I know it’s late, but I’m in a jittery mood. I know I won’t be able to sleep until I get something down, because there’s so much going through my mind. But first, take this. A gift. One that I was planning on keeping to myself, but to do so would be an injustice to music and the artists.

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Listen.

Just, listen.

Mogwai is an extremely influential post-rock band, and like most bands in this genre they usually produce instrumental music, so when Stuart sings, it demands attention. And yet his voice evaporates and becomes an instrument with which we hear our own stories pulled apart with delicate tenderness, like boys pulling wings off flies.

There’s so much happiness and sadness to be felt down the spine in seven brief minutes. The latter from the tone, the former from the beauty.

If only we could see life so simply. If only we could separate the good from the bad, the love from the heartbreak. But we can’t. That’s why songs like this are composed, and that’s why words like bittersweet exist to help us define what can’t be explained.

It may feel like you’re constantly waiting for the next dawn to wash away the dust with sunlight, but at some point life ends, and life begins again.

All it takes is one day.

You may have noticed that I’ve adapted my popular version 10 layout into a lifestream¹. I quite enjoy the concept of the lifestream, where you can see a person’s latest activity that’s up-to-date by the minute. A change like this means a bump up to a full sub-version number, 10.3

The key to all of this is my new iPhone 3GS. The technology has roughly caught up to my needs, so I decided to get one this year. Apple tends to announce new iPhone generations every summer, which means I’ve been planning this design update for months now.

So with this fancy new iPhone I can write tweets on-the-go, stay up-to-date on the people I follow, and check my @replies, all with the Tweetie application². I once had my tweets integrated into the blog, but decided not to stick with this because the frequency with which I use twitter meant that the sheer number of tweets was flooding my RSS feed. Then one day, the realization dawned on me to exclude that one category from my feed, et voila! A simple workaround that lets people subscribe to my twitter stream if they so choose.

I can also take pictures with the built-in iPhone camera and e-mail them to Flickr directly from the phone, which will automatically create a Wordpress post and embed the picture in the entry³. And coincidentally enough, the maximum width for images posted to Flickr is 500 pixels, which happens to be exactly how wide the main column of my blog is. It’s like it was meant to be.

So there are two new categories: one for tweets, and one for snaps. Both of them display with CSS styling unique to each category and an icon to denote the type of post. A note on the “snaps” icon; I tried to find something that would represent both a camera and an iPhone, because the iPhone isn’t a pure camera, nor is it just a phone. I decided to use the camera app icon built into the iPhone, which says both. There are no comments allowed on these entries because I don’t care for discussion on such fleeting things. If someone really wanted to comment, they could post a reply through twitter, or a comment through Flickr.

So unlike most other life streams, this blog is not exactly an aggregator of various service feeds because there’s a unique Wordpress blog entry created for every one of my Flickr posts and tweets as well, each one retrieved from within the Wordpress loop. I did this to retain a little independence from services like Flickr or twitter; if I ever chose not to use them anymore, my blog won’t explode into a ball of fire with all the missing entries.

With all of this snazzy integration in place, I can post things quickly and on-the-fly, as long as I have internet access. Which is almost anywhere, now that I have a 3G data plan. Version 10.3 is a reflection of that.

With my ever increasingly busy life, the ability to post snippets of things comes as a welcome change to my regular entries, which often take days to write.

1. If you’re seeing some strange rendering issues, they’ll probably clear up if you refresh the page. [↑]
2. This also helps me avoid text messaging charges, which is how I wrote tweets before, when I was out in the real world with no internet access, though my new data plan has unlimited texts anyway. [↑]
3. In an ideal world, I could send the picture to a Wordpress e-mail address or post it using the iPhone Wordpress application, but the post-by-email option of the former doesn’t allow attachments, and the latter has very crude image uploading options with only one set width available for resizing. [↑]

Sometimes, you stab yourself in the hand with a point, but it’s not sharp enough to break the skin.

Sometimes, the blood comes to the surface, and this is as much of yourself as you can show the world.

Sometimes, the pavement is covered in snow outside, and you can drive over 100kph in one spot before the traction kicks in.

Sometimes, you scare yourself with your recklessness.

Sometimes, you realize that life is pain.

Sometimes, you have nothing left but numbness and resolve.

Sometimes, life moves too fast for words.

I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.
Hey, I’ve got nothing to do today but smile.
Da-n-da-da-n-da-da-n-da-da and here I am
The only living boy in New York

Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where,
And we don’t know here.

—Simon and Garfunkle, The Only Living Boy in New York

Every day, we get caught up in our lives.

We adopt pets to give us a sense of family. We eat breakfast at work or in the car to save ourselves time so we can work some more. We scorn those who express emotion, we avoid eye contact with strangers on the street.

Everything we do — the food we eat, the movies we watch, the home team we cheer for, our coffee shop romances — they’re just trying to fill that hole, that gap that’s missing, the only way we feel alive.

We don’t slow down, we don’t figure things out. We don’t reflect and appreciate what we have.

Like strawberry cheesecake ice cream with a thick graham cracker swirl. Like the serenity of the snow that falls around us, when heaven decides to bless the earth.

Life gets in the way of living.

And now I realize just how guilty I’ve been of this. I’ve been looking for love, but never recognized it when I found it. All I ever wanted to do was lie in bed, look into your eyes, and go through my favourite albums with you. But I never did. And now I wonder. Why can’t we just live? We can’t we just love?

Sometimes you have to stop. You can’t capture everything. You need to throw yourself in.

