Yearly Archives: 2007

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.

Hurts So Good

I’m exhaust­ed. It’s late. I should be going to bed, but I want to write. Here I am.

Vanilla chai, this time. I nev­er drink this tea, so it seemed some­what appro­pri­ate.

My limbs are sore. I’ve been prac­tic­ing my Tai Chi on a reg­u­lar basis, and my under­stand­ing has sur­passed my phys­i­cal abil­i­ty. I’m start­ing to over-exert myself. I’ve also been using my arms instead of my whole body when advanc­ing in sin­gle push hands, caus­ing my arms to work more than they should. Tonight, it got to the point where they were com­plete­ly weak. I sus­pect Elizabeth could feel this, and she switched arms before I had the good sense to do it myself.

It’s get­ting cold in the house1. The ther­mo­stat says 20, but it feels more like 18. I stood in the show­er for a good 15 min­utes, let­ting my skin burn under the hot water, to the point where I stepped out of the show­er into the cold air and start­ed to sweat.

No edit­ing. No back­track­ing. Just type, and pub­lish.

I hap­pened to come across a video today by the Grass Roots.

When I think of all the wor­ries peo­ple seem to find
And how they’re in a hur­ry to com­pli­cate their minds
By chas­ing after mon­ey and dreams that can’t come true
I’m glad that we are dif­fer­ent, we’ve bet­ter things to do
The oth­ers plan their future, I’m busy lov­ing you

One, two, three, four
Sha-la-la-la-la-la live for today.
Sha-la-la-la-la-la live for today.

And don’t wor­ry ’bout tomor­row, hey hey hey hey.

Maybe I’m just read­ing into it, like a born-again, but the lyrics struck me as very Taoist, and the idea of detach­ment in par­tic­u­lar2. Darren jokes that I’ll start preach­ing to him the next time I vis­it him because our con­ver­sa­tions always stray to Taoism.

I’ve been feel­ing decid­ed­ly dark, decid­ed­ly yin, late­ly. Not sad or upset, but in an ener­getic way. I’m boun­cy. Maybe this is the way my brain adjusts to my pre­vi­ous­ly cheer­ful upswing. The fun­ny thing is that I’m no less cheer­ful, just in a dif­fer­ent way. I feel more bal­anced. It’s as if the mind aches from some unknown force, expressed through an emo­tion­al state, yet rel­ish­es and wal­lows in this.

And I’m lov­ing every minute of it.

  1. I’m try­ing to wait as long as pos­si­ble before turn­ing the heat on [↩]
  2. Something I’ve only recent­ly been able to achieve to any rel­a­tive degree of suc­cess. [↩]

Moments of Unexpected Kindness

Yesterday was gro­cery day.

I looked out the win­dow, and it was rain­ing. “You can’t wait for the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty for­ev­er”, I told myself, so I grabbed my toque, my hood­ie, my jack­et, and stepped out­side.

The rain was­n’t heavy, but enough to soak through in a cou­ple min­utes.

On my way to the store, I thought of putting an ad in the clas­si­fieds.

WANTED: RAIN DANCER

Looking for cheer­ful mod­el to dance in rain for pho­to project.

Should be slim build. Light-brunette to blond hair, no longer than shoul­ders. Bring own clothes, short-sleeved with no logo pre­ferred.

Will offer dig­i­tal neg­a­tives for port­fo­lio as com­pen­sa­tion.

It was a short walk.

At the deli counter was the reg­u­lar bunch of hooli­gans, a group of unmo­ti­vat­ed, lack­adaisi­cal guys with whom I’ve dealt many times before.

I was about to say some­thing to get their atten­tion when anoth­er young man (whom I ini­tial­ly assumed was part of this group, with the same facial hair and the same mug), walked up to greet me.

“Barbecue chick­en?”, he asked.

“Please”.

I stood there wait­ing for less than a moment before he came around the counter with some­thing in his hand.

“Wipe your glass­es off with this shit”, he told me, and see­ing the beads of rain­wa­ter on my glass­es, hand­ed me a wad of paper tow­el. The uncouth man­ner in which he pre­sent­ed the paper tow­el made his ges­ture all the more warm.

Handing me my din­ner, he said “Take it easy, bro”, and touched his fin­gers to his fore­head in a mini salute.

The rain stopped before I stepped out­side again.

And I haven’t cleaned my glass­es, or stopped smil­ing since.