunately, this is when I need to be buried under snow. I’m con­vinced the win­ter will wash every­thing away, and I’ll emerge clean again.

boy plays with man

 

I don’t know what to do with myself lately. Ever since Will was born, catch-up time with John has been a call he gives me every now and then between meth­ods of pub­lic trans­porta­tion as he makes his way home from work. I just want to talk to some­one and have their undi­vided atten­tion, cause it’s the old habits I miss the most, the late nights when you’d rather stay in someone’s com­pany than sleep. But the only peo­ple who under­stand are also the peo­ple with their own lives, and too often I’m left to my own devices.

As a result, I’ve been feel­ing vul­ner­a­ble. I hold myself back from reach­ing out to the wrong arms, the ones who touch my face and drag their nails across my skin, the ones with famil­iar smells and com­fort­ing weak­nesses, the ones who appre­ci­ate the things I want to be appre­ci­ated for, but none of whom can give me what I need.

pictionary

Dennis’s socks.

I’m sure I’d feel as lonely as ever if I wasn’t so over-stimulated and ready to be by myself for a while. This prob­a­bly won’t hap­pen until some point dur­ing the hol­i­days, and even then, I had plans on catch­ing up on per­sonal projects and chores I can only bring myself to do once a year1. Maybe this is adults mean when talk about how time passes more quickly when you’re older.

I’m in between places now, unsure of where I am or where I’m headed. But at the very least, I know what I’ve been through and what’s behind me.

  1. i.e. Cleaning the floor­boards and walls of the house. [↑]
Date  December 7, 2011
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we put our feet just where they had to go

0

Our final days grow ever darker, but win­ter feels far away when I turn on the A/C in the car as we set off on the scenic route. It’s strange to think I’ll never be here again. I do my best to take my time, to remem­ber the smell of every wooden house and twirl of hair and cozy wind. This was never a way for me to escape my life back home, only a jour­ney I knew I needed to take.

But the nov­elty of grey hair and almond eyes has long run out, and now I’m just a man, try­ing to find out where he belongs.

fountain

A mask that smiles.

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Date  December 2, 2011
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take me somewhere nice

1

It’s night, and a gen­tle song begins on my bed­side speaker. Until this point, I’d always won­dered who’d be the first to hear this song with me. Whose breath I’d feel on my body as the melody got lost in the dark­ness along with our inhi­bi­tions. It wasn’t a song I’d been sav­ing, only one I never had the chance to share until I found myself here, explor­ing the open fields and windswept moun­tains and towns in between.

Sarah and sweater

 

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Date  November 29, 2011
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The willing suspension of disbelief

0

The stars are clear out here. A train runs through the cen­tre a few times a day, blar­ing a horn as a warn­ing to peo­ple who may be going from build­ing to build­ing by cross­ing the tracks. It’s a tiny vil­lage in a snow­globe, only the snow hasn’t come.

I haven’t been around this many peo­ple in years. I’ve long won­dered what it’d be like to live this life one more time. To have rit­u­als and the­atre plans and reg­u­lar friends. None of this is real, of course, but I don’t mind pre­tend­ing if only for a lit­tle while.

girl in dorm room

Girlcave. Fucking awesome.

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Date  November 26, 2011
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this same flower that smiles today

2

I find myself resigned to someone’s care. It’s not an easy kind of con­trol to relin­quish, but lately I trust as lit­tle as pos­si­ble in the future and do my best to go along for the ride. As the old poem goes; be wise, strain the wine, or as Zorba would put it, “DON’T BE DELICATE”. I didn’t plan on liv­ing for­ever anyway.

On a cold night, we keep the only promise made, one of those small won­ders that still make me believe. I fit some­where between needs and wants, tem­po­rary relief and long-term side effects, class and home­work, nib­bled lips and bit­ten tongues.

in a field

 

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Date  November 23, 2011
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a well-watered place

3

The fall is hold­ing out against the win­ter, trees clutch­ing bright leaves before the chill breaks their grips. It’s won­der­fully warm among such colours, and we walk in the val­leys of Appalachia to take in the smell of moun­tain air as rus­tic hands around us work live­stock and soil. In old Aramaic, Damascus means “a well-watered place”, a fit­ting name as the rain soon grows too heavy to be explor­ing the tiny town, pop­u­la­tion 981.

looking over a bridge

 

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Date  November 17, 2011
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some day i'm gonna find it out

0

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Over-stimulation is a sling­shot moved by the force of com­pany for the sake of self-distraction.

cat in window

 

And yet I’ve never felt so alone. The nights are filled with absence, which I try to mol­lify with indul­gence. It’s okay for now cause I know I’ll be okay some day, when it’ll be safe to be alone with my thoughts again.

