Monthly Archives: January 2008

The Honeymoon Is Over

Angel I can see myself in your eyes
Angel won’t you feel for me from your heart
Do return my heart to me
No don’t insist I’m already hurt

— Blonde Redhead, Elephant Woman

Yep. It’s over. Although she still does­n’t know.

Maybe it was just a phase. Maybe I’ve accept­ed the fact that she’s tak­en. Maybe we’re too sim­i­lar. Maybe I’ve real­ized it would nev­er work. Maybe I just love her less, the more I know her.

Or maybe it was just a phase. One of the many things cured by time.

It makes me won­der if I cling to such feel­ings sim­ply because I love being in love, unre­quit­ed or oth­er­wise. It’s like when you’re in a pure­ly phys­i­cal rela­tion­ship with some­one, and you start get­ting feel­ings for them. You won­der if you’re real­ly in love with the per­son, or in love with the idea that you have some­one with whom to go to bed, some­one to kiss and kiss you back. It’s a blur­ry line, some­thing you don’t fig­ure out until you remove your­self from the sit­u­a­tion.

Not that it mat­ters. I’m over her.

And I’ve lost my inspi­ra­tion.

Residence

Ah, res­i­dence. The first year of uni­ver­si­ty, the first year away from my par­ents, and my first year in Ottawa. Also, the year I was intro­duced to Fear Factory, Dream Theater, and Refused.

I found these old pic­tures while orga­niz­ing my pic­tures fold­er. Boy, do they take me back.

Headbanging

Take a look at this pho­to, for exam­ple, where I strapped a pair of khakis to my head, and start­ed head bang­ing to Deftones — Shove It (My Own Summer). Why did I strap a pair of khakis to my head? Cause I did­n’t have long hair. Why did Pita and I decide to do this one day? I have no idea.

Dying my hair red

Washing my hair after the dye job

Alicia drying my hair

Or how about these ones, where the girls agreed to give me red chunks, back when I was obvi­ous­ly in my Tool phase. Nadine mis-read the instruc­tions, mixed the wrong chem­i­cals, and it came out all sparse.

Highlights include:

  • Failing Calculus 2 with Dave and Jarod. When we wrote the sup­ple­men­tal exam, it was five peo­ple total in the pro­gram who failed, three of whom were us. I guess I had the wrong study bud­dies. In the end, I was the only one who passed.
  • Most of the guys on the floor get­ting sued for sex­u­al harass­ment.
  • Jarod and Jono’s rave room, lit with a black­light and dis­co ball, which was some­what famous around cam­pus.
  • Constant con­flict between neigh­bors, me and Pita includ­ed, over the vol­ume of music.
  • Going to the gym with Dave, and hav­ing him spot me while I benched the bar. As in, the bar with­out weights. Afterwards, I would spot him while he benched 240. I don’t think I could have helped much.

Pita took these pho­tos, got them print­ed, and scanned them. Dated ’99. Sure they aren’t great. They’re dark. They’re grainy, tak­en with a cheap film cam­era. But they’re still unfor­get­table mem­o­ries, and it gives them a cer­tain dat­ed style. Makes me wish I had a tak­en some pic­tures myself.

Continue read­ing “Residence”…

Ersatz

This looks famil­iar.

A place I’ve been, a feel­ing I’ve had, a girl I fucked one night in the fall.

Back then she cried. Lying in bed next to me, she told me she was sor­ry. I believed her, but I did­n’t trust the tears, because she knew how much it turns me on. She got what she want­ed any­way, and I sup­pose I did too.

That was the last night I saw her.

And now this. A replace­ment who used my shots, my con­cept, my idea, and called it des­tiny.

But it isn’t can­did enough. It’s too forced. Unnatural. As if she’s try­ing too hard again to cap­ture what was lost, and what she could have had.

So she found anoth­er ver­sion, and used him in my place.

New Years '08

An hour to the new year, and I’m in the train sta­tion.

Trying not to throw up. Trying not to think about meet­ing new peo­ple. Trying not to think of hav­ing to see peo­ple I hate.

One of the sta­tion doors is propped open, but there isn’t a sin­gle per­son inside. The sta­tion, nor­mal­ly bustling, is emp­ty, with just the buzz of the lights to fill the emp­ty space. Not even a wait­ing taxi out­side. Everything ster­ile as a hos­pi­tal. I want­ed to take a pic­ture, but I could bare­ly move, so I pulled out my note­book and man­aged to scrib­ble two words:

It's quiet

Another debil­i­tat­ing pan­ic attack.

Pat and Jen’s par­ty was post­poned, so I had already decid­ed to stay home. It was ten when Aaron called me to go over1.

Halfway through the bus ride, I was filled with a sud­den rush of anx­i­ety. Maybe it was the peo­ple on the bus, or the fact that I was­n’t men­tal­ly pre­pared to be at a par­ty. I could­n’t breathe, yet I was hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing.

I had to get off at the next stop, which turned out to be the train sta­tion. As I sat inside, the anx­i­ety would pass in a cou­ple min­utes, then come back in a wave as strong as before. I called Aaron and told him I was going to head home, but he insist­ed, so he sent Rob and Doug to pick me up.

I arrived drained and exhaust­ed. It was a hell­ish night.

I can only hope the rest of the year goes bet­ter than this.

  1. The only way I found out about the New Year’s par­ty was from Rob’s com­ment. Aaron nev­er told me about it him­self, so I was­n’t going to pre­sume that I was invit­ed, because I nev­er take my friend­ships for grant­ed. [↩]