a wise man

i've never had a pet. does that say something about me?

thing is, i don't actually care if it says something about me. not really. not at all. but there is an interest. a bit of wonder.

i've always been one to wonder. it makes me question things of late. like whether i've had as many ideas as i used to. whether i should keep the same little notebook that i used to, whether i should jot things down in pen the way i used to.

whether i should run towards the same goals, the same people, the same locales that i used to. something tells me that far less are reading this as were before, yet i don't actually *care*. as if this were anything but self serving. as if this were anything but private and unyielding.

even in private letters i couldn't be candid. or so i was told. when you're sitting here, the way i am right now at least, it's hard to distinguish between lies and fabrications made to answer questions to which you don't have an answer. like when someone asks you 'why' and you have nothing to say except a lie. even though you know what the truth is.

but i do have to ask...if you had a choice, between telling the truth and lying, which would you chose? would it depend, on whether you were lying to protect feelings, whether you were lying because you didn't think you knew the truth? whether you wanted to blame someone else for your own shortcomings, whether you wanted something to point at because you had no idea why you felt the way you did?

are you a liar, or do you tell the truth? are you someone who comes up with excuses, or do you face up to reality and just get what's coming to you?

are you a coward, or a saint?

sing it, frankie

a kiss is still a kiss.

a sigh is still a sigh.







the fundamental things apply,
as time goes by.

son of a preacher man

the best and worst times of a man's life come with heartbreak.

it's a time for strength. of insight and of solidification. it's a time to understand that which eluded you and a time to look inward, look deeply outward, and basically look all around. it's a time for realization, it's a time for understanding.

it's a time for forgiveness, and a time to let go of all those wrongs that have been placed upon you.

it's a time to prove that you're not a goddamn slug, not a goddamn ant, not a goddamn anything known to the world. it's a time to just stand up and be known as something different and unique and all together too insignificant.

you are not special.

you are not worth fighting for.

you are not memorable or notable or immortal.

you are simply what you conceive. you are what you have known, all along, but have not been able to admit. you are walking compost, you are the dust of ages. you are one of billions and one amongst nothing. you are a story waiting to happen.

you are a story that's been told far too often before.

you are a figment of your own imagination. you exist only in your own mind. you are zen, you are isolated, you are nothing but a collection of thoughts and reaction. you are a microverse.

you are a walking mortality.

you are simply the connotation of existence. you are what you are, nothing less and nothing more.

just live with me and be done with it.

a simple profession

yes. yes. hahahahahahahahaha.



oh yes. definitely. youth and the young, fight and the fought. simple. done. don't worry, nothing's going to happen.


if i've ever told you a secret...well then you will never be alone. i do not abandon and i do not turn away.


if i've ever told you a secret, then i am yours forever.

one of the good days

i'm sitting here, back at ihop (yeah yeah, more with the foodery talk...get over it). i'm trying to write but the thoughts keep seeping in. i can't stop thinking about it, i can't do anything but steer all my focus back to her.

pink elephants, don't think of pink elephants.

the more you push away the more your arms get tired. just looking to my left, i see a couple; 15, 16 at the most. but with an older couple, maybe the girl's grandparents. her hand on his lap, his thigh (the younger girl's hand, that is). talking and laughing, old and young. a bit of society in this anthilll of a diner (it's barely a diner, even. not now, when i've been searching out real diners more and more). the girl talks, an annoying little voice that i would never be able to stand for more than five seconds.

so long, nostalgia. pink elephants.

that whole debacle above was a few days ago, thursday night i think. actually friday night. the end of a long day; i sat and started up on another film. i wrote up about a third or half of it right there at the restaurant but met up with the director later on and talked of other things. this latest project, the one i'm currently writing...there's something special about it. i don't know what, not just yet. i've finished everything but the script format now and i still can't put my finger on what exactly intrigues me. guess that's what makes it worth thinking about.

saturday i spent the night in the city. there was a comfort level, a familiarity and a simplicity that i didn't realize i missed so much. knowing you're with friends and knowing that you can just enjoy yourself for a few minutes without having to worry about the outside world. knowing that later on things will go to hell in due time but, for right now, you can breathe in scents and memories enough to overtake you.

