Yearly Archives: 2004

Shirley's Trust

Shirley is a fun­ny woman. Really. Someone had recent­ly not­ed that she uses the phrase, “Well this is it!”, a lot. It’s usu­al­ly for sit­u­a­tions of agree­able­ness, and spo­ken with iambic dime­tre, empha­sized on every oth­er syl­la­ble.

Shirley’s in denial about the whole mat­ter.

There are always news reports and sto­ries of mass mur­der­ers, pedophiles, rapists, sociopaths whom no one ever sus­pects. In my head I always think that it does­n’t mat­ter how some­one may be per­ceived on the out­side, that any­one could be the next noto­ri­ous psy­chopath. Shirley, how­ev­er, is one of the few peo­ple I would have a very dif­fi­cult time believ­ing as being able to hurt any­one. Some may think that it’s sad to be so cyn­i­cal, so untrust­ing of almost any­one, but that’s just the way my world­view has devel­oped.

Put sim­ply, she’s an inno­cent per­son. Not inno­cent in the igno­rant sense, which is some­thing that I had only recent­ly begun to dis­tin­guish, but inno­cent in the good, whole­some, true, hon­ourable sense. I real­ize that this makes me trust her about as much as I trust my oth­er friends. I hon­est­ly feel like I can divulge almost any­thing to her with­out wor­ry­ing about being judged or mis­in­ter­pret­ed.

Yet there are things that I don’t let her know, because I firm­ly believe that our work­ing rela­tion­ship isn’t worth the risk, if there just hap­pened to be some­thing she found out that she could­n’t deal with.

So does­n’t this mean that I don’t tru­ly trust her?

Eight Hours New

Everything is okay now.

My coun­try just spent mil­lions on Bush’s 24 hour “rela­tions” vis­it for secu­ri­ty alone (even Loo had four RCMP patients one day dur­ing prepa­ra­tions) with no talks of our cat­tle farm­ers con­tin­u­ing to suf­fer through the U.S. beef ban, Tool’s lat­est album is still my least favourite, I’m scared of los­ing my sex dri­ve, some of my best friends are going through some stu­pid shit that I can’t do any­thing about, the lat­est Half-Life 2 patch has dropped my frame rate by more than five frames-per-sec­ond while the stut­ter­ing con­tin­ues, and I swear my iPod is going to run out of bat­ter­ies on the bus ride home.

But I got a full eight hours last night.

And I’m ready to con­quer the fuck­ing world.

Life On Contract

I remem­ber once when I was younger, say about nine or ten, my par­ents took me for a car ride. I had no idea where we were going, because I nev­er ques­tioned them when­ev­er they told me to get in the car. I’ve always been a vic­tim of hum­ming engines, and even today I find it hard to stay awake while rid­ing in a car. I fell asleep and even­tu­al­ly woke up in a parked car with my seat­belt still on, uncer­tain of how much time had passed or where my par­ents had gone. The sur­round­ings were unfa­mil­iar, the park­ing lot, half-full, even more so. I sat there, expect­ing my par­ents to come back any sec­ond.

Not know­ing how much more time went by, I start­ed to ques­tion whether or not they had pur­pose­ly left me there, some decade-late, do-it-your­self, abor­tion. “No”, I thought, “They would­n’t just leave the car, it’s too much mon­ey”. When I could­n’t fight against my sus­pi­cion any longer, could­n’t con­vince myself that they would­n’t just leave me in this lot like a baby on a doorstep, I start­ed to cry. I did­n’t know what to do. I gath­ered up the courage to leave the saftey of the car, and locked the door, know­ing that in doing so I would­n’t be able to get back in, but too scared of get­ting in trou­ble if my par­ents were ever to find out.

Wandering around the adja­cent plaza, my face a com­plete sob­bing mess, I looked for them through the store win­dows. Excuses, apolo­gies, promis­es to be a good kid kept rac­ing through my mind as I won­dered from store to store, being care­ful not to let my eyes off the car. Eventually, I found them in a light fix­ture store, chat­ting with a sales clerk about some wood grain ceil­ing fan. I went in, approached them, and all I could say was, “Where did you go?”. They told me, mat­ter-of-fact­ly, that they went shop­ping and that I should have stayed asleep in the car. After fin­ish­ing their con­ver­sa­tion with the clerk, they left with me, and we all went home. I was shak­en, but hap­py that I was­n’t dis­card­ed because of poor marks of bad piano form.

And even though I wish that the entire inci­dent did­n’t hap­pen in the first place, a part of me won­ders what it would be like if I had nev­er found them. Perhaps a res­o­lu­tion.

An end to the stip­u­la­tions of a con­di­tion­al life.

Autumn Argument

Thumbnail: Autumn pathway

Quite a few weeks ago, on anoth­er Sunday, I woke up with Loo sleep­ing next to me. I could nev­er sleep past sev­en because of my work hours, and Loo rarely gets to bed before 11 the night before. Our sched­ules were, and still are, almost an eight hour shift away from each oth­er. This does­n’t put us in the great­est of moods, and makes us say things that we don’t mean (on my end, at least, I can’t speak for her).

Like on that Sunday, after wak­ing up and sit­ting in the IKEA PELLO for an hour lis­ten­ing to my music, I was grumpy to say the least. I was­n’t tired enough to sleep, but I was­n’t rest­ed enough to do any­thing.

I decid­ed to just get out and walk, not sus­pect­ing how beau­ti­ful the autumn day was. Everything I loved most about the fall was in that morn­ing; the light chill in the air, the lay­ers of colours, the man­i­fest atmos­phere. The walk was brief, just along the canal and back, but it was a shiv­er of the sens­es that only comes out a few days of the year.

When I returned, I still was­n’t in the best of sorts. My frus­tra­tion about our mis­matched sched­ules was start­ing to come through. Loo got up and we argued, try­ing to fig­ure out who was to blame. In the end, I real­ized that it was­n’t either of our faults, but we were both pay­ing for it.

Even though we argued, we end­ed up resolv­ing things, a lit­tle wis­er, and still just as tired. Another hur­dle jumped, anoth­er obsta­cle that won’t get in our way again. I like to think that only good came out of that morn­ing, and that if it did­n’t hap­pen, I would­n’t have expe­ri­enced what I was meant to.

Like watch­ing jog­gers kick up the autumn leaves strewn across the pave­ment.