cause you're bored and you can doesn't mean you should

I always won­der if I’ll ever reach such a com­plete peace that I’d stop writ­ing com­pletely. One of the rea­sons I started this blog was to have a place where I could get things down and sort my thoughts out on a page, but I don’t need to do much of either nowadays.

I know so many peo­ple who’ve con­tin­ued writ­ing, even after find­ing that kind of hap­pi­ness in their lives. Unfortunately, hap­pi­ness has robbed them of lit­er­ary inspi­ra­tion, and now they have noth­ing inter­est­ing to say. It wouldn’t be so bad if they stopped writ­ing, but they post for the sake of post­ing instead of hav­ing some­thing to say or express or vent, and it reeks of des­per­a­tion and insecurity.

I used to worry that hap­pi­ness would make me a bor­ing per­son too, but now I wouldn’t mind as long as I real­ized it and gave up this blog. It’s so embar­rass­ing to write out of a belief that it’ll make you inter­est­ing. Or even worse, to be obliv­i­ous to the fact you’re writ­ing about the most inane things.

Protected: round my hometown memories are fresh

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Dear Lisa

It was this suc­cinct wit. She could say so much in a line or two, and any­thing left unsaid would only serve to feed your curios­ity. You’d be given the punch­line, this blow that would knock the wind out of you, then won­der what cir­cum­stances could have led up to that. I’ve always been after that style, that abil­ity to move peo­ple with words the way hers used to move me.

Dolly and Lisa

Of course Dolly has to sleep on any­thing new in the house, regard­less of whether it’s your sweater or not. It’s part of the sass, and yet one can’t help but reward her with cud­dles and love.

For a few years, I lost her to the hap­pi­ness (where I hope to lose myself one day) until we spent a rainy day together, blissed out and hope­fully obvi­ous only to the check-out lady who scanned all our vari­eties of chocolate.

Dear Lisa believes in me, and that’s the only rea­son I believe in myself too.

The Process (or why a tree is not a tree)

Take a leaf off a tree. Is it still a tree? Take a sin­gle twig off a tree. Is it still a tree? Remove an entire branch from a tree. Is it still a tree? Take off half of the branches. Is it still a tree? Cut down the whole tree, leav­ing only the stump. Is it still a tree? Many peo­ple would say no, it is no longer a tree, though the roots may still be in the ground. Well, where did the tree go? Removing a leaf, it remains a tree, but not by remov­ing all of the branches and the trunk?

In the real world, there aren’t any things as we com­monly think of them. A ‘thing’ as we refer to it is only a noun. A noun is merely an idea, a men­tal con­struct. These ‘things’ exist only in our minds. There is no tree, there is only the idea of a tree.

—Anonymous

I’ve been writ­ing here for almost a decade, pour­ing 10 years of my life into this blog. I recently con­sid­ered clean­ing up the con­tent by delet­ing a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of my old entries; I’m not the same per­son as when I wrote them, and I don’t even like who I was back then. Not to men­tion the fact that some are rather embar­rass­ing, like read­ing your old diary in high school when the biggest prob­lem was what peo­ple thought when you wore your uni­form cause you for­got it was a Civvies Day.

The prob­lem I was faced with was decid­ing what should be deleted. People aren’t sta­tic; they’re processes, events, evo­lu­tions, made up of cells that con­tin­u­ally renew them­selves on a daily basis. At what defin­able point can I say these entries are no longer me? It could be argued that even posts as recent as a few months ago aren’t an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion, though there may still rem­nants of the old me in the habits of my thoughts.

Then I came across this pas­sage in The Tao by Mark Forstater, on the sub­ject of how using human lan­guage to encom­pass and describe a con­cept such as the Tao is log­i­cally sus­pect: “Reality can’t be enclosed and described by words. Symbols aren’t real in the way that a tree is real, and how­ever much we may delude our­selves that they are, we’ll even­tu­ally find that the word ‘water’ won’t quench our thirst.”

I came to accept that the things I write here have never been and never will be a com­plete reflec­tion of who I am, so I’ve decided to keep all the entries. The ones writ­ten by my old self serve as a reminder of who I was, and at the very least, they tell me where I’ve been and how far I’ve come.

Publishing Necessity

John asked me, “Why? Why do you write these things and post them, when it clearly shows that you’re not over things?”.

