Monthly Archives: October 2007

The Weeping Sky

Thumbnail: Hurdman station on a rainy day

Thumbnail: Walkley station on a rainy day

It has­n’t stopped pour­ing since I woke up. I’m trav­el­ing through the city in my favourite hood­ie. Thinking about you and your del­i­cate wrists. The pho­tos I took of you smil­ing, always look­ing away. Wondering what it must be like in your world. Wondering if we’ll ever meet again. Wondering what you meant when you told me it’s hard to be alone when you’re told you’re grow­ing old.

I write this so I won’t have to write about you again.

Perhaps in a sim­pler world things would have worked out dif­fer­ent­ly, and you would have giv­en me a sec­ond thought.

But I have no tears in me.

The sky weeps instead.

A Truth is Worth a Million Words

You inter­pret my heart, my nature, as you wish to believe it.

— Onegin

People see what they want to see.

As I touched on a while back, some of it comes from inse­cu­ri­ty. Other times, from a fal­la­cy of pro­jec­tion as some peo­ple igno­rant­ly, and mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal­ly, believe that every­one must think and act as they do. There are a few oth­er cas­es that don’t fit into either of these cat­e­gories though.

An exam­ple: I once offered a guest in my house some yogurt. The first thing he asked was, “Is it going bad?”. He did­n’t believe I would have giv­en it to him oth­er­wise. It was a per­fect reflec­tion of his dead­beat friends who expect­ed you to eat before com­ing to a par­ty, and he had nev­er known any oth­er type of peo­ple. A more extreme exam­ple is if you offered to feed some­one at your house and they got insult­ed because they thought you were imply­ing that they could­n’t afford to feed them­selves. Some peo­ple see things that aren’t there. It’s an amaz­ing sub­con­scious sign of their char­ac­ters.

The way some girls inter­pret things is also an inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non. Some of them think a guy who’s talk­ing to them must be hit­ting on them so they drop the b‑bomb in ran­dom points of con­ver­sa­tion, just to warn you they have a boyfriend. Some girls think you’re gay because you don’t make any advances towards them. Some girls think you’re torn up, depressed because they declined your advances, and end up mak­ing a big­ger deal about it than you do. I want noth­ing more than to tell these girls to get over them­selves, but I bite my tongue because they end up embar­rass­ing them­selves more than I could ever do myself.

There are also times when a per­son is so pig-head­ed and stub­born that they see every­thing through a fil­ter, inter­pret­ing your actions in some crazy way, and believe you’re at fault because they sub­con­scious­ly refuse to see their own mis­takes.

The old me would have been insult­ed when some­one assumes I’m a cer­tain way. Nothing would anger me more than some­one pre­sum­ing to know how I feel or what I’m like, and I used to care des­per­ate­ly what they thought, even if I knew I was just mis­un­der­stood. It’s an inter­est­ing feel­ing to be passed that now1.

The truth leaves no room for bias, only inter­pre­ta­tion.

I’ve learned nev­er to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for oth­er peo­ples’ inter­pre­ta­tions. Only take respon­si­bil­i­ty for your intent. You learn a lot about a per­son from the way they inter­pret things and from the way they see the world.

With the truth in your heart, it does­n’t mat­ter what any­one thinks.

With the truth on your side, noth­ing can go wrong.

  1. It’s actu­al­ly been qui­et a few months since I wrote this entry. I did­n’t post it at first because I want­ed to be absolute­ly sure that it was­n’t a fick­le feel­ing, and that my strength was firm. Reading back on it now, it seems more rel­e­vant than ever. [↩]

The Ass-Slap Ritual

As I opened the front door to walk to work, I remem­bered that Aaron is pick­ing me up for lunch today, so I thought I should check to see if my wal­let was in my left back pock­et (where it always is). The thing is, I always put a wad of mois­tur­iz­er in my left palm so that I can lock my door with my right hand with­out get­ting my keys all greasy, then rub it in while walk­ing.

So I reached with my right hand to pad my pock­et and see if it was there, but feel­ing a bit stiff from the weath­er and the morn­ing, I had to stretch with a bit of force and momen­tum.

Exactly at that moment, my neigh­bours came out of their house. We greet­ed each oth­er, and after repeat­ed­ly refus­ing their offers to dri­ve me to work on such a chilly day, we went our sep­a­rate ways.

Then I real­ized that since I had­n’t com­plete­ly stepped out of my door frame at that point, they prob­a­bly saw me check­ing for my wal­let with­out under­stand­ing what I was doing, and thought I was doing some strange cross-body back-reach­ing ass-slap­ping rit­u­al.

Broken Snail

I was on my way to work one day, walk­ing down a hill, when I noticed that there was a rather large snail on the ground. He was about an inch and a half long, his shell a delight­ful con­trast of pink and pas­tel hues to dark brown band­ing. I want­ed to take a pic­ture, but I did­n’t have some­thing to car­ry him to work (where I have an infin­i­ty board and white box), so I decid­ed I’d just grab my cam­era on break and bring him there.

Of course, my break was in a cou­ple hours, and I was pray­ing that he’d still be there when I went out­side. I grabbed the cam­era and tri­pod and ran up the hill, look­ing for a small shell cast­ing a shad­ow on the con­crete.

Thumbnail: A crushed, broken snail and his shell

I found him crushed, splayed out in strands of mucus, most like­ly stepped on by some care­less per­son. Snails can’t live with­out their shells, as the cal­ci­um car­bon­ate struc­tures hold their inter­nal organs. I took a few pic­tures of the trag­ic scene any­way.

When I got home that night, I hap­pened to look at the snaps in quick suc­ces­sion and noticed that parts of him were still mov­ing.

He was still alive.

I took a few frames and over­layed them to make this Flash ani­ma­tion, where you can see his foot wrig­gling, as well as some indis­tin­guish­able entrails that remind me of liv­er. It’s so sad to think that he was left out to die a slow death with his innards exposed.

I would have named him Shelly.

Unplanned Feelings

I found a small boy sleep­ing on the steps with a birth­mark cov­er­ing his face and won­dered what kind of god would give a child that.

—Sarah Miles, The End Of The Affair

I’m in such a weird mood tonight.

Met a nice, loqua­cious young man at the bus stop. I saw him hob­bling there, his man­gled gait vis­i­ble from the win­dow of my house. His voice was loud and verg­ing on uncon­trolled, “My car is in the shop, I have to be there by sev­en, I can’t be late, I’m coach and man­ag­er and med­ical staff of the Generals, so they can’t go on the field with­out me.”

With inno­cent, child­like can­dor, he con­tin­ued. I won­dered if he was aware. If peo­ple took him less seri­ous­ly. If I real­ly under­stood who he was.

He got on the bus first, and in a con­fi­dent tone, said to the bus dri­ver, “Can I get pri­or­i­ty seat­ing?”. I con­sid­ered sit­ting next to him and con­tin­u­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, but by the time my trans­fer print­ed out, he already start­ed with the per­son next to him, “I can’t be late. I’m coach­ing foot­ball…”.

So I cried on the bus because Misery Is A Butterfly, even though it was­n’t loud enough. Even though I put it on. I was doing it to myself, you see, because of this mood. Because I need it and want it and won­dered how I’ve ever lived with­out it.

I’ve been read­ing Beautiful Losers. Can you tell?

I don’t plan on writ­ing these things.

Then again, I don’t plan on feel­ing this way.