Yearly Archives: 2003

I Need To Tell You

I won­der if I come off as a per­son with emo­tion­al bag­gage. One of the (very few) things that I pride myself in is my “self-aware­ness”, the abil­i­ty to see myself objec­tive­ly, but this is a char­ac­ter­is­tic that I am unable to deter­mine with­in myself. Has my past made me a per­son of fright­en­ing, unper­son­able dis­po­si­tion? Do peo­ple think of me as some­one with deep root­ed emo­tion­al issues?

I won­der if my his­to­ry even mat­ters to oth­ers. I real­ize that it’s when I let my his­to­ry inter­fere with or affect my rela­tion­ships that it becomes a prob­lem. I’m afraid, how­ev­er, that I let things become affect­ed more than I’d like, more than I under­stand.

The past is some­thing that I rec­og­nize as being sig­nif­i­cant, and I try to keep it only as that. It is some­thing that I learn from, some­thing which can affect me and my deci­sions today, but not some­thing that I should present­ly be deal­ing with.

So, is it?

Well, I’m not com­plete­ly sure. On a night like tonight, when the mid­night sky burns bright enough to illu­mi­nate my room, I can’t help but feel unheard, unheard in some­thing I wish to express. What becomes this need to be under­stood?

It’s a voice I wish to have, to bring me clo­sure, to let me be free.

It has tak­en me three hours to write this final thought, along with the resur­fac­ing of many dis­tract­ing mem­o­ries. Things still feel unre­solved, of course, but I have suf­fi­cient­ly quelled my mood until there is a more appro­pri­ate time to express myself.

When I see you again, you will under­stand what I’ve become, and what you’ve done to make me this way.

Event Horizon

I was talk­ing to Eugene, or Yoog as I used to call him, the oth­er day after hav­ing no con­tact with him for over a decade. It was good to rem­i­nisce about the good times we had so long ago, me going to Australia for the first time to meet a friend of my moth­ers’, and him com­ing to vis­it from Australia, to stay with me.

It was odd to hear that I affect­ed his deci­sion to shift the focus of his card col­lec­tion to base­ball, as odd as it was to find out that one of my ex’s would scream my name in her mind while mas­tur­bat­ing.

I’m sur­prised, aston­ished, at how much influ­ence I could ever have on any­one. I still can’t believe it, since a card col­lec­tion can be such a sig­nif­i­cant part of a young boys life, and unat­trac­tive Chinese guys aren’t gen­er­al­ly the object of any­ones’ fan­ta­sy.

The more I think about it though, the more I real­ize all the lit­tle things that I’ve done to affect peo­ple, whether it’s some­one’s choice of uni­ver­si­ty (which, I feel, is no small deci­sion), or how I could ever bring some­one to tears.

I’ve felt like my life has been so worth­less for so long that I’ve been blind­ed to the part I’ve played in the life of oth­ers. It’s only with this new infor­ma­tion, this cat­a­lyst, that I’m able to begin to real­ize that I’m not so worth­less after all.

There have always been peo­ple whom I admire and respect. It’s only these peo­ple who real­ly have an affect on me. After all, hear­ing hurt­ful words from a per­son you look up to is much worse than from some­one you don’t have any respect for. I’ll always won­der if it’s respect which allowed me to have influ­ence on oth­ers, or whether there was some oth­er rea­son, such as love or friend­ship.

And per­haps, with time, there will be more.

The Sex Lounger, CHUO FM, E.S. Posthumus

The weath­er has been beau­ti­ful late­ly. I’ve always found the brisk­ness of ear­ly spring to be inde­fin­ably nos­tal­gic. The grey pave­ment seems to be fresh­ly laid, from the absent snow which so recent­ly cov­ered it. The yel­low grass, the cloud­less skies, it all seems to be such a poignant sign of the change in sea­son.

I was sit­ting on Trolley’s sex lounger yes­ter­day in his hot apart­ment, and I felt a slight draft com­ing from his win­dow. Trolley’s apart­ment always seems toasty to me, so it was refresh­ing to feel a breeze from the out­side. It remind­ed me of this great quote from Moby Dick:

Nothing exists in itself. If you flat­ter your­self that you are all over com­fort­able, and have been so a long time, then you can­not be said to be com­fort­able any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slight­ly chilled, why then, indeed in the gen­er­al con­scious­ness you feel most delight­ful­ly and unmis­tak­ably warm. For this rea­son a sleep­ing apart­ment should nev­er be fur­nished with a fire, which is one of the lux­u­ri­ous dis­com­forts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deli­cious­ness is to have noth­ing but the blan­ket between you and your snug­ness and the cold of the out­er air.