this afternoon i ended up in an old diner for lunch/dinner/whatever it was. a good meal, floating with a fair amount of work done on my new script. i had such an outpouring of ideas and concepts, it was just great. just plain great, totally worth whatever it was that i ended up paying for the food.

i sat there, listening to the meals of all the people around me. this is definitely an old folk's diner; people coming from church i suppose, maybe just a familiar haunt for people of a certain age and a certain town. who knows. i hear the words "operating system" and i turn my head, not really caring what they're saying or who is saying it but, rather, just wanting to acknowledge that it was a momentary lapse in the thousand other conversations that i couldn't make out even if i wanted to. it was a beacon, a phrase to keep me aware of my surroundings. like a lighthouse shining in my eyes for a tenth of a second.

it was a second choice, this diner; my original intention after leaving chicago this afternoon was a little diner i'd found last week. what a place; it just dripped of anytownUSA, totally my kind of locale. thing is i was so tired when i came across it last week that now i couldn't remember where the hell it was. oh, i had a vague recollection and some idealistic notions as to where it was. but nothing concrete, and nothing written on paper.

so after about an hour of searching (an hour being an obscene length of time given the area, mind you) i finally find the place around 3:55...only to find that it closes at 4:00 on sundays.

from what i can gather, very few people can recite the sound of fate laughing as well as i. my gift/curse, i suppose.

so off i went, a block north and about a mile or so west, to this here old-folk's diner. where upon i realize that i have forgotten my pen and so ask the waitress for one 15 minutes later when she graces me with her presence. the waiting did give me time to think, though. i got to think about things like how drivers seem to leave far too much space between cars when entering a bottleneck; i had been on the highways for a few hours previous and about half of that time was spent watching the cars in other lanes merge and spread out as we entered three-lane-sections-merging-into-one-lane-sections. i'd complain if i could think of a way to solve the problem. after the waitress came back a few times, though, i started thinking on how she always filled up my coffee when it was halfway full.

you see, the art of coffee mixing is a delicate one, at best. a person with specific tastes will want one cream with one sugar, or some other such configuration, per cup of coffee. but when the waitress pours in more coffee when you've drank half of your one-cream-one-sugar batch...well it just screws up all the proportions of the cup, doesn't it? so now you have to add something like half a sugar and half a cream to re-adjust the mix, but that's never good enough because no one actually goes through all the maths in their head and, if they did, they would find that it's a very annoying amount of cream/sugar that needs to be added to make up for the coffee that the waitress added when she might have just waited another minute and poured a whole new cup instead, an amount like .33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333 of a sugar or something. honestly, how annoying is that?

of course this is all pointless, seeing as how it didn't really annoy me that much and how most people don't care enough to want to mix their coffee perfectly anyway. so don't worry, there was no chastising of the waitress and a good tip was left, as usual.

so, in retrospect, i will never understand I-90 or women.

after said old-folks-diner i came back home and watched as the family started on casablanca; my plan was to leave and go see some movies so i couldn't watch the whole thing with them. but i started them off and watched about fifteen minutes worth before i went to see Corpse Bride and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. both were sufficiently entertaining and served their purposes.

after the movies i went to ihop and sat down to complete the outline/treatment of my new script. barring the fact that this is the second mention of this eatery in the same post, i nevertheless managed to finish what i had actually set out to do. rock on, right? right. so now, not only do i have a fully functional treatment outline, i can pump out a treatment in about fifteen minutes or so and feel reasonably sure that it will be met with at least mild approval. sure, there's plot anomalies to be worked out, of course, but nothing obvious yet and there's more then enough time to work on it. we haven't even started filming on the current film yet, let alone even thought about our next shoot. lots of room to maneuver.

so i have come home to enjoy myself (and the caffeine-induced insomnia), finish casablanca, and now try out another movie. all in all a very tolerable weekend. i got to spend time with a couple people around whom i feel completely comfortable, i basically wrote out my next screenplay, and i've basically moved on in a lot of different ways. not bad at all.





oh right, i almost forgot.

