Monthly Archives: February 2005

Post-Breakup Phase

Anyway, what I was try­ing to say is that I’ve been real­ly moody late­ly. Extremely moody. Almost on an emo­tion­al lev­el.

Another post-breakup phase. I go through this for a few months after break­ing up with some­one, but it only start­ed to hit me recent­ly. Funny how I’ve only now had enough rela­tion­ships to actu­al­ly real­ize this. I look at my month­ly archives from the begin­ning of the blog and most of them begin with some emo­tion­al, con­fused line. In fact, this entire blog start­ed as a way to vent these post break-up thoughts and feel­ings, until it became some­thing more than that. Now I’m falling back into that trap. I’m start­ing to do stu­pid shit again, things I wish I did­n’t do, after­wards.

Every day, in my head, I plan out my entries for the next week. Yet, every time I sit down to type, I’m nev­er in the mood to write. It’s just the same shit, over and over again.

The dif­fer­ence is that this time I know what to do. I’ve been look­ing for too much mean­ing in too lit­tle.

I want to get out. For the first time in my life, I’m sick of this win­ter. I want to sit in the sun. I want to be amongst oth­ers.

I want to lay on the track, feel hot steel scream­ing at me
Expose the bones on my back, let me show you what I mean.

The Healing Button

Ugh. I feel taint­ed. Moody. It feels like no one likes me. For the first time in a very long time, I feel alone.

I just start­ed three dif­fer­ent entries, but did­n’t fin­ish any of them. I’m not even in the mood to write this. I’m just sit­ting here with the lights out, two Candellas perched on top of my desk, and the first vol­ume of Buddha Bar resound­ing in the room. My head is numb, my throat dry, my cat unin­ter­est­ed.

This has become so bland. The same things over and over again. Where did my humour go? When did things stop chang­ing? Maybe I need a break from this.

Tomorrow, I’ll fin­ish this tomor­row. This is just a mood. I’ll explain when I’m not as tired. I’ll go to bed with this music on, dream­ing of quaint European archi­tec­ture and par­ties I could host to this sound.

Maybe I’ll feel bet­ter when I hit, “Publish”.

Couple From The NAC

A cou­ple emerged from two heavy doors at the National Arts Centre (Human Resources entrance) as I was on the 95 today, pass­ing down the Mackenzie King Bridge. One was a woman, very slen­der, who looked as if she was in her ear­ly thir­ties but was prob­a­bly in her late thir­ties. The man was what some­one would con­sid­er an appro­pri­ate match, being slight­ly taller than her, and dressed in the same half-casu­al jeans-with-over­coat style.

For a moment, they stood out­side the doors, appro­pri­ate­ly adorn­ing their shuf­fled coats and scarves accord­ing to the late win­ter weath­er. They looked as if they had emerged from the res­o­lu­tion of an emo­tion­al fight, or some very guilty sex in a broom clos­et.

Their first steps were almost lan­guid, but I could tell that it was­n’t a phys­i­cal exhaus­tion. They were pac­ing each oth­er out, wait­ing for the oth­er per­son to talk first, and their foot­steps were how they sub­con­scious­ly spoke to each oth­er. It was as if they both knew that they had done some­thing wrong. Whether it was inten­tion­al or not was unclear, but it was cer­tain that nei­ther per­son was more at fault than the oth­er.

They con­tin­ued walk­ing togeth­er, west­bound, with that slight dis­tance between them that’s reserved for cou­ples who are either try­ing to hide their phys­i­cal long­ing for the oth­er or try­ing to express their angry emo­tions. I could tell that the silence was com­fort­able, as nei­ther of them spoke, because there weren’t any right words to be said at that moment.

I watched them in fas­ci­na­tion as they con­tin­ued down the street with their hands in their own pock­ets. Each of them under­stood exact­ly what the oth­er was think­ing, but were hes­i­tant to say any­thing before know­ing how the oth­er felt first. When they spoke next, it would be in one-word sen­tences. Their faces showed how much they had been through togeth­er, and how much was at risk at that very moment.

But it was how their silence spoke vol­umes of how well they knew each oth­er that made me won­der if I would ever feel the same.

Winter City Nights

The back of Social

A shot of the rear entrance of Social, a restau­rant I’ve only dined in once, but have passed by, wish­ing I was inside, many times. I like how the mood in the shot is warm, against the implied cold from the Christmas lights. One could sit here at any time of year and soak up the seren­i­ty, where a song by Sigur Rós (at night, when it’s com­fort­ably crowd­ed) is as rel­e­vant as a song by Edith Piaff (par­tic­u­lar­ly in the fall, when the skies are grey) is as rel­e­vant as a song by Iron And Wine (dur­ing the ear­ly days of sum­mer, when it’s still cool in the evening).

::Sniff::

I swear I’m miss­ing some under­wear.

For the longest time, I had enough box­ers to get me through the week at least, but now I find myself hav­ing to do laun­dry before Saturday comes around. I can’t imag­ine any­one actu­al­ly tak­ing them, although every time I lose an arti­cle of cloth­ing, I always sus­pect the most recent ex-girl­friend first. This isn’t for any spe­cif­ic rea­son (in fact, I’m pret­ty sure none of them have ever actu­al­ly tak­en any­thing), and is prob­a­bly just a para­noia cul­ti­vat­ed through group hug con­fes­sions.

That, and know­ing how impor­tant smell can be to some­one. Ashley, in par­tic­u­lar, used to take my under­shirts on a reg­u­lar basis. She’d tell me to wear them for days (good thing Asian peo­ple don’t sweat), and we’d have a rota­tion thing going on where I’d give her a new (used) shirt when I could­n’t see her for a while. She told me that she’d fall asleep clutch­ing them, although the smell would nev­er last longer than a week.

Michele was dif­fer­ent. She did­n’t have any nat­ur­al scent, and told me that my shirts would nev­er stop smelling like me. I sus­pect that she had a much sharp­er olfac­to­ry sense.

Sam I could smell through the pages of a book she once gave me: a copy of Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. She picked it up at a book sale, and read it in one day. By the end she was cry­ing, and thought I would enjoy it. Every time I turned the page, it was like she was sit­ting in front of me again, cof­fee smell on her breath.

Louise was dif­fer­ent still. She had a great scent that was a lit­tle sweet, under the Cool Water by Davidoff she would fre­quent­ly wear. She did­n’t seem to care for my nat­ur­al body smell as much as the arti­fi­cial “male” scents, such as the Gillette series of prod­ucts. Jacky once told me that she was using a stick of the same sport antiper­spi­rant that her ex used because it remind­ed her of him. When I actu­al­ly saw the stick, even already know­ing that it was a stick of “guy antiper­spi­rant”, I was still sur­prised at how male ori­ent­ed the mar­ket­ing was, with high con­trast flu­o­res­cent stripes and bold fonts. It looked a lit­tle odd when she put it on, hold­ing the stick with her dain­ty hands.

I find that most girls are like this; they pre­fer the man­u­fac­tured smells of an after­shave, body wash, or even deodor­ant. Instead, Ashley taught me to appre­ci­ate an eau de nat­ur­al. I remem­ber walk­ing up to her house, after not see­ing her for a month, and being able to smell her from out­side the door. I would miss her even more just stand­ing there, almost as if this made her ethe­re­al pres­ence tan­gi­ble. Ever since, I’ve believed that the scents we pro­duce are more impor­tant than the ones we put on. They’re unique to one per­son, and nev­er go away.

Unlike my under­wear.