The about section of my site has always remained somewhat spartan. Even though blogging gurus say you should have a blurb about yourself so your audience can “identify” with you, it’s always seemed pointless to me.

I’ve never been one to describe myself. I prefer to let my writings be my description, especially since I’m evolving all the time, and it’s reflected even more in the changes to my writing style. In English class, you learn “say, don’t tell”. So instead of writing, “Tim was scared”, write something like “Tim’s forehead tightened as a bead of sweat fell across his trembling face”.

I also tend to write without explaining things. Like the fact that Dolly is my cat (although I don’t think many people are named Dolores nowadays), or that John is my best friend. Entries are a stream of thought, instead of stopping to make sure that new readers are caught up. That means anyone who follows me here is jumping right into my life. Sure, it’s probably hard to follow without all the context — like trying to watch 24 by starting in the middle of a season — but I’d rather assume that people already know what’s going on.

It doesn’t make me very accessible, but the things I say probably aren’t that accessible to begin with.

It’s been a relaxed existence here. Aside from spending time with my grandma when she’s awake, making sure she eats throughout the day, and the occasional visit to the hospital, there’s no set schedule for anything. I’ve only been to this house a handful of times in my life, but I feel remarkably comfortable. There’s no formal need to sit at the dinner table until everyone is finished eating. There’s no obligation to talk to someone. No one feels the need to entertain me. I can nap when I want. I can raid one of the three fridges when I wake up at night and can’t fall asleep. I can walk around in my pajamas all day. I can disappear for hours to write. Like we’re actually family, even though I barely see these people.

My grandma tells me feel at home because we’re “our own people” as it’s said in Chinese. Even though I always understood the expression, I’ve never really felt it until now.

Sometimes, I wonder what my life would be like if I didn’t have so much baggage. How my relationships would be different. Which ones would have worked, and which ones wouldn’t have changed at all.

Love, in all it’s multi-faceted wonder, levels, and types, is never a sure thing for me. I may feel it, but feel that it’s fleeting and conditional at the same time. Other people have the luxury of taking love for granted. They assume they’re loved. How comforting it must be. For me, it’s always been a struggle for stability. “We won’t love you if you don’t do well on this test. We won’t love you if you don’t practice piano. We won’t love you if you don’t finish your dinner. No one’s going to love you if you always stay this skinny.”

It feels like I haven’t survived my childhood yet. And I arrive at this fact so many times when trying to figure out the source of my issues that it’s starting to sound like an excuse. Therapy has helped identify my issues, but it’s still taking work on my part to resolve them, along with patience on the parts of others. I’m beginning to question why people would accept and love me. I guess it’s worth it to some, but things would be so much easier if they didn’t have to deal with my insecurities.

I’ve come to realize that I cling to pain and yearning because they give me inspiration. They may not be the sole source, but certainly a great deal. I always listen to Leonard Cohen and Elliot Smith during such moods, as they have the ability to intensify and deepen the sadness.

I can tell it’s something of a destructive habit. It’s almost like I subconsciously choose to dwell on things that have been resolved for the sake of something to write about.

It makes me think of the last lines from King Missile’s song Ed:

“Yes, this is the answer. This is the ending. I shall keep on running, because a body in motion tends to stay emotional, and it’s better to feel. Pain is better than emptiness, emptiness is better than nothing, and nothing is better than this.”

Is this how I feel alive, a way of bringing significance to my life? Or is this the way I truly feel, and I’m simply a slow healer, and too much of a thinker?

Or perhaps the better question is this: does happiness inspire me just as much?

Every song is a time stamp. A place in life, marked by the exact moment that it’s first heard. In this moment, your surroundings, circumstances, and emotions all become attached.

There’s a song for everything, from a single moment — like losing your virginity — to an entire year — like your last one in high school. Perhaps my childhood is such a blur because I never started listening to music until I was about 14; there was no anchor for my mind to associate with my experiences.

In preparation for my housewarming party, Trolley and I decided on a set of music to be played during the festivities. It was my idea to split the songs into two categories, day and night, to take us from the afternoon to the evening. We sat at his computer, and as we went through the list, I told him how to categorize each song. It seemed like such an arbitrary act to him, but for me, there was a distinguishing tone to each song that made it appropriate for a certain time of day.

Two examples:

The quintessential night, Bring Me the Disco King, by David Bowie, (featuring Maynard James Keenan & John Frusciante).

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And the quintessential day, Another Sunny Day by Belle & Sebastian.