*ahem*

go sox.

come and knock on our door

that's it! i've figured it out. i've figured it out i've figured it out.

i was brainwashed, see. i had been programmed, for so very many years, with this idyllic and outdated philosophy. it dawned on me, just now, this realization.

it dawned on me because Three's Company is on television right now. jack's simple solution to romantic intervention involves serenades and love letters, handwritten invitations and climbing balconies.

the kind of activities that today, of course, will get a pair of cuffs thrown on you. the kind of activities that, without a requisite intimacy, will blow away any chance you may have for looking like a stable human being.

brainwashed. exposed and treated and induced into believing that the world still accepts such things, that women and men and society still welcome these ideals with open arms. the subterfuge and the subliminal manipulation.

the sweet and cuddly little lies. extrapolate the rant all you like, but in the end it's simple.

if you have actually seen the episode, you'd know that jack does all these things, the serenade and poems and flowers and invitation, he does all this things...but for the wrong woman. this mistaken identity accepts the invite and shows up at his door, conventionally homely as she is, and forces jack into a floundering embarrassment that drips of the edges of the television.

if you have actually seen the episode, you'd know how very little jack is attracted to this woman, how very infatuated he is with his intended flame.

if you have actually seen the episode, then you'd know that jack gives up the woman he's lusted after when she turns vicious to the mistaken identity, he tosses her out the door to continue his date with the conventionally homely one. you'd know that, in the end, he saved face for himself and this overlooked woman.

you'd know that, in the end, it doesn't matter what anybody else says or what anybody else does. in the end you just have to do what's right, plain and simple.

the name is hindi for "Vesuvius"

i'm not sure why, but i felt compelled to compensate for something last week.

i was back in hyde park, back on campus and jumping between labs and friends and coffee shops. i had a meeting downtown (blogged and blogged, if you've read it) and for day's end went down to hyde park just to go to hyde park.

i hung around until the director called (i had to remain in the city for this call) and gave me the addresses for two places downtown that sell lighting equipment.

so off i went. neither place seemed ostensibly able to meet our needs, but i took information and catalogs and came back to hyde park to watch a wong kar-wai film.

the day's compensation was in fundamental approaches to life, i guess. i sat amongst friends all day, jumped from group to group, all the while listening to those still in school and those long graduated. there were varying levels of debate and discussion, but it was always something slightly askew.

as if they were all speaking a foreign language, one i've studied and with which i am familiar, but never completely fluent. discussions on music, movies, philosophers and historians. on school politics, on global politics. on relationships and hopes and dreams and intentions.

i always seemed to be translating in my head.

but the compensation came with a little time. an excuse that i was amidst academics and intellectuals. that so many of these analyze and analyze and comment and connect and critique.

none of them, however, has created. i have seen no imagination or raging creativity other than through research (and even that's a stretch). they are mountains, solid and even capped with a little know. they are mountains surrounding a volcano. i sit and simmer, hollow and empty, smaller than the rest.

but every once in awhile, something happens. and i change. islands are borne, small villages are wiped off the map. and i grow, so slightly, just a bit taller than before.

right, so i didn't totally enjoy the kar-wai movie (that's right, i used the hyphenated last name ONLY. what are you gonna do about it?) given precedence, this makes two of his films that i find rather on the beaten path.

look out the window. check the weather. it's gonna be cold tonight.

thumper was the man

i argue.

constantly.

this is not a fresh revelation, to be sure. just the closest within reach, for now. i deliberately, whether on a conscious level or not, play devil's advocate. i pick the opposite side of the majority simply to rouse and rebel. i go against the grain to see what happens.

not only that, oh ho ho ho ho, not only that. i go out of my way to create such dichotomy.

"i couldn't stand that movie," i'll say.

"i like ketchup with my eggs," i'll retort.

