December 12th. Thoughts in my stomach.

It's 5 am. I've been up for the last hour, wasting time, because nothing seems immediate yet. I'm listening to Bobcaygeon on repeat. I know you're not crazy about it but it fucks me up something special; I always thought stuff like "in the middle of that riot / couldn't get you off my mind" was kind of the epitome of love. Well, here I am. So much for the closet; it can have my coat but not my status as romantic.

It's weird how my aptitude for putting off work has worsened as I've grown older. There was always this sense, when I was in high school, that putting things off was okay, because I always got them done somehow on time in the end. "It's okay," I'd tell my mom, "it's not going to not get done." And it always did. But every little instance of pushing it too far sets a precedent, and pretty soon you think nothing of staying up until 7 or 8, just waiting for the urge to strike, and you fall asleep with all the bright lights in your apartment on, steadfastly convinced that you'll start working on your paper any minute now. I guess something in my brain/fingers just lacks that killer instinct.

I guess this is why I prefer exams to papers. There's less leeway. The difference between handing a paper in a day late and not doing an exam is too much for me to blow off showing up at a certain time to a certain place with a handful of pens and a stomach full of knots, ready to fill up this booklet or that booklet with all my empty, stupid thoughts. I miss simplicity, I guess. I remember Grade 10 was all about straight-up facts. That was my jam. I know what chattel means, I know what the tallest peak in Antarctica is, and so on, and so on. I guess it's just a learning process.

"And it was in Bobcaygeon / that I saw the constellations / reveal themselves / one star at a time."

I can't wait until you wake up, light in the curtains, tired smile on your lips, all things shining. We won't have much time together but every moment feels exciting in ways I won't bother trying to explain here. I love you.

December 4th. The thought thickens.

It's 7:26 ante-meridian. Blood is thicker than water; and I'd want you all around even if you had cancers. But it ain't all jugs of orange juice, apple-cider, suicide doors. There's more to it than they act.

Stuck here where I sit with the violins and the silence, blotting my ears against the sheet-sirens and the violence of the ink-blood final fantasy mental images, I get nothing done except two (2) times myself. A doppelgänger, if you will.

And the noel-halo? It's over an A this time. But I don't believe in angels, only angles, and from this one the three-point-whatever buzzer-beater's fading fast. Maybe I just have the wrong haircut. I've seen leakings of the future through the seams in my fingers. It's not pretty, three times fast.

Forward, we (I) march, though, then. Forward, onwards, upwards. The fence is up, my tongue is loaded, six-shooter style, with offensive ways to make a mark, and in nets: a scary price to pay for my missed deeds.

So I'll go then, for my refrigerator's sake, and buy off a monster or two; but not more. These days my wallet's as thick as my torso. Which is understandable, maybe; I just might have a rib missing.

November 14th. Thought in a Trap.

Theme for the week: I don't know. Everything keeps slip-sliding. Even the little successes get washed up in the current, eddies, eddies, eddies. I wish eagle-like I could fly above it all. I wish I knew where to put in the right amount of work, the right amount of fear.

The new music—Ninja High School, Inside Out, more Trap Them—has been nice. I only feel like I'm always hungry. More, more. I'm a glutton of the worst kind. It doesn't show on my body—at least, not yet, of course—but I can't stop consuming. I want to read everything, to write everything, to do everything. I want everyone to love me, to want me. I can't stop. I can't.

At least I made a step towards keeping myself linked in. Neon colourchrome giant chain pictures across a swath of black. We're having a party. You're invited. It's going to fuck your bones until you cry out 'rhythm!' and bruise your fucking brain black. This, in my head, is how everyone lives, outside, at night. And tonight: more games, more toying, more eyeing and shying and dying. Maybe Sunday I'll tell my parents. I don't think it would matter. Maybe.

At least I'm too busy to care about the stumblebums in red jerseys and the wrong end of highlight reels. The baby-face beat-down. Let the rest of the city have 'em. I've got too much on my plate to eat my score-words every couple of nights. Besides, I'm always at work, almost, anyway.

I guess that's the real theme of the week. Work. And next week? Less work. Maybe more play? Maybe. Maybe I'll taste the sweet love of victory, and fuck defeat.

Could work.

November 7th. Blood Thoughts.

I was working yesterday (first full real cash shift in over a year) and a bunch of people I vaguely know came by. Shirine's Paul, Will's Antoine. I was grateful to certain degrees that they saw me as a cashier and not as a bagger. Makes me feel all accomplished-like, sort of.