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I wonder if I’m the only who can hear it, because of my experiences and when I heard these songs first, or whether the order of certain notes express a certain connotation of sun and moon.

The connotation then comes from this person’s experiences, your relationship with them, or both. You hear the song through their ears. It changes the notes, the chords, the core sound of what you’re listening to. From someone like Darren, a song is totally different than from Julie.

Music is thus another form of memory.

I admit that I not only save other people’s posts, but entire blogs.

Sometimes, there are entries I like to read over again. Other times, I just like to be reminded of how right I was. But more often than not, it’s the ephemeral nature of blogs in general, combined with the fickle nature of adolescent writers still trying to “define themselves” on a free medium, that gives me the itch to save. So many writers I used to follow have changed domain names, started protecting their entries, or deleted their blogs.

Some things are garbage and should be forgotten or thrown away — but some things deserve to be kept too. Word-for-word, exactly the way it was spoken, because that’s the way it was expressed.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point-of-view, our words do last. Just because they aren’t there anymore, doesn’t mean they were never spoken.

There are consequences to the things we write, whether we want them or not.

Sometimes, she reaches down and grabs a handful of my derrière. I laugh a nervous laugh, and she chides me.

It’s a reflex. None of my girlfriends have been so zealous in their pinching, or reveled in such an act. My laugh is one of surprise, and a good one at that.

This is what upsets her. But how should I react otherwise? I hardly consider this thin-framed body, a frail comparison to the physical conventions of a man, as being sexual or attractive.

Otherwise, she’d see me as the rest of the world sees me.

I’ve been reading Andrea’s blog lately. Normally, I don’t read blogs of people I’ve never met¹, and even though I’ve met Andrea, I’ve never had a penetrating conversation with her, let alone gotten to know her. Andrea’s blog is a little different though. To the uninitiated, it’s a regular journal, but there are bits of insight and emotion scattered throughout that leave you feeling like you’re looking at someone stoned, naked, and through their kitchen window. The ordinary mixed with a dash of extraordinary is what truly gives one a sense of empathy, and it was this that drew me in.

It’s been making me feel so fucking nostalgic.

I remember being in that stage of life. Back in school. Getting drunk. Chasing girls. Unsure of anything but the way I was feeling in that exact moment.

It’s made me realize that I don’t write like I used to. My entries used to be so experimental. Aside from a single sentence as a last, concluding line², and a penchant for being a little too personal, I hadn’t developed a particular writing style. Back when I posted something almost three times a day because I had to. When my posts had no titles (the same way Andrea has nothing but an incrementing number and location stamp) because they were about everything and nothing in particular.

Now, there’s too much purpose to my writing. Carefully planned out posts, trying to express something specific, without the stream-of-consciousness I used to enjoy. Lost is the old whimsical nature, the ordinary mixed with the extraordinary. I never used to care whether something was significant enough to post, and would just write it and hit that publish button.

I miss it.

But I can’t tell if it’s the way I used to write, or my life back then, that I miss.

1. Blogs rarely interest me when I don’t have a bit of personal insight from a first meeting. [↑]
2. Almost every single pots in this blog ends this way. [↑]

Let me give it to you straight, straight like an arrow.

I’ve had these words stuck in my head for some time now. Lyrics from the titular Dears track I first heard in university, back when I would go home in the summer and watch The Wedge on Friday nights.

I know that’s awfully cynical to say, but I need proof that it is possible today.

I just wish I could accept that fact. I’m starting to wonder if that’s why I keep hearing the words in my head. It’s my subconscious reminding me, keeping me grounded.

It’s the same story, where guy sees girl, falls in love, and happily ever after. In between, there’s always the overused plot element of the guy winning over the girl by revealing himself and his feelings. After all, this alone is enough to win any girl over, regardless of whether she found him attractive or not, she was married or single, or he was the nerd and she was the cheerleader.

But love doesn’t exist in real life, as much as I want to believe that it does.

Not for me, anyway.

I’m still not sure if I feel like a man.

I always imagined that it’s a mindset you suddenly develop (or a way people view you) once you have kids, or pass 30, whichever one comes first. There’s this idea stuck in my head that adults are these people who don’t have fun. They don’t watch (and enjoy) stupid movies, or play Warcraft, or talk on the phone for hours. It’s probably from growing up with my parents, who never did anything that made them laugh or smile. Or maybe I’m having too much fun and freedom to really feel like I’m grown-up.

There was definitely some point between getting my first job and house, and now, that I started to feel like an adult. It was never a distinct line though.