A thousand kisses deep.

How simple a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple heart.

—Zorba the Greek

I feel like writing.

Saturdays are usually reserved for relaxation, but I mixed it with a few errands throughout the day. Bought extra auburn foliage for one of my pots, and a funnel to get fresh-ground pepper into my new pepper shaker. Picked up my weekly groceries. Sat down at the pizza parlor to start Beautiful Losers while my Hawaiian was being baked.

I watched Zorba The Greek tonight, about the adventures of an aimless Englishman who goes to Crete, and the lessons he learns from a man he meets named Zorba.

Though generally jovial and lighthearted, it was heavy and heavy at times. There’s a scene where a beautiful widow (the love interest of the movie) is ritualistically stoned and killed out of jealousy by the men of the village, simply because she wouldn’t let any of them have her. The direction is a little inconsistent, but Anthony Quinn’s portrayal of the Grecian spirit keeps the movie in tact. Many believe the movie to be an analysis of Apollonian vs Dionysian thought, but I saw it as a nod to Taoism as well.

Zorba’s a Taoist, whether he knows it or not. He shuns intellectual thought and analysis, and loves life with bubbling spontaneity. In the end, the Englishman learns from Zorba, not about life, but how to live it.

And it inspired me. Not just the dialogue or the playfulness, but the locations too. It made me want to travel, to see new places, to meet more people, and explore other cultures.

One day. For now, I’ll enjoy the comfort of my house.

So here I am, staying up late with my back next to the open window, eating butter pecan tarts, drinking Dragon Well tea, and writing as much as I can.

I think I’ll go practice the form now.

Tomorrow, I have nothing to do but live.

Part of The Tao Tattoo Series

1. The Meaning
2. The Experience
3. The Background
4. Tattwo

To remind me to keep my chin up.

To remind me not to sweat the small stuff.

To remind me to live in accordance with the nature of things.

To remind me to stay balanced.

To remind me to decrease my wants.

To remind me to indulge myself every now and then.

To remind me that everything is as it should be.

To remind me to stop comparing myself to others.

To remind me not to use force against the world, and embrace the way of the universe.

To remind me to follow my own nature, and not the trappings of life.

To remind me that nothing really matters.

To remind me to have no claims to life.

To remind me to be spontaneous, deliberate, watchful, reverent, humble, pure, and accepting.

To remind me that heaven is found on earth.

I wake up every day looking at Death, and you know what? He ain’t half bad.

—Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp

Its not until you lose everything that you are free to do anything.

—Tyler Durden, Fight Club

I used to take pride in the fact that I felt like I could die satisfied any day. I was at a place in my life where I couldn’t ask for more, and there was a tremendous sense of overall satisfaction. I had everything that I deserved. After that, all I had left to experience, every fall morning caught or tear shed, was a bonus. Of course, the closest I had ever come to death was a minor case of pneumothorax, which I imagine is as fatal as pinching one’s skin between two Lego pieces while building the Death Star, so this feeling was never actually put to the test. I’m sure I’d feel differently if I ever came frighteningly close to the end of my life, although just how much remains a mystery.

Perhaps this grew from a cogent sense of frailty, perpetuated by all the stories of freak accidents echoed throughout the media. The student who impaled his heart on a number 2 pencil while trying to catch a football in the middle of class. The general who drowned in a pool of his own blood from a nosebleed on his wedding night. Even the president of the United States almost choked to death on a pretzel. To distance myself was the only way I could deal with it.

The problem, I’ve only recently discovered, was that this left me alienated and unattached. I have no dreams, nothing to live for. Not even a goal to work towards. During high-school, the goal was to get into a university. After university, the goal was to get a fulfilling job. After the job was the house. Now that I own a house, it feels like the rest of my life has been laid out in front of me. No risks, no surprises. I appreciate everything that I’ve been given, but it feels like it’s been a little too easy. Even my most significant goal was rather suddenly accomplished this year. As Logan Pearsall Smith once wrote in his book Afterthoughts, “How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true!”. A simultaneous fulfillment and dissatisfaction.

I presented this problem to Pat, and from his infinite wisdom (at 24, no less) I realized that one should never live for what might happen. Otherwise, a person would go crazy. Of course, to truly live this way, it doesn’t hurt to be a bit of a fatalist. Having this belief means that one can only do the best that they can, and to go means that it was meant to be.

For now, I’ve been keeping myself occupied, until I can figure out what I want in the last rest of my life. Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night. It’s only now that I’ve discovered that I need a few dreams to survive.

And I can only hope to never reach them.

The Awakening Series

1. Introduction
2. Cause
3. The Reborn Dreamer

It’s getting easier to write again. Ideas are coming a little more fluidly, and aren’t quite as straining to develop anymore. Perhaps there’s been an excess of inspiration in the last while, from the music that keeps me moving, to the people I interact with, to the temperature of the season, to the words in the books that I’ve been reading with relish.

I can never seem to get it all down.

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.

I’m having one of those days, actually, one of those weeks where I can’t seem to write anything down. I have all these ideas floating around in my head without the words to follow through. Maybe it’s because I don’t exactly know what I’m feeling, like a bittersweet mix in the palate, or an indistinguishable taste. For once I’ve started to take control of things, started to be pro-active instead of reactive. Started listening to hopeful, inspiring, energetic music. I’ve realized that I have the ability to point my life in the direction I want to go, that I can’t rely on others to make me happy, that I can start living for myself now.

And it’s all new to me.