The main bit, though, was this one instance. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught this girl in line at my cash kissing her boyfriend. She was tall and had that—that—hair and in just that one second (maybe less) I was just so fucking angry. It wasn't her, obviously. Lots of girls in Montreal probably look like that from out the corner of my eye. It just scared me how emotional I was able to get about it so quickly. I guess I'm still not unbroken again yet. I need to keep working on stuff like that.

I keep toying with the idea of dropping ENGL-227.

We'll see, I guess.

November 4th. Thought Your Makeup On.

Fuck. I have the worst love/hate relationship with other people's blogs. I guess, with representations of other people on the internet, period, if my dalliances with MySpace back in the day are anything to go on. Everything just comes out so perfect and enviable. I told Shirine last night my purest loves were ones gone unnoticed. It scared me how true it sounded. And all these—tumblr, wordpress, blogspot, whatever—just kill me. There's a word that fits perfectly but I'll never (redolent) remember what it is.

Note: It was not redolent, after all. Maybe there wasn't a word. Who knows.

I wonder how much of this is that I'm a guy. I got my new copy of the Atlantic in the mail today. They still think I'm Alexander Hanley. The main article so far as I can tell (at least the first of the main ones, pagination-wise) was about gender dysphoria in children. It was a real pleasure to read. Obviously, my problem is not even remotely on the level of a seven-year old boy saying, "Look, Mommy, I'm a girl!" with his penis tucked between his legs. But there's an issue, obviously. I guess at the heart of it it might just be my "grass is greener" fetishization of the Other. If I was a girl I would envy the shit out of guys. It's funny how things work, like that, in my head. God knows there's a lot more separating me from Ian MacKaye than 26 years of age.

Another part of it, though, is my constant envy. Ugh. I'm such a head case. I wish I could just be content as me. I wish I could be a better me in order to be content. At the end of the day, I just wish I was someone else. I told myself I'd go to bed at 10. Then 11, then 12, then 1, then 2. It's almost 3. I have shit I need to do and no inclination to do it. It's murderous.

Then I sit back and laugh at myself because even all the other perfect dolled up undolled up unextravagantly beautiful wreckful girls in the world could read this and not get the same feeling I get out of reading through a year or two of some other stranger's life, some whoever whatever chick who always never manages to mention me (especially when mentioning specifically not me, all the things right around me i couldashoulda been couldashoulda been a part of)

and it fucks me up something special

and to boot i'm not even nano-rhyming. fuckkkkkkkkkk.


(park that car, drop that bomb



sleep on the floor,

October 21st. Dot dot dot. Dash dash dash. Thought thought thought.

I've only cried two times since that fateful haircut in early August of 2001. The first time was December 29, 2005, a few hours after Kat broke up with me, lying in my parents' bed at 346, and realizing I'd never get to hold her side-blubber again. I guess even back then I was a slave to the little things.

The second time was September 17, 2007, two or so days after the first break up with Steph, when I finally watched Finding Nemo, sitting on the living room couch at Claremont, and the cover of Beyond the Sea came on over the closing credits and I just lost it.

Number three is right around the corner. I can feel it lurking in my head, waiting for the right moment. I don't think it'll take that much to set it off anymore. I don't even have anyone that can break up with me. I'm just really fucked up these days.

I have my first midterm of the semester in an hour. After that disaster of a Milton quiz who the hell knows how this'll go. In my head, everything's pretty clear, but.

I haven't done a word of Windswept in over a week now, I think. It's starting to gnaw at me. There's still a timidity to it, but it'll grow.

Days like these and suicide—no matter how distant how far down the line—feels increasingly the only option. Some life.

And in the background: phone calls from no one, and my throat's gagging full of neo-Platonism and

a chorus of voices singing together happy

"We could dance all night..."

October 12th. Gordian Thoughts.

Time-taker-uppers keep keeping me down. The weeks are like a maze with no exit signs and hardly any landmarks. I've written myself a few notes on my arms. Keep writing. Don't skip classes. Don't be too late for work. Don't eat too much junk food. Don't make that jump. Keep waiting. Keep wading. We'll see where they get me.

The hockey season's started, which means I'm going to be spending way too much time caring about it. I guess all my cares are disproportionately important, though. The stupid facebook messages to no one, the attempts at decent comebacks (in French and in English), how to get yellow to stay on top of black. Whether anyone notices a grey ghost with his grey goose shuffle, day in day out. And let's not forget the endless perfectionism in the artistic medium of plastic bags and the food that's making its slow walk towards becoming shit in so many toilets all over the downtown area. So we go on, the new HNIC anthem extolling our virtues in lieu of a eulogy. Galvanised.

