Yearly Archives: 2003

The New Freedom

I did­n’t mean to talk about this so soon, but after con­tem­plat­ing this sub­ject for a while I feel as if I’ve done enough think­ing to prop­er­ly speak about it. I do feel like my mind is clear on this issue, that I’ve giv­en myself enough time to under­stand things well from as many aspects as pos­si­ble. This is some­thing that I had­n’t real­ly thought about in more than half a year, but more recent events have sort of spurred my mind on the sub­ject again.

Hah. It’s almost humourous, how imma­ture I seem back then to myself now, that it has­n’t even been an entire year and yet my mind­set has changed com­plete­ly in a total­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion. I used to be so scared that I was indeli­bly affect­ed by a past expe­ri­ence, that I could nev­er change what I felt and thought. And yet I feel as if I see things much more clear­ly now. I feel less bur­dened, less biased, less neg­a­tive.

This does­n’t even have any­thing to do with hope or with chance, things which I dwelt on so much before. I’ve been able to see past these mat­ters, and free­dom from such things is great. Odd, that an expe­ri­ence that may have dam­aged or dis­cour­aged me has been able to resolve all my wor­ries.

And now, what has changed?

I’ve done what I thought I would nev­er do again.

Patches Keeps Pooing

I’m bring­ing Patches to the vet on Wednesday with Trolley’s help. He’s been shit­ting on the car­pet fair­ly con­sis­tent­ly, in front of Nick’s blue couch. At least he stopped uri­nat­ing, which was much more dif­fi­cult to deal with. I doubt this entire thing is health relat­ed because he does­n’t seem to be in any pain, although cats are known to hide their pain very well. Dolly still attacks him and has some­how become the alpha male of the house. Patches will back off if she wants food but he’s already eat­ing. I wish I could keep him because he’s a very affec­tion­ate cat who’s too old to be moved around any­more, but I think he’s unhap­py here. Rob will hope­ful­ly end up adopt­ing him, because he also grew up with Patches when he was grow­ing up with Aaron.

Concert: Billy Talent, Crowned King, Death From Above

The Billy Talent con­cert was pret­ty decent. There were quite a few peo­ple who seemed out of place there such as 10 year old girls and women beyond the cougar idiom, I’m guess­ing because BT is more of a main­stream band, but I’m not sure. I did­n’t real­ly know any­thing about them besides the fact that they have four mem­bers and that they have a sin­gle out (even though I know the entire album like the back of my hand). I’ve nev­er even seen one of their videos so actu­al­ly see­ing what they looked like, to put a few faces with the music, was pret­ty inter­est­ing. They played about half the songs from the album, and Benjamin was able to work the crowd up pret­ty well.

A band called Crowned King opened first and they had a fun ska derived sound with a lot of well com­posed har­monies, but the lyrics that I heard were a turn-off.

The best part of the show, how­ev­er, was the sec­ond open­ing act by a band called Death From Above, who used to be on the Sound-Virus label and are now on the Ache Records label (which also hap­pens to be the label for Hot Hot Heat). It’s a band with just a drum­mer (the vocal­ist) and a bassist, but the sound is extreme­ly full and well round­ed. It’s extreme­ly blood pump­ing, adren­a­line rush­ing, great sound­ing music and I would have bought an album at the con­cert if it was avail­able. They’re com­plete­ly a no-bull­shit band who tried to start shit with secu­ri­ty for kick­ing some peo­ple out dur­ing their set. They start­ed talk­ing about how much of a big­ot Glen Danzig is, and then mak­ing fun of the crowd for hav­ing no fuck­ing clue about who Glen Danzig is after cheer­ing from a men­tion of the Misfits. Just goes to show how many peo­ple at con­certs are com­plete poseurs. I’ll def­i­nite­ly be look­ing into Death From Above because I believe that they’re Canadian as well.

The NEMLC

When I went home for Christmas three years ago, I was a very con­fused per­son. I had no idea what I was look­ing for, what I was doing. When I came back, I felt as if I had gone through some sort of mid-life cri­sis. I still did­n’t know what I want­ed, but for some rea­son I was­n’t con­fused any­more. Did I end up resolv­ing any­thing? To this day I don’t know.

What I do know, how­ev­er, is that I haven’t stopped chang­ing. Even if I did come to some con­clu­sion back then, it would have no rel­e­vance today. So many things are chang­ing, not the world around me, but me myself.

I see this as a good thing. It lets me know that I’m still learn­ing, that I’m still liv­ing to the high­est degree. I have dif­fi­cul­ty “defin­ing” myself, dif­fi­cul­ty under­stand­ing my own (long term) actions some­times. As I’ve known since high school, it usu­al­ly takes me at least half a year to under­stand the choic­es I make.

Sometimes it feels like a con­stant mid-life cri­sis when I keep ques­tion­ing the deci­sions I make and the rela­tion­ships I have with oth­ers. I ques­tion things not with doubt, but with curios­i­ty.

And this has filled my life with uncer­tain­ty.

Winter Prelude

The weath­er these last two weeks has been wet and dull, though not unpleas­ant. It’s just begin­ning to turn a stark Canadian cold. The sun is out, the pave­ment is salt­ed, but the sky feels too dry for pre­cip­i­ta­tion. I can smell the bat­tery acid in the air, let­ting me know that snow is almost here.