I told him I’d rather post them now than in a year from now, because they have to come out sooner or later. This has always been nec­es­sary, even if it’s a lit­tle embar­rass­ing at times, and I’ve never cared who reads, and who judges me. It’s my cathar­sis, my way of deal­ing with what can’t be changed. Sometimes, peo­ple find relief in know­ing they’re not alone in hav­ing painful emo­tions, in mak­ing mis­takes, or expe­ri­enc­ing unre­quited love. I don’t write for them, but if they can take some­thing away from my words, then it helps me know I’m not alone as well.

I made too much about you now to lie

Sometimes, I write these entries in my head over sev­eral days, but when it comes to get­ting them on the screen, I can’t. Not because I don’t feel like it, but because the words come out with such difficulty.

So I sit in my room with the lights off, hop­ing for some­thing to give me courage, some­thing to move my mute fingers.

Instead, I pro­cras­ti­nate. I buy myself time by play­ing a game on my iPhone, or surf­ing the net. It’s like I’m stalling, I’m build­ing up for a moment that’s no more impor­tant than any other, like a ner­vous school­boy try­ing to ask his crush to the prom; pick­ing up the phone, dial­ing a num­ber, and hang­ing up again.

Maybe if I bury it after a bunch of incon­se­quen­tial thoughts — like how it’s hard for me to write about some­thing — then peo­ple will get bored and won’t bother read­ing the rest. I try to con­vince myself that every­thing will be for­got­ten much quicker than it took for me to write this. Nothing works, when all I’m try­ing to say is that every time I lis­ten to Letter Read by Rachael Yamagata, I imag­ine she’s lis­ten­ing to the same thing at the same time.

So some­times, you just have to say fuck it and write it any­way, even if you’re afraid and you can’t breathe, and put it out of your head that you’re left vul­ner­a­ble, that any­one could read it, that peo­ple know some­thing that you prob­a­bly shouldn’t share, that you’re still think­ing about her when every­one is telling you not to, because none of it mat­ters when it’s the truth, and telling the truth is what makes you you.

Protected: The Continuation of Love and the Letter

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Feather Fountain Pen

Feather fountain pen

Pat and Jen bought me this feather foun­tain pen set from their hon­ey­moon to Europe. It comes from an Italian sculp­ture store, Fabris Giuliana in Venice, Italy.

Feather fountain pen writing

The nib is super fine; I don’t think I’ve ever owned a foun­tain pen with such a small nib, which is per­fect, because I tend to have small hand­writ­ing. You can’t even tell which direc­tion the stroke is going. So far it writes a lit­tle rough and scratchy, but with enough use, the nib will break in to my writ­ing style.

I’ve always enjoyed writ­ing. Not just the con­cept of putting ideas into more a tan­gi­ble medium, but the act of writ­ing itself, whether it’s on a key­board by night, or flow­ing lines on a sheet of paper.

Revealing Words

A reader recently sent me an e-mail. This was the last paragraph:

Lastly and please don’t take this as being bold, I want to keep read­ing and one day read that you are noth­ing but happy and ful­filled. I would never post a com­ment because I am too shy and also pretty prone to being embar­rassed by peo­ple who are cooler than me (and I con­sider peo­ple who blog as peo­ple who are cooler then me), but many times when I read your entries I feel like I am watch­ing a pro­tag­o­nist in a favourite movie or re-reading Siddhartha. Does that make any sense to you? I’m cheer­ing you on and I’m in your corner.

It made me won­der: if she wants to read that I’m happy one day, does that mean that I’m not happy now? It forced the real­iza­tion in me that the answer is no. Obviously no. Life isn’t great. But do I only write about the bad stuff? I’ve always believed that you have to suf­fer to cre­ate. I’m one of those, so maybe this is the case. I imag­ine it’s the oppo­site with my Tai Chi or table ten­nis part­ners, who must think my life is per­fect, because of how happy I am when I’m doing those activities.

It also made me won­der how much of myself is revealed here. Someone once told me that she sees two dif­fer­ent sides of me: one who is seri­ous and intim­i­dat­ing from the things I write, and another who is easy-going and relaxed over the phone.

So what comes through in my words? Certainly not every­thing. But it’s the same as any­thing else, because it’s hard to get a total pic­ture of some­one, unless, per­haps, you spend an appro­pri­ately uncom­fort­able amount of time with them.

Jump Right In

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”.

About sec­tions are the telling, but entries are all about the say­ing.

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.