I wonder if beauty ever means anything, in the end. I wonder what processes lead people from being babies to being babies. I wonder at how I can be so serious, so unserious, so quick to retort and so thick-skinned, all at once. I wonder how deep the needle will have to go when I finish the semester and finally start Ulysses and finally finish it and finally get its cogs and screws and nuts and bolts tattooed all over my stupid body. I wonder about capstones, about headstones, about stone henges, and stone heads. I wonder, like Character, what I'll be like in my thirties (Ed.'s note: Notice here his life is imitating his writing, and not vice-versa. A sign of times changed? Or just a crippling addiction to binaries and paradoxes? Who knows.) Who will be left to read out my eulogy to a quiet church half-full of faces untearstained? Who will be left to collapse, nauseous, at the wake, wondering about what might've been?

I guess the solution is to not die. Thanks, Alexander.

October 4th. Marx's Grave is a Communist Thought.

Outside my front door the floorhallway smells like cherry popsicles childhood. It's strange and sad and stoically silent how they manage to bottle a perfection like that and use it to clean shit-tiles with in little apartment landfilldings tucked away into nowhere. I live on St. Marc. Nick and Norah were all around St. Mark's Place. St. Marx place. Swing with me, sixties. We're running away, running away into the night. We're never coming home.

I had almost forgotten how I can't deal with stress without slipping into suicidal ideation. Mmmm-hm. My bike got stolen. My spotlight never got turned on. Christ, I hate myself. All these thoughts—"crazy vs. talented, more sex than i've had since two months ago, i got what i wanted before it was what i wanted and back then i wanted something else anyway. sick, six, sick. metro cars. metro cars. fuck."—

and i'm always trying to recapture in words that image in my head (that imagine my head) of the old, broken men, arms crossed resting on rakes or shovels, staring at the clouds as they roll, roll, roll out. watching. waiting.

and it's beautiful to me in my head and the image imbues the words (for me) with something powerful but i think they're stilted outside of my skull. who knows. who the fuck knows.

i miss the idea, i miss it, i miss everything. i miss my stupid bike and worrying about it. i just need something to love, and someone to listen when i say "i had an epiphany today." i guess epiphanies are like dreams; they only mean anything to the person who had them. anyway, they're too ethereal to remember properly after a few hours. so fuck it.

i feel heavy. i'm weighed down by all the million-weights of the waiting, of the eternal waiting. beauty and the way it makes me smile only worsens the time in between. listen to me. someone needs to take me out back, shoot me in the head with a bolt-gun, and make glue of me. in death i could finally keep things together. kiss kiss, bang bang.

i could go on for as long as this window's capable of expanding. let's not and say we didn't. everyone has better things to do. if you'll excuse me, i have a date with a pencil and my memory of some coming mannerist attraction and a piece of paper where everything is nice in my brain and comes out all shitty. b+ eternal. i need to learn latin so i can be even more depressing. that or go back to reading emile zola.

i wonder if even one of any of my fleeting angry crushes ever caught their eyes on me, where i'd be. i'd have thrown it all away—i'd still throw it all away—for some hand-holding. maybe the beatles were right, after all. we all live in a yellow submarine.

September 27th. Thought the hots for you?

It's funny how one forgets.

Admittedly, it's been a few months—May, June, July, August, and most of September—since last time. I mean, shit. I realized this morning that I barely even remember what sex feels like (Ed.'s note: This is not strictly true.), so this should hardly come as a surprise. The child-like grabs, the hurrying for cover, the cursory glance. The reddening inflaming Lisa Robinson anger. The following minutes of self-doubt and all-consuming frustration. Blah blah blah.

And lest we forget, there were also the conversations in my head: "You see, there are three types of students, upon getting marks back. Type 1 sees his mark, understands that it corresponds to what he handed in, and why, and is satisfied. Type 2 sees her mark, becomes frustrated because she thinks she deserves better, and shoots over to the teacher to complain. Type 3, me, thinks he deserves better, but instead of complaining, says nothing and fumes about it for weeks on end."

Well, maybe not. I've got a packed schedule, anyway. Maybe Provigo will see fit to do both of us a favour and give me a happy medium of hours... because I certainly don't know how many I want/need. I guess one of the pros of being of two minds about something is that regardless of the outcome you have something (if you're an optimist) to be happy about.

(This is where you point out that I'm a pessimist, but nobody reads this, so I win the argument on the basis of democracy.)

Speaking of which... I hate patriotism with an idiotic fervour, but damn if I don't prefer living in Canada to living in the U.S. based solely on the way our federal electoral system works. My goodness.