"you can't base your argument on that assumption," i'll expound. "you'd have to say that you believe in such-and-such, not take such-and-such as axiomatic for this argument."

and so on. i haven't spoken to another person all day, i haven't had a single discourse. so this is not a fresh revelation, to be sure. just the closest one within reach.

i went to use the washroom at a diner tonight (more on this later...the diner, i mean, not the washroom bit) and could only wonder. there, in the little alcove across from la toilette, was a baby-changing station.

it wrenches at the mind, you see; a question as to whether any man in recent history has actually brought a baby under the age of 3.5 years (as bounded by the directions of said changing station) into this washroom and sought out this baby changing station and used it. surely the odds of a man randomly using the facilities, then noticing the changing station, then going back to his seat with the information and later returning to the station with his (or heaven-only-knows-whose) child in tow, ready to change the kid, are staggeringly low? surely.

then another bit worthy of note. outlined there, on the right hand side, were the words

NEVER LEAVE A CHILD UNATTENDED.

and, below them, the sister translations into several other languages.

first note, if you please, that the punctuation at the end of dire warning is clearly a period. this trend continued through spanish, french, some other language, up until german.

the german translation, you see, had a big fat exclamation point. alright well the big and fat might be a relative assessment, though it was clearly an exclamation point.

but the german translation is the only one; the three translations above and the one below the german all have periods. all of them. period period period. exclamation point. period.

it delegates a further respect for the german people, i think, to inherently place such importance on the guardianship of children in random diner washroom corners.

the plan tonight was simple. after a short nap (completely lacking utility, of course) i had decided that enough television had been watched and that i would instead rather continue the novel i am currently reading. so off i go to my coffee shop to commence. after an hour or so, though, i was fraught with ideas for my next film storyline. so i decided to take my tidbits and garbled outline and have something produced by day's end.

first off, the day has ended, at least in calendar terms, and only a marginally clear piece has been produced. second off, i don't care because it is a very full outline that, although marginally clear, is nevertheless a very, very solid starting point. besides, this is a digression.

so i go off to the diner and plop myself down, ready to spend the night or however long writing my treatment. after about five to ten minutes, my outline was complete. i finished my coffee, hunkered down, and spent the next three hours reading the novel i had been reading previously. which ends this story presently. sitting here, full of coffee, novel close to finished, strong outline in hand, and nothing but optimism ahead of me.

i had forgotten myself. my mannerisms, my self-image. who i am, who i want to be, and how it is best projected. i forgot that i like to talk a certain way, that i like to dress a certain way, that i like to breath and work out and smile and dance and sing and write a certain way. i forgot that i don't need anybody else, no matter how much i may want somebody else around. i forgot how to lick the seconds off the clock and savor them. to sit in a corner with nothing but my thoughts and feel perfectly at ease.

hell maybe i never forgot, maybe i had a light in my eyes and simply needed time to re-adjust my mind's eye. i've been presented with new and wonderful and horrifying and amazing experiences and needed to blindly collect them all no matter what the cost to how i like to do things a certain way. i would forego talking the way i do so i could deal with a friend in need. i would forego dancing and singing to hold onto a moment that i knew would never come back.

for a year i've been a deer, stuck in headlights. now the car's gone, and it's time to finish crossing the road.

the times, they are becoming different

there is something to be said for change. and it's this.

it can happen in an instant. a minute, a day. a matter of hours or weeks. your entire life, your entire outlook, your wardrobe your shoe size your tan. things can change, big or small, in durations of time unfathomable and not wanting to be conceived.

it's important to question, though, which is worse. when things change, forcing you to adapt? or when things don't change, despite how very badly you may want them to?

nor iron bars

i'm starting to understand certain things, recently. but no lists, i am not making a list. no lists. so, let's begin.

the first is my city. all the memories that seem so old but that i've only actually accumulated in the last couple years. how one of the best things about being 40 stories up and looking down on buildings below is looking at the rooftops. seeing gardens and lawn chairs, umbrellas and pools and trees even. the things you see on rooftops can change your mind in ways you ways you didn't know could be managed.

i'm starting to understand the mentalities of all those people i could never understand before, or at least those people i wrote off as something else entirely. the ones who "can't handle a relationship right now" or who "aren't ready to date." the ones who simply don't want to deal with it all, the ones who i thought were just trying to let me down easy or who were severely deranged or something else that made more sense to me. i'm starting to appreciate the feeling. to empathize with it.

i'm starting to understand why someone can feel trapped. used to be that whenever i felt confined or forced or pushing in a direction i'd just go and figure out a way to solve it. or push back. but the more oppressive sort of binds have their way, too. sometimes you're forced and pushed and confined by yourself and your own sensibilities. by your responsibilities and your principles. how the hell do you push yourself back? the only way is to take it and hope that you can convince yourself to let up somehow.