To Write And To Remember

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.

A Change In Writing

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.

Perhaps another evo­lu­tion in the way I write.

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.

Restless Writer

I have 106 unpub­lished drafts in my database.

Things I don’t feel like say­ing. Parts of myself I’m not ready to reveal.

The writ­ten word has always been my medium of choice. Photography is only an exten­sion of that, when I need to express myself bet­ter than words can let me, and video goes one step further.

I used to be a ter­ri­ble writer. During a parent-teacher inter­view in grade 10, my his­tory teacher asked my par­ents when we came to Canada. They were quite embar­rassed to tell him that I was born here.

Aside from pick­ing up a use­ful word here and there, I’ve never made a con­scious effort to improve my writ­ing. The things I say are taken from my mem­o­ries, expe­ri­ences, and thoughts. How I say it is inspired by snip­pets of Nabokov (when I’m feel­ing lyri­cal or ver­bose), Cohen (when I’m feel­ing sad or roman­tic), Herbert (when I’m feel­ing dry), or Irving (when I’m feel­ing quirky or hon­est). The only way I’ve been able to gain any sem­blance of a writer is by mim­ic­k­ing to the best of my abil­ity the lyri­cal styles I enjoy the most.

Sometimes I won­der if I’ll ever stop. Writing is often a need, not a want. I do it when I’m feel­ing rest­less, when I have some­thing to say, when things are unset­tled, when I have things to fig­ure out. And the case most often is that life is filled with these moments. Perhaps if I ever find some sort of per­ma­nent seren­ity, I’ll be able to stop.

But I prob­a­bly wouldn’t want to.

Questioning Happiness

Last class, Mike asked how I was doing, and as a some­what phatic response, I told him I was doing well.

He told me, with a chuckle, that if he didn’t know me any bet­ter and went only by my writ­ings, he would imag­ine me to be like Joe Btfsplk, with a per­pet­ual rain cloud above my head.

So I went home and read through the last cou­ple pages of my entries, and found that they painted a some­what lugubri­ous picture.

I’ve always con­tended that hap­pi­ness is too hard to write. When I feel like express­ing myself, it’s often because of a prob­lem of some sort, inter­nal or exter­nal, that I need to fig­ure out. Writing has always been a way for me to get my thoughts in line, and off my chest. Not much of a peace­ful, detached, care-free Taoist, am I?

Perhaps I’ll always lead a Cohen-esque life, where love, sex, phi­los­o­phy, and depres­sion are the dom­i­nant themes.

The funny thing is that my life has improved tremen­dously after ther­apy. I used to be a very dark per­son. After gain­ing the sta­bil­ity of a house and a career, along with sep­a­ra­tion from my mother, not much else has changed. I’ve come to real­ize that it’s not so much the things in my life that’s improved in the last few years (aside from the strug­gle with anx­i­ety), as my atti­tude. To be hon­est, I have noth­ing to com­plain about.

That doesn’t change the fact that my entries have been some­what depressing.

Perhaps I’m still not truly happy yet.

Or per­haps I’m still not look­ing at things the right way.

Bittersweet Paradox

bit­ing keeps your words at bay
tend­ing to the sores that stay
hap­pi­ness is just a gash away
when i open a famil­iar scar
pain goes shoot­ing like a star
com­fort hasn’t failed to fol­low so far

and you might say it’s self-indulgent
and you might say it’s self-destructive
but, you see, it’s more pro­duc­tive
than if i were to be happy

—The Dresden Dolls, Bad Habit

I was jit­tery and ner­vous all day.

Several new devel­op­ments have left me with a lack of res­o­lu­tion. People to meet, presents to give, pic­tures to take, respon­si­bil­i­ties to ful­fill. And as much as I try not to think about it, it’s in my nature to do so.

I still haven’t got­ten passed this feel­ing. Still don’t know if I want to. Still don’t even know what it is. All I know is that it’s mak­ing me manic.

Until I fig­ure it out, I’ll wal­low in it.

I can only write this at night. When I’m falling asleep and off my guard, sit­ting on my chaise, with the cur­tains drawn and the win­dow open to the win­ter air.

Now I feel like writ­ing, but I don’t even know what to say. Everything’s too jum­bled for me to decide whether I’m happy or sad. Maybe it’s both, maybe it’s one because of the other. Life, at the moment, is so bittersweet.

Wonderfully bit­ter­sweet, that’s what it is.