Monthly Archives: May 2010

Happiness condensed

The weath­er’s been so hot late­ly that I’ve been eat­ing a tub of ice cream every three days. This is prob­a­bly why I’ve been try­ing to come up with new ways of con­sum­ing it. At one point, I added some choco­late wafer rolls, and real­ized you don’t even need a spoon because you can use the rolls to scoop up the ice cream.

It’s best to do this with a pre­mi­um brand like Häagen-Dazs, because they’re real­ly dense (less air is mixed in), so they stay firm for longer. That means you don’t have to eat the ice cream quick­ly before it melts…but if you lived alone and had no one to mind the slurp­ing, a wafer roll dou­bles as a straw too.

ice cream

 

This one is Caramel Cone Explosion, my favourite Häagen-Dazs flavour: caramel swirls and sug­ar cone cov­ered in Belgian milk choco­late with roast­ed almost pieces, in caramel ice cream.

I also recent­ly tried If I Had A Million Flavors by Ben & Jerry’s, which is described on the tub, “A Collision of Chocolate & Vanilla Ice Creams mixed with Chocolate-cov­ered tof­fee, White Chocolate Chunks, Peanut Butter Cups & Chocolate-Covered almonds”. Which is pure hedo­nism, real­ly.

I didn't come here for the tea

I came here to get out of the house. Room, actu­al­ly. I haven’t had a face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion with any­one in three days.

I kept going through my phone book. No one. Not a sin­gle per­son I want to talk to. No one with whom to be myself com­plete­ly, with whom to spend in com­pa­ny with­out con­ver­sa­tion. Hank told me a morn­ing of awk­ward­ness is far bet­ter than a night of lone­li­ness, but I beg to dif­fer. The morn­ings always seem to last much longer.

At the same time, this is when I want to dis­tract myself the most, and being with oth­er peo­ple is the most effec­tive way. I’m too busy being focused on spend­ing time with some­one else that I can for­get about myself.

In the car it’s all Kid Cudi, and even though I’ve always told myself I would­n’t dri­ve when I’m like this, I’d always want­ed to hear this album when I’m in this kind of mood. I was nev­er one to resist a night in cool sum­mer air, cruis­ing under the city lights to old haunts.

Waiting for my order affords me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sur­rep­ti­tious­ly observe peo­ple and try to fig­ure out their roles each clique as they inter­act. Even though I’m alone, it’s com­fort enough to be among strangers.

The saddest fact in life is that our cats will die before us

When I was young and a cat food com­mer­cial came on where the kit­ties would nuz­zle their own­er after receiv­ing a por­tion of Brand X, I’d think to myself, “Those are prob­a­bly spe­cial cats, the way they use perky mod­els to por­tray every­day moms in clean­ing com­mer­cials. I won’t ever have a cat like that.”

But I was wrong.

She fol­lows me around the house, she sleeps under the blan­kets in the crook of my arm, and I can’t imag­ine my life with­out her.

Arrows with no target

I don’t view my projects the same way any­more. I used to work towards a goal, an idea of what I want­ed to achieve. But more recent­ly I stopped car­ing about the end result, prob­a­bly due to this new per­spec­tive on…every­thing.

It’s a strange jux­ta­po­si­tion of know­ing that what you’re doing is ulti­mate­ly insignif­i­cant, and find­ing enjoy­ment in doing it any­way. Like a child stack­ing a pile of blocks, only to knock them down.

The wikipedia arti­cle on wu wei explains feel­ing this bet­ter than I can:

The goal for wu wei is to get out of your own way, so to speak. This is like when you are play­ing an instru­ment and if you start think­ing about play­ing the instru­ment, then you will get in your own way and inter­fere with your own play­ing. It is aim­less action, because if there was a goal that you need to aim at and hit, then you will devel­op anx­i­ety about this goal.

Zhuangzi made a point of this, where he writes about an archer who at first did­n’t have any­thing to aim at. When there was noth­ing to aim at, the archer was hap­py and con­tent with his being. He was prac­tic­ing wu wei. But, then he set up a tar­get and “got in his own way.” He was going against the Tao and the nat­ur­al course of things by hav­ing to hit that goal.

(This also reminds me of a verse from Leonard Cohen’s True Love Leaves No Traces: “Through win­dows in the dark/The chil­dren come, the chil­dren go/Like arrows with no tar­gets/Like shack­les made of snow.)

Nowadays, I do what I feel like doing and don’t stress out about not fin­ish­ing a project, cause I know I’ll feel like work­ing on it anoth­er day. It leaves me more loose ends, but I don’t mind. Luckily, I love cre­at­ing things. Trying dif­fer­ent medi­ums. New ways of express­ing myself.

life being what it is

Darren came up from Toronto for a vis­it over the long week­end.

These ses­sions always ful­fill my quo­ta of rela­tion­ship talk. When one admits to not want­i­ng to be in a rela­tion­ship, this is fol­lowed nat­u­ral­ly by the ques­tion, “Would you go for it if you found the per­fect one right now?” from the oth­er. Then in return, “If she came back to you and said she want­ed to try again, but you only had a 50–50 per­cent chance of suc­cess, would you go for it?”

In our lit­tle duet, our philo­soph­i­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion, love is always a theme. No one else chal­lenges our psy­ches in this regard.

Trivial Pursuit night

 

Continue read­ing “life being what it is”…