i'm starting to understand being used without realizing it. time was when i'd see friends or family or characters in tv or movies or books, people whose self-worth was so invested into something else that they simply couldn't see what was going on. i would look at these guys and just stare in awe. watch them being used up, spit out, spun around, and chewed up again. watch them blame everything else in their lives on whatever troubles they had because they couldn't see the rotting core. they couldn't see that they were prostitutes, whoring themselves out, handing over dignity and integrity for money or attention or even love. i just couldn't understand how someone could be so blind. but i'm starting to understand how little that is true. nobody is that blind. they're just willing to close their eyes.

i was taking notes the other day, writing down my thoughts to put up here. thing was, every time i started on another line, i kept wanting to start my sentence with a 'p' i have no idea why, no other thoughts. just every time i started on another line, i put a hyphen to bullet it and then put down the letter 'p' as if i knew what i was going to write. but i had no idea what i was going to write, not a clue.

but that went by fairly quickly; i was killing time until a meeting but realized that there wasn't that much time to kill. so off i go, to this meeting and to a person that i realize now is almost freakishly similar to a character from the West Wing. speech patterns, pauses and accented syllables.

there are friends i can help. and there are friends i can't help. there are strangers i can pity and respect and just plain ignore. there are people that i deal with and people that i wish would deal with me. there are billions and billions of figments in my imagination that will never have seen my face. there are jerks and saints and all the years it can take to be one and then another.

there are hurts and hopes that look like they will never end. and then they disappear with some dawn that you never say coming.

and i'm starting to really understand how much more joy and how much more pain there is left to sift my hands through. like the handful of sand you focus on before you look up to see the desert ahead of you. the only thing you can do is make sure you have enough water. and a really big hat.

of course, once you start to understand something, it stops being important. which is a little sad, but a little freeing at the same time.

so much for feeling trapped.

tick. and then tock.

"and life goes on."

my computer games says. the voice that spouted the proverb sounds oddly canadian, as supposedly american-living-in-prague as he is. with a goatee and glasses, no less.

there was a woman at the cash register of the store, today, while i waited to purchase a coat.

"that's a nice coat," she said. either that or something of such effect. and so small talk ensued, as i am wont to do, between said woman and myself and the cashier and the floors and the walls. a comment, a slight laugh, another comment. a slight laugh.

look at me, the amazing ball of charm, able to dispense pleasantries and commentary whilst still being completely ambivalent and mysterious. it's a longterm skill, mind you, something that must be learned over years and years. but i have had nothing, if not the time, to study such things.

the burning question, i know, that some of you ask. is he feeling better? is it fading away, the pain and the hurt and the memories and the wanton dusty dust that encrusts his skin? is he feeling better? is the counsel of friends and forum and far-fetched imagination leading him towards a thicker hide and solid objectivity?

is he feeling better?

yes and no, i must reply. yes and no and no and yes and yes. i am used to challenge, you see. i am used to problems and difficulties and overcoming complications.

an aside, for a moment, to recall the words of a very good friend of mine some years back, upon the discussion of his incredible luck, having found the woman of his dreams and my relating such to his karma:

"so there you go," i said. "something happened. you're a good person, believe it or not."

"you're good people," he then remarked. "where is your karmic justice?"

a perfectly substantial query, though i do have to ask whether or not it remains valid today.

have i received karmic justice? have i found and lost the most deserving moments of happiness of my life? or are there more to be found and lost and found? is whatever has happened so far been the most base of experience, unworthy of note or noble label? have i received my karmic justice, am i to have my karmic justice, is there such a thing at all?

i want so badly to spout off, to talk about ambition and want and need and hope and dream and all the things that make us do more than just breathe and eat and sleep. it's just such a farce though, to ramble on pedantic about a subject that i can barely spell, let alone describe. who am i? what authority do i have to talk about it? what good does it do anyone else, to read about it? how does it even help me, let alone anyone else?

it seems the time has come for something. something. but the more nagging time will come when i realize what that something is. the time has come to change, to remain the same, to learn or to teach or to mentor or to worship and fall to the floor. there is action to be executed, right this second, right now and right here. but what is that action?

what time is it?

full of sound and fury

okay, that's it. time to spell it out.

i do not care how little you care. i do not care how i look. i do not care how i sound and walk and talk and present myself in my own home.

i do not care that it's all in vain. i do not care that there is more reason to veer towards disillusionment than there is to crawl to a hopeful ideal. i do not care that you have nothing to say to me. i do not care that you have everything to say to me.

i do not care that you are evil.

i do not care that you are busy and shortsighted and naive and disrespectful and innocently pretentious.

i do not care that you complain about nothing. i do not care that you're more humble than me.