For now, the only thing I do that makes me feel like I’m a man is when I’m paying and filing my bills.

It’s been snowing for three days now, the first real snowfall of the season. It’s a wonderful feeling to look outside and see it falling¹. Winter brings it’s own sort of coziness, like the way sun is for sports and rain is for movies.

A lot of people don’t like the winter, whether it’s because they get tired shoveling, they’re late from cleaning the car, they don’t like dealing with the messiness, or they simply hate being cold. To me, it’s all part and parcel of living in the Great White North. The summer brings as many unpleasant issues — burning car seats, stifling heat, unavoidable sweat. I wouldn’t be able to appreciate one if it wasn’t for the other.

I tend to get tired of the weather only at the end of each season, because they seem to drag on for so long². It’s a never-ending cycle of enjoying the new season, then missing the next one.

There’s this great poem by Shioh T’ao I think of when trying to explain this:

Spring comes, and I look at the birds;
Summer comes, and I take a bath in the stream;
Autumn comes, and I climb to the top of the mountain;
Winter comes, and I make the most of the sunlight for warmth.
This is how I savor the passage of the seasons.

My version would go something like this:

Spring comes, and I admire the blossoming feminine beauty;
Summer comes, and I go for a drive;
Autumn comes, and I fall in love with everything;
Winter comes, and I cherish the warmth.
This is how I savor the passage of the seasons.

This is why I love Canada. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

For now, I’m enjoying the snow.

1. Admittedly, it’s been a mild winter so far; maybe I’ll feel differently when I have to scrape ice off my windshield at -40°C. [↑]
2. There’s a saying that Canada has only two seasons — winter and construction. [↑]

Sometimes, I wonder whether it’s me or this city that’s changed more.

There’s so much to say, and not enough time to write. It’s obvious that I haven’t been sticking to any kind of posting schedule lately. The benefit is that I don’t feel the pressure of having to write something every day, the drawback being the fact that things I want to get down are often lost. When I do get a chance to write, it’s like I’m perpetually writing about thoughts, feelings, and events that are a month old.

I used to write my thoughts quite often. Things I had to figure out or get off my chest. Now, it’s mostly things that happen in my daily life, and something random here and there. It’s like I’m moving beyond my confused adolescence into some sort of reflective dotage.

The entries from the first year were written with so much more frequency — roughly three times a day. Then that changed to once a day, then every other day. A few times, I tried to write less frequently, without a set schedule, but that never really worked. The writing itch was always there. At one point I took a month-long hiatus.

Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.

The thing I particularly miss are the entries written late at night. Spilling my soul out in words, with the music, the sky, and the empty streets guiding me. As tired as I would be (I swear, sometimes it was the exhaustion that brought it out in me), I always went to bed after feeling satisfied.

Now, I’m not sure what this all is.

I’m the au pair with the jazz tapes, telling him to use Davis and Coltrane on the first date. The hero’s childhood buddy, who dies in mortar fire during their service in the Second World War. The awkward friend who isn’t attractive enough to play the lead. The sibling confidante, who contradicts the protagonist with cynicism, only to be proven wrong in a satisfying fit of glory.

All my life, I dreamed of greatness, of being the main character in some quixotic story.

But I’m slowly realizing that I’m only a deuteragonist.

I wrote this entry about four or five months ago, but never published it. I held off because I wasn’t sure if it would be true a week after I wrote it. Weeks turned into months, until the sudden realization that I don’t feel this way now.

I regret not publishing it at the time. Even though it holds no relevance anymore, at the very least, it would have been a time stamp of how I felt in the moment. There are so many fleeting memories and emotions that change here, part of my ephemeral nature. But part of me thinks that it took this realization to give me the strength to say it.

Maybe I’m starting to believe in myself.

I’ve always enjoyed reading about people who are in love, but most of all when that love is unrequited. Vivid pictures painted in details about a saucy diastema, the observed ritual of walking by a certain table every day to get a cup of water for paint, an unsolicited brush against a hip. Stories about awkwardness, weakness, burning desire.

Perhaps it’s because I can relate to these experiences, or because they make me feel like I’m less alone in my own clumsy dealings with the opposite sex. Even though there are countless stories written about unrequited love, there aren’t enough. For the few of us who are “oppressed by the figures of beauty”, as Leonard Cohen calls it, nothing makes us feel better. All we can do is silently commiserate with the words of those who share themselves in this way.

When I look through my old entries, it seems like most of them are about love or a torch I carry in one way or another, and how this affects me.

And sometimes I wonder if this is the reason why people come here to read my words.