Posts tagged with "interesting people"

Shirley's Trust

Shirley is a fun­ny woman. Really. Someone had recent­ly not­ed that she uses the phrase, “Well this is it!”, a lot. It’s usu­al­ly for sit­u­a­tions of agree­able­ness, and spo­ken with iambic dime­tre, empha­sized on every oth­er syl­la­ble.

Shirley’s in denial about the whole mat­ter.

There are always news reports and sto­ries of mass mur­der­ers, pedophiles, rapists, sociopaths whom no one ever sus­pects. In my head I always think that it does­n’t mat­ter how some­one may be per­ceived on the out­side, that any­one could be the next noto­ri­ous psy­chopath. Shirley, how­ev­er, is one of the few peo­ple I would have a very dif­fi­cult time believ­ing as being able to hurt any­one. Some may think that it’s sad to be so cyn­i­cal, so untrust­ing of almost any­one, but that’s just the way my world­view has devel­oped.

Put sim­ply, she’s an inno­cent per­son. Not inno­cent in the igno­rant sense, which is some­thing that I had only recent­ly begun to dis­tin­guish, but inno­cent in the good, whole­some, true, hon­ourable sense. I real­ize that this makes me trust her about as much as I trust my oth­er friends. I hon­est­ly feel like I can divulge almost any­thing to her with­out wor­ry­ing about being judged or mis­in­ter­pret­ed.

Yet there are things that I don’t let her know, because I firm­ly believe that our work­ing rela­tion­ship isn’t worth the risk, if there just hap­pened to be some­thing she found out that she could­n’t deal with.

So does­n’t this mean that I don’t tru­ly trust her?

Music Saves The Day

I was rid­ing the bus the oth­er day, and a woman got on and sat in a per­pen­dic­u­lar seat in front of me. She wore plain mary-janes, thick wool stock­ings, a con­ser­v­a­tive plaid skirt, and had her hair in a slight­ly orna­ment­ed pony-tail. I assume that she was in her late twen­ties, but her demeanour was almost child-like. She sat for a while, star­ing at noth­ing, car­ry­ing a per­pet­u­al­ly inno­cent, apolo­getic expres­sion on her face, as if she had a tir­ing day and was pen­i­tent to those around her for being in such an exhaust­ed state.

Sticking out of her bag was a sim­ple, white, let­ter-sized book­let with the head­ing “DEMOCRACY IN ACTION PROGRAM”, and I thought it was odd that a par­lia­men­tary event being held in the cap­i­tal of Canada would use the American spelling of the word “pro­gramme”.

Soon, she pulled out a set of plas­tic, bulky Sony head­phones (the ones with the over­sized foam that actu­al­ly come with a music device), and searched her bag for the tape play­er attached at the end of the cord. Now, I admit that I’m already gen­er­al­ly attract­ed to old­er, home­ly look­ing women, but it was the fact that she had such a pure look of sim­ple bliss on her face when she put on the head­phones, as if she was wait­ing all day to lis­ten to her music, that I found most attrac­tive.

The Steve Lam

I used to real­ly, real­ly admire the steve lam. He seemed to have his own style, and not care what any­one else thought. I want­ed to hang out with him, get to under­stand him bet­ter, maybe be a lit­tle more like him. I even bought him lunch once (he chose a club sand­wich from the cafe­te­ria), although one time we almost shared a bag of roast­ed peanuts while stand­ing next to a vend­ing machine.

I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed. Sure, he prob­a­bly still does­n’t care what oth­er peo­ple think, and he has real­ly cool hair that I want SO BADLY, but now it seems like he’s caught up in the whole “indie new york rock­er” image.

Image.

That’s what’s wrong with this pic­ture.

Possibly His Only Chance

A few days ago, I dropped off some pants to get hemmed. They weren’t ready when I went to pick them up, and this turned out to be a major incon­ve­nience; there were some things I had to do at the mall and I want­ed to get them all done at once. The tai­lor told me when they would sup­pos­ed­ly be ready and I made my plans around that.

When I made the extra trip to pick up my pants, there were two Thai women, lean­ing over the counter, flirt­ing with him. Being a Thai man, he flirt­ed back. The women stood to the side when I approached the counter, and kept mak­ing com­ments and then ask­ing me in return, “You’re look­ing good these days. He looks good, does­n’t he? And you have a good busi­ness going. It’s a good busi­ness, isn’t it?”. I was about to say some­thing regard­ing the tar­di­ness of the ser­vice, since I was thor­ough­ly irate about the extra trip, but decid­ed against it. Here he was, being hit on by two women. Who knows when he’d have the oppor­tu­ni­ty again.

The Zarathustra Sessions, Part 2: Progression

I have learned to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly, since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move.

Now I am nim­ble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances with­in me.

—Of Reading And Writing, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

A long time ago, maybe almost ten years ago, I met a guy who was the same age as me named Alvin. We got along extreme­ly well, which was a rar­i­ty for me at the time. He was a com­plete enig­ma. There was always an air about him, some­thing in his sta­ble demeanor, that told me he had every­thing fig­ured out. I asked him once, “Do you feel any pain?”. “Only when I want to”, was his response. I could­n’t pos­si­bly under­stand.

How can I describe this feel­ing? How can I explain? I’ve been look­ing for the right words for so long, but noth­ing comes through. Only images and ideas. Thoughts with­out expres­sion.

All I know is that it feels like I’ve arrived at some­thing, like I’ve final­ly come to a point where I’m com­fort­able with myself. Where I can hurt with­out being sad. Where I can love with­out pain.

The key is under­stand­ing how dis­sat­is­fac­tion breeds improve­ment, how pain breeds hap­pi­ness, how there must be a bal­ance of good and bad, and liv­ing by these beliefs with com­mit­ted indus­try and absolute humil­i­ty. It’s what Taoists express as Yin and Yang, what Nietzsche was say­ing through Zarathustra. And when one’s life goal is self-improve­ment, every­thing falls into place.

Now there is no going back. Now I tru­ly feel like I’m alive.

Now a god dances with­in me.