I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR EXPLOSIVE INDIFFERENCE.

because that's it. final straw. that's it.

took my chances and tried my best, but in the end i'm not gonna explain myself anymore. i'm not gonna lay it all out there, i'm not gonna let anybody in anymore. i'm not gonna lift up the armor, i'm not gonna put down the sword. i'm not gonna twitch the poker face for half a second.

i am not going to disregard my tenets any longer. i am not going to let anyone get the best of me and i'm sure as living hell not going to let the reins go loose again. i am not going to fall.

i am not going to fall and i am not going to crash.

if only there were someone around to celebrate. but that's life, that's my life, and that's the pile of lemons that'll start a proverb. there's nothing worse than having to start over, especially when you were so sure about where you were headed. there's nothing worse than having to listen to the malcontents with no recourse but to put off the listening for another day. there's nothing worse than the pictures in your head, of all the joys and happiness and simple satisfaction that they are having, the ones that you hate to picture in your head. the ones that don't need to be stronger than you because they've managed to make it through the hard times without doing a damn thing.

this whole thing has become a rant, now. a sopping, soaking, dripping wet rag of asides and what-ifs. the whole literal explosion leaves a bad taste in my mouth. the whole experience does nothing truly cathartic, it just leaves me wondering how anyone can have just one post, just one drink just one hit. it's the splatterings of a keyboard junkie, the razorblade the needle of a word addict.

soldiers have their guns, carpenters have their hammers, drunkards the glass. whores have their price. and writers have their keyboards. their thoughts and their pencils and their twisted little monologues. their twisted little minds. their little, twisted souls.

when a man of science, a man of reason, a man of logic, theory, and thought loses all sense of rationale, what is left to say? what happens when that kind of man is thrown into cold and confusing waters, buoyed and bouncing and trying to understand while trying to breathe? what happens when that kind of man has to focus on the irrational and the simplistic, the childish and the pointless and the boring and the definition of malaise?

what happens when that kind of man cannot bring his mind back to reason?

because it sounds like that kind of man has to hatch into something else, if unable to do those things that are denotative of his nature. it sounds like that kind of man implodes into something else entirely.

see, now what just happened? what did all that self-serving malarky do? a whole rant, a page or more or more and there's nothing to show for it by now. no memorable quips, no endearing lines. i'll probably be at a loss to recall any special phrases, even. it's the ready-to-serve flotsum that lightens some ballast and let's me unburden so momentarily.

but, as usual, no one has any idea what i'm talking about. and so it goes, the entire game played again. with no one the wiser or the more interested.

let's not

there's too many blogs that only rehash and spout off politics.

too many blogs that just take newspaper headlines and paste them on the electronic page.

pause


let's not continue that rant. let's leave it be shall we shall we?

it's time to focus on the things that haven't happened. losing my wife, losing my job, losing my kids, getting prostate cancer, being on the front lines of a war. watching someone sick, watching someone die. forcing my way through all the rest for whatever selfish reason i deem worthy. losing an unreignable love, having a nervous breakdown, being betrayed by everyone i know. not winning a presidential campaign.

let's not continue that rant. too many of those things have actually happened.

my coffee is good. my sweatpants/sweatshirt/socks are comfortable. the weather is just what i wanted. the reeses i had last night were great. the plans for tonight will hopefully be solidified. my back is feeling better. my head is clear. my consumptive curiosity remains abated for the time being.

it's quiet, and still. and i have another movie to write.

let's worry about tomorrow another time, shall we?

i just don't know

honestly.

honestly.

honestly, what do you do when you identify and feel for the guy in the sitcom that is supposed to be receiving your laughter?

what do you do when you agree and empathize with the completely pathetic heap of compost that does nothing but provide comic relief through his horrible horrible misery?