I hap­pened to tune into CHUO FM on Sunday at around 11:30 pm when I was test­ing my alarm clock, and I was fas­ci­nat­ed at what I heard. I gen­er­al­ly don’t like the radio at all, but this pro­gramme had me hooked. A male voice, appar­ent­ly a co-host, whose host had not showed up, had the show to him­self for the hour. The pro­gramme was ter­ri­ble. This per­son had a decent radio voice, but the things he was talk­ing about, the tricks he used to avoid dead air, every­thing he did made the show inter­est­ing­ly bad. I had to lis­ten until the end, because of how rarely I expe­ri­ence some­thing so poor­ly done, yet so pub­lic at the same time.

I was lucky enough to dis­cov­er a group called E.S. Posthumus, and there does­n’t seem to be an offi­cial web­site, or any web­site for that mat­ter, in which I can find out more infor­ma­tion. They seem to be doing well, with songs on sound­tracks like Spiderman, Minority Report, and Unfaithful. One of my cur­rent favourites is Tikal. I rec­om­mend­ed them to Jeff and Nick, since I remem­ber how Jeff was get­ting into the instru­men­tal stuff right now. He told me that he had a four tier sys­tem of know­ing whether to keep a song. I should prob­a­bly try doing that, since I cur­rent­ly have over a gig of songs I haven’t decid­ed whether to keep or not.

Moving Towards k

I’ve come to a point in my life where I’ve achieved my sta­bil­i­ty. That’s not to say that it won’t dis­ap­pear once a new sit­u­a­tion aris­es, but it seems that my loss of bal­ance has giv­en me prac­tice in regain­ing it.

The future seems so uncer­tain. I don’t have a room­mate for the sum­mer, and I don’t even know if I need one. Everyone is talk­ing about mov­ing in with each oth­er, but none of our leas­es end on the same month. I might not be grad­u­at­ing in a month if I fail any cours­es, a very dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty. That means that my grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny would be delayed, and I would need to reg­is­ter for a sum­mer semes­ter. I don’t even give a shit about the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, but it’s not like I would be going for myself. I don’t even have a job lined up any time soon, some­thing which I am des­per­ate­ly in need/want of.

Yet in the face of such uncer­tain­ty, I have been able to remain rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble. I’m not sure why this is. Possibly, the taste of good liv­ing I had last sum­mer has cre­at­ed a kind of hope in me, a hope with no-strings-attached.

What an odd turn of events, that hav­ing a con­tent sit­u­a­tion (and even los­ing it) has made me “hap­pi­er”. I won­der if it’s just a phase, that I’m still rid­ing off a store of emo­tions, and that once the store in drained, I’ll become a bit­ter per­son. Somehow I doubt it, but one can nev­er tell.

I can now safe­ly say that I am a bet­ter per­son, although if his­to­ry has taught me any­thing, it’s that any­thing can change.

And yet there is still a wish for change.

Days At Trolley's, Phases, Etc.

I woke up at 3:33 ante merid­i­an and, unable to sleep, decid­ed to write.

I’ve been busy. I spent the last three days at Trolley’s, sleep­ing on his couch, and gen­er­al­ly stay­ing up late play­ing Wind Waker. It’s been an amaz­ing game so far, and even though it seems to be too short, it’s been an unpar­al­leled expe­ri­ence. I met Adam and Matt on Friday, so we went out to Minglewoods and sat out on the patio, even though it was­n’t quite patio weath­er yet.

Dolly and Nala did­n’t get along togeth­er well. When they saw each oth­er, they tried to stare each oth­er down. Nala’s tail dou­bled in size as she made a low growl. Dolly just hissed back. Apparently, cats intro­duced to the same liv­ing envi­ron­ment are sup­posed to spend around the first two weeks with­out face-to-face con­tact. Dolly stayed for a few hours at Trolley’s any­way.

My trip to Hong Kong has been can­celed, due to the lung virus that’s been going around. Yet anoth­er time that my trip has been can­celed. Visiting Hong Kong at least once more has become one of my goals in life now, some­thing I feel the need to do before I die.

I am now offi­cial in one of my typ­i­cal “Jeff” phas­es, where I start to freak out near the end of the term. Progress on my final project has been dif­fi­cult, not some­thing which is not com­plete­ly (or at all) my fault. I found out that I was too late in request­ing a marks shift in my graph­ics course, so my 35% midterm now counts. This means that I will need rough­ly an 80% to pass the course. Since this is my final term, I may not be grad­u­at­ing until I can make up the three cred­its. I believe I have a back-up plan, which involves tak­ing a soft­warre engi­neer­ing course dur­ing the sum­mer that I can use towards my total cred­its. I think that means that I won’t be attend­ing the grad­u­a­tion in July. Things seem very fucked up for me aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly right now, and I’m wor­ried, one of the many rea­sons I can’t sleep.

I tried rock climb­ing on Tuesday, and even though my left fore­arm was dead from hit­ting the L trig­ger too much, I was still able to scale a few walls. It was a great time, some­thing that I could def­i­nite­ly see myself get­ting into. Even the act of belay­ing is fun, in the sense of a trust exer­cise. It’s just not some­thing that I can get into right now with­out a job, or any con­ve­nient way of get­ting to the rock climb­ing stu­dio.