It’s late. I should really be in bed. My eyes feel super dry and tired. I don’t even think I have enough energy to floss before brushing my teeth, but I’m going to force myself to do it cause I have a dentist appointment on Wednesday. At least I’m showered, warm and comfortable.

I haven’t sat down in my chaise to write in a while, although I should because it feels so good. The two-day writing schedule fits nicely in with everything else going on in my life.

It’s been busy. Andrew and Alex left last week, so I have to the house to myself again. The company was a fun change. Through them, I met Ziny and Ellen, whom I did pictures of yesterday. Hopefully I’ll be doing some more of Paige tomorrow, as well as more work on my next project in the upcoming week.

My sleeping schedule is still somewhat messed up, but only because of engagements that keep me up late. Thanks to smoothie power, and a better understanding of how to control my eating through bouts of IBS, my stomach is much better. I’m still breaking out pretty badly though.

Went to see Dan today. I haven’t been to his place since last fall. Last time we hung out, it was for phở and to watch Being John Malkovich at my place. Every time we hang out, we play musical tennis, where we take turns listening to a song, and giving another song recommendation based on the previous one. This is super fun, and only Dan has a taste in music as diverse as mine to play this correctly.

Drove to Quebec for the first time, and the roads are pretty bad. The lines have mostly faded and the shoulder has encroached on the road, so you can’t tell where you’re suppose to be. On top of that there are potholes everywhere, and the usual assortment of bad drivers, and this makes driving in the French province less than fun.

Since I don’t take the bus anymore, I don’t have any time where I just sit down, hence no time to read. With the time I’m saving, I’m trying to read before I go to bed. My book rotation right now is the following:

• a fiction book, currently Last Light Of The Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay
• a Taoism book, currently Awakening to the Tao by Liu I-Ming
• a Tai Chi book, currently The Essence Of T’ai Chi by Waysun Liao
• a book recommended by my therapist, currently Reinventing Your Life by Jeffrey Young and Janet Klosko

In the next couple of weekends, I’m trying to hang out with Darren, Navid, Pat, Julie and Blake, Frédéric and Misun. I don’t like to mix friends. It’s not as efficient, but I prefer to concentrate on one (or one couple) at a time.

Through all of this, I’m missing Bronwen sooooo much.

Soul Mountain ends with the narrator convinced that God is communicating to him in the form of a frogs’ blinking eye, and that’s become my favourite part of the whole book. I always read the introduction both before I start the book and after I finish the book, and this time the introduction tied everything together in the end. I finally understood the big picture in what was a motley, slow-starting novel. I wanted to read Soul Mountain again, almost immediately after I finished it, but I decided to start on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, even though both are relevant right now.

Doesn’t it suck to find two copies of the same book with different translations, and the inferior translation is the one in hard-cover or the better design? I’m a sucker for a nice looking book.

When people ask me what my favourite novel is, I tell them, “A Hero of Our Time”, and that’s been true for more than eight years now. It’s a prime example of Russian Romantic Literature, and I can appreciate that. It’s brilliant, not only in it’s lyrical style but also for the complexity of the mindset captured by the protagonist, which makes it such a pleasure to read through. It’s intelligent, it’s interesting, it’s creative, yet none of these things make it my favourite. It’s not even the book I’ve enjoyed reading the most.

It’s simply been the most influential.

Lermontov’s novel once offered me guidance (albeit blindly) when I needed it the most. His words have shaped me more than anything else I can think of, even though I’ve cast off most of my former self related to this. I still see his work as being an integral part of my development, in making me who I am at every changing moment, and that is why I hold so much importance in it.

All of it was a matter of timing. Otherwise, I’d probably think that it was just another boring book I was forced to read in grade 10 English.

The same goes with my relationships, something I would never have thought was related to timing. It’s funny to think that my most significant relationship was also my shortest by far, with a person who is most likely to think nothing of it at all. And everything that made it important to me was a combination of a very specific mindset I had at the time and the fact that this person was such a change from my previous girlfriend.

The same goes with my favourite movie and my favourite band. I’ve become a person who holds more significance in the things that change me than the things that please me.

And change is a product of time.

When I went home a few months ago, I found a copy Soul Mountain at Chapters, which I had been looking for, ever since I found out about it. I’ve been reading as much as I can lately, whenever I have the time and the energy to concentrate on what Gao Xingjian is trying to narrate to me.

The thing that makes the autobiography interesting so far is that Xingjian was incorrectly diagnosed with fatal lung cancer, and after proper review, had been given a second chance on life. His outlook changes, and he begins to see everything around him very differently.

I’ve lately felt that, although I’ve never been threatened with any life-altering incidents, I’ve begun to see things differently as well. It’s as if I have nothing and everything to live for. That there would be no difference between dying tomorrow or in eight decades. It’s almost as if I’ve had my fair share of experiences, each one as important as the other in shaping who I am, good or bad, and that this is already sufficient for me to be satisfied with my life. Perhaps I feel this is true when I compare the amount that I’ve already learned with the infinite amount that is impossible to learn. After all, what is the purpose of life anyway? For me, it is to continually shape myself into a better person, whether it’s intelligence, or a better appreciation of music, or dexterity, or anything. And since there is no absolute goal I have to reach (or can reach), there is no way for me to fail, and death henceforth becomes meaningless.

When I tried to explain this to someone, he got confused, and thought that I was telling him about how I had experienced all there is to experience already. This couldn’t be further from the truth. There are a plethora of things I haven’t done, that I haven’t been through, and whenever I’m given the chance to actually experience one of these things, I feel as if I’ve gained more out of life.

Instead of seeing the act of living as crossing out items on a life-long “to do” list, I see it as writing down items on a “have done” list.

The greatest distinction for me between these two worldviews is that I can take my time in doing what I want, instead of feeling rushed to accomplish as much as I can before I die. Seeing life this way has certainly allowed me to be a much more relaxed, flexible, easy-going person, uninhibited by the fear of death. The good thing about this is that I didn’t have to fool myself into this view, simply because I was unsatisfied with my life. Somehow, this mindset shaped itself in my brain, and eventually manifested itself through my ever-continuing maturity.

It has made life meaningful and meaningless at the same time.