honestly.

i just can't

honest to god, i don't even know what i am right now.

me, the master of interpretation. the maestro of analysis and deconstruction. if my state were some sort of wave, i'd go into mathematical decompositions so elaborate that you wouldn't begin to understand the depths to which the whole is royally screwed. this state, this mindset, this composition and superposition and overwhelmingly amalgamated mush of thoughts and wants and needs and hopes and fears is compartmentalized and categorized and comprised of so many fundamentals that it just doesn't make sense to assign them weights.

you know what? it hurts. you're goddamn right it hurts. you know what? sometimes nostalgia pops up like that relative that you never see for a reason.

you know what? why should i? why should i?

you can't control your own reactions to things and why can't you control your own impulses. why can't you learn to empathize and eulogize and realize that there is nothing special about you and that's that.

"you never forget your first."

those were the words on a tee shirt today, in the middle of a comic shop in the middle of a mall in the middle of wherever it was that i was.

why should i?

another couple getting married. another friend cast into the fore and fading into ambivalence. the sad part is not knowing how true that is. the sad part is putting on some false air that sacrifices are made for relationships that will face problems so far unknown. the sad part is thinking that you might be knowledgeable in something that may be more forced than decided.

i don't need to explain myself, i say to myself. i am enlightened, i say to the stranger looking at me while i say things to myself.

the basic tenet, vikas. how in the flaming hell do you inscribe and carve into stone a basic tenet and then disavow its importance?



how, vikas, do you GIVE YOURSELF A RULE AND THEN NOT FOLLOW IT??



i've turned into a bloody nag. nitpicking conversations, picking at conceptual inconsistencies. poking at word choice, twisting and tearing at themes and subtext in relation to the delivery used. argumentative, antithetical. devil's advocate for no reason other that to hear someone's rationale.

wanna hear why? wanna know, wanna understand, wanna read why?

show me another challenge left and maybe i'll change. but for right now it's the only thing that provides any sort of engagement.

i despise this, the groveling sort of stimulation. mindless and mechanical and lacking any formal creativity.

i despise the things that i cannot have, no matter how hard i try. i despise not being able to have it, completely independent of skill or intent or content of character.

it's like being told by everyone on the planet that you can breathe, that it's easy and that it just happens and that you shouldn't even think about it. it's like being told by everyone on the planet that you can breathe but knowing that none of these people have ever had asthma in their entire lives.

how nice it must be, to be certain of one area in your life. how nice it must be, to know that one area is always worth chasing and wanting and fixing and supporting.

how nice it must be, to know that area will love you back just the same.

how nice, how nice, how nice how nice how nice how nice.

why should i?

last week was quite the carousing. the entirety of those in training ventured downtown, to explore their new city. not feeling up to paying $60 to go into the city i visit almost every night, i stayed behind.

the night turned into one of light drinks, then hopping bars in st. charles. after the third bar my toronto-nian friend and i threw on some fake accents and took to the masses.

i donned an australian/uk thing, whilst my browner companion became an arabian austrian currently living in toronto. we made quite the foreign delegation, to be sure.

enough that this impressed a trio waiting outside the last bar, a trio that volunteered to drive us up to the latest open bar in the suburbs, 20 miles north, with them. the accents and the revelry continued, driven north with us.

the dancing, the drinks, and the more slight dancing. the women remarking on all the dancing partners we should so easily attain, with our incredibly magnetic accents. well, with mine at least. more comments, more toasting. more blindly blinding cavorting.

then, back to training. less going out at night, but still the occasional venture. i began to find myself anew, somewhat. rediscovering and relearning the lessons that were never really forgot.




i don't want to talk about training anymore.

though a friendship was made. a good one. a healthy one. a comforting one. a viable one. a good one.

the last week was one of secrets told and uncovered, tales recounted and remembered. it was all the things that i knew and should have trusted but did not want to admit. it was all the recollections that now only prove how very right i was. and how very blind i was willing to be.

this weekend was less than of note. friday night with the newly minted friendship. the good one. saturday sleeping, sunday sleeping. sunday night, monday night, movies and more movies.

today, looking at things towards which i should not look.

the tenet, vikas. just follow the tenet until you don't need it any more. okay? can you just follow the bloody tenet, already?