Date  November 4, 2011
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Maui Wowie

6

When Dave and Jenny asked me to film their wed­ding in Maui, there was no way I could say refuse. Soon1 I found myself in the only place in the world where Koa grows, and every tree I passed made me won­der if it would even­tu­ally be made into a ukulele or gui­tar. I was only there for two days, but it was worth every moment in the delight­ful weather, spend­ing time with some of the nicest peo­ple I’ve ever met.

The entire wed­ding group gath­ered for din­ner at Mala restau­rant, over­look­ing the Pacific Ocean and the islands of Lanai and Kaho‘olawe. At this time of year, the Maui sun­set passes in the blink of an eye.

I learned that there are only twelve let­ters in the Hawaiian alpha­bet (which is why so many of the words look the same to me), and the lan­guage uses Spanish vow­els. Each vowel is usu­ally pro­nounced by itself (Wailea is said “Why-lay-ah”). I was sur­prised to see most signs in both English and Japanese; it turns out there used to be a sig­nif­i­cant Japanese com­mu­nity in Hawaii, although most of the Japanese tourists go to see Pearl Harbor instead.

All the locals are super nice, per­haps due to the fact that tourism is one of the only indus­tries left in Maui2; it seems like most peo­ple liv­ing there are in the ser­vice indus­try in some form or another3.

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  1. “Soon” being a rel­a­tive term when com­pared to the lim­it­less of time, as it took me roughly a full day and three planes to get there, from Ottawa to Chicago to Honolulu to Kahalui. [↑]
  2. The other being agri­cul­ture that’s mostly been over­shad­owed by com­pe­ti­tion from Philippines. [↑]
  3. As opposed to those from Honolulu, who have jobs related to the mil­i­tary in some way. [↑]
Date  October 29, 2011
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leave the bottle

1

I needed to feel a dif­fer­ent pain. I needed to reassert myself. I needed to change my body from the one he knew.

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I’ve been killing it. Nights that bleed into morn­ing, pots of cof­fee, retail ther­apy, English ales that drink like meals. The blood doesn’t faze me any­more. Instead of slowly slip­ping down the spi­ral, I’ve decided to fall all the way so I can climb back up.

Sometimes you have to tear your­self down before you can start rebuilding.

Date  October 27, 2011
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9

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Date  October 24, 2011
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the things we carry

2

I can’t fig­ure out why I’m so moody lately. Maybe it’s been too long since I smelled the wood of my gui­tar. Maybe it’s the fresh Autumn colours that tend to mag­nify my emo­tions. Maybe I’m feel­ing over­worked, over­stim­u­lated, and too rarely under­stood. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had a moment to myself in what feels like weeks, with so many feel­ings of lone­li­ness amongst so many people.

Autumn stream

 

I always think of exile in times like this, and in par­tic­u­lar, a stanza from Yevgeniy Onegin:

From all that to the heart is dear
then did I tear my heart away;
to every­one a stranger, tied by noth­ing,
I thought; lib­erty and peace
would serve instead of happiness.

Luckily, I’ve been read­ing The Poisonwood Bible, which reminds me that the only prob­lems I have are first-world prob­lems, and that I’m rich in ways many will never be.

I find it amaz­ing, the immen­sity of it, how any sin­gle per­son can be respon­si­ble for a tome of such rich sto­ry­telling, obser­va­tion, and wit. It’s the only book I’ve picked up in years, and I only started read­ing to get into her head as much as pos­si­ble (and piqued by my curios­ity on how she could describe a story of the Belgian Congo as sexy). Unsurprisingly, her favourite char­ac­ter is the strong, faith­ful, war­rior daugh­ter. Mine is like me too; the dark, brood­ing, intel­lec­tual child, dizy­gotic twin to hers. It makes me won­der if lik­ing one char­ac­ter over all oth­ers is too often an exer­cise in vanity.

In the end, Onegin real­izes he was wrong about exile, that he couldn’t fill him­self with empti­ness to replace the sad­ness, some­thing he only fig­ures out when he finds some­one worth lov­ing. That’s what’s pulling me back too, keep­ing me grounded amongst those dark moments of untem­pered emo­tion. I carry the image of her smile with me, the only thing as dis­tin­guished on her face as her Spanish eyes, and the rea­son I call her Cheeks from the way the flesh pulls up to round her face. I’ve stud­ied this smile for so long that I can see it every time I close my eyes, and with that, I carry a strength of my own too.

Date  October 17, 2011
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gambler's fallacy

1

It’s my eleventh time here in four years, almost three times per. At this rate — con­sid­er­ing how sel­dom I get out nowa­days — it’s one of the only places I fre­quent. Each visit serves as a small time­stamp, from the year we went home with dif­fer­ent peo­ple to the year we went home together, and all the times caught in between among heavy snow and mechan­i­cal horses.

wedding name card

 

Strange how often I come here when it’s so rarely by choice. I always think I’ll be up next time, that I won’t be sit­ting by myself in one of these great halls, cause for­tune even­tu­ally smiles on every per­son who takes a chance on love.

Date  October 9, 2011
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