Posts in category "Random"

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.

Papa Was A Rolling Stone

My dad called. After 14 months with­out con­tact.

Not that I was­n’t expect­ing it. He e‑mailed me two weeks ago (flagged with the lit­tle red excla­ma­tion point to note that it was impor­tant), telling me that he was hav­ing a par­ty on New Years. “Can you come and join us?”, it said.

“Us?”

Is he dat­ing now, I won­dered. Married?

I sat on this e‑mail, unsure of what to say. A lit­tle while before this, Merv struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with me about fish­ing. I told him I used to go to this one fish­ing spot at a lift-lock in Peterborough with my dad, and it made me won­der what I would say if I ever talked to him again. He did­n’t even know me when we were on speak­ing terms, how would he know me now? I’ve changed so dras­ti­cal­ly in the last year.

We nev­er left things off on bad terms. We just stopped talk­ing to each oth­er, so there was­n’t any ani­mos­i­ty, on my part, at least. I nev­er con­tact­ed him because I nev­er felt like it, and I was expect­ing years to go by before he con­tact­ed me.

Then he called on the week­end. It took me by sur­prise. I thought e‑mail was a way for him to stay dis­tant, while ful­fill­ing the min­i­mum parental respon­si­bil­i­ty. I had guests over and was enter­tain­ing and some­what charged up. He start­ed talk­ing to me in Chinese, and I could only reply in English. It was too much for my mind, and I was too much on my guard. So I told him to call me next week.

And he did.

Continue read­ing “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”…