i just wish i could stop thinking about this thing, about that thing. half of it is whining, the other half is venting. the other remaining percentage is lacking any care about what the hell anybody thinks.

the last few weeks have come with commentary on how young i look. not how young i am, not how naive i am, just how young i look in comparison to certain other people.

why should i?

i feel like punching anyone who says i look young. i feel like punching anyone who wants to look at me and feel rational in finding me naive. i feel like punching anyone who wants to tsk tsk tsk their commentary into trying to teach me a lesson that i learned far earlier than they.

i feel like punching anyone.

just throw a switch in my brain that turns off reactions to how certain people talk. just twist a knob and let me be poker-faced and unresponsive to that smirk, that smile. that smooth line that makes you want to break your own kneecaps. that mentality and willingness and sheer bluntness that make you want to want nothing else.

but today, we found a good diner. today, we saw good movies. today, we saw far too many previews.

today, i opened up the special bourbon, now to stay awake the rest of the night so as to some point hopefully pass a few hours with the newly minted friendship. the good one.

today, we listened to phil collins in one too many places and appreciated such just enough to warrant my riveting conclusion:

Because I can'’t stop loving you
No, I can't stop loving you
No, I won´t stop loving you



Why should i.

in case you were wondering...

...do not, do not, do not, DO NOT cook green peppers in a microwave. there's a tendency to turn out badly.


and cause small fires.

grips are incredibly hard to come to

the name is one i've heard too often. a slimy sort of name, at least now, prevalent enough to warrant disgust. around, in movies, in books. in the appellation of friends.

time. how disappointing to live presently and always want the future. craving it, like a hike in blood sugar. wanting to be out of class, wanting to be out of this job. out of these clothes, into a room. under the sun, over her. wanting a challenge that lasts more than a few hours, women with too much makeup. men with too much hairgel.

hi, i'm so-and-so, from section such-and-such.

brown shoes and black socks, Mr. so-and-so stands up, he's wearing brown shoes and black socks.

i start ripping paper, making my little square. i was a master of origami, when i was a lad. i was a folding extraordinaire, a papier magician. i was phenomenal. right now i can barely fashion a crane. how sad and simply uncool. how nostalgic and wrong.

two days later, i made one in about fifteen seconds. i'm back, in full effect. in full effect.

a late night at a suburban bar left me with two hours of sleep and the kind of bleary eyes that would scare little children. maybe even teenagers. during our lunch break i snuck a nap outside, in a couch; everyone in class and other classes had seen me, it seems.

"hey," i'd hear a day later, "you were the kid sleeping in the hallway on friday."

"i know you," they'd call, "you were sleeping during lunch! we left and came back an hour later and you were still sleeping!"

it seems that spanish card decks don't have 8's and 9's, originally. 40 cards in a pack.

the lectures drone on, "marketing people tend to be creative, accounting people tend to be more numbers and statistics." where does that put me, i wonder? i'm versed so very well, in both marketing and numbers. what kind of person am i? am i a person at all, definable in this little convention center away from all known civilization?



i hate, i hate, i HATE the 'questions?' powerpoint slide. the little 3-d question mark, that olive-spring green question mark that casts the darker question mark onto the space behind it, that ubiquitous slide that EVERY SINGLE PRESENTATION MUST HAVE AFTER EVERY SINGLE SECTION.




"you feel like you're wasting your time," we say. we talk about being on project neither urgent nor important, in our definition. we move on to those projects that are urgent though not important, the liars and the deceptions. "you've been deceiving me, i've been wasting my time."

"is there anything i could have done to prevent this."

it reminds me all too well of deceptions and secret meetings, lies there were not lies and truths that were not revealed. it reminds me of the callous carelessness of other people, and the way they have removed me of power. how my perceptions were countermanded by their unwillingness to be fucking straight with me.

it goes on, "tv is a substitute for challenging ourselves, because we were introduced to something new." we had the world open up to us and close abruptly, so we live our lives in screen to experience the joys that have since gone, and which cannot be easily rediscovered.

"if you choose, it's important. it's what your intent is, and how you feel after. it is because you chose that course of action that makes it fair."

now ain't that the lamentable truth.