Anyway. Apart from my constant workings on Windswept, and the ways I keep managing to increase the scope of it without increasing the target wordcount... all I have to worry about is keeping my daydreaming in check. Keep reminding myself that she's a bitch, and too old for me, and everything else ever goddamn. Ugh. I prefer writing about Windswept. It depresses me so much less. I have to stop getting myself into TV interviews for it, though. It's not not not not not healthy. And that was five nots for emphasis, not to make you figure out that a quintuple-negative evens out to a single one. Odds out to a single one. A bunch of words that sort of describe me. WHATEVER. More ugh. Here's a passage that I wrote recently that won't see the light of lj (at least, non-private lj) for a while. You can thank me later. *wistful sigh*

~~~~
Character breathed out. They were at a fast food joint somewhere. His mind was blurry. It was always hard to concentrate when he was feeling overfull. The summer was going strangely. The move was fractioning up his mind as much as it was his apartment. Perhaps they were mostly the same thing, anyway. Perhaps they always had been. Anna-Leigh was talking to him about Harry. He had been having difficulty, lately, making conversation. He wasn't sure whether or not she had noticed. He felt less and less interested in intellectualisms, arguments. Whatever. Something, somewhere, was going. He worried, running his fingers through his hair, feeling for the hole, hoping somehow frailly to plug it. His eyelids fluttered unconsciously.

"Yeah, he was telling me this... stuff... something about this short story he's working on. He said... he said it was going to be all in dialogue?" She made the sentence, awkwardly, into a question, as though asking him whether or not it made any sense at the same time as she was stating it. He frowned, puzzling.

"Isn't that just a play?"

"Well, yeah..." She hadn't considered this, but landed on her feet. "But, I mean, it's all in the intent, right? Plus," gaining confidence, "what you call it, how you frame it... influences how the audience reads it." She was throwing herself against his intellect. He smiled wearily at her and dipped his head to his straw, sipping, sucking, and nodded as he came back up for air.

"I guess."

He wondered where this was going. Was this the cliché, the dulling, that he knew about? Little pieces of him infinitesimally rubbing into the void, a rain of high-school dandruff slowly, over the months, taking effect? He took his fingers out of his greasy hair and pressed them against the dying, firm sadness of the table, looking for solidity. She was lost in thought. He studied the curves of her face, her beauty. She hadn't changed, nor had his reaction. It was still electric, there was still a spark, a shock. He was worried, though, whether this could keep meaning anything, could hold up and stock up and dam up meaning inside itself like a sponge, a bear-trap, for so long. And if it could, was it not, in some way, dangerous? Was she too much? He stopped and wondered. Well, was she?

And he looked at her, offhand. And she was. But he didn't say anything, not yet. If they had found a way to make cars run on water, a perpetual motion machine, would we know? Would they tell us? I've seen Primer. Do we end up keeping the big discoveries to ourselves?

He wondered.

September 13th. I thought the law.

I'm three days from being not-a-teenager-anymore. For a while there I worried that my guys—my guys, you know—weren't realistic as young twenty-somethings because of how much emotional drama they had. Well, each passing day proves them more and more possible, but maybe also more and more like me and not like anyone else. Move over, hacksaw. I am the new king.

I'm listening to new new music—Deathspell Omega, Feist, Titus Andronicus—and new old music—Gorilla Biscuits, HORSE the Band, Jay-Z, Pelican—and it's fun. I'm like an adventurer. The deepest, darkest Congo. Victoria Falls. Dr. Leunginstone, I presume? No, just a little hippo. Well, I'm not done making an ass out of myself, at least, publicly or otherwise. I guess I should eat more.

I woke up at 5:37. Today was my day to buy textbooks, art supplies, Peek Freans, and to sell my soul to Provigo and/or PA. Instead, sleep. No transactions recorded.

I did get the stones and the website use enough together to pull myself across the downtown core and into the deepest (not really) bowels of Place Montreal Trust. I placed my trust in some employees and came out heavied-down with the (hopefully) right stuff. Tomorrow, here I come. Three packs of Mike and Ikes and doing my best not to take a liking to anything.

It makes me sad that I considered suicide extensively (whoo ideation) before even mentally reaching "move back out next month." Maybe I really am as dumb as I look. I'll let you know when the jury gets back to me.

EDIT: I just dreamt I had 18 million dollars in credit-card debt. It is so good to be awake.

August 24th. Da Thought 3.

I'm floating, falling, flying out of control. It's past two, I'm losing it, no word from Concordia, no work on the horizon, no word count changes, nothing. It's all—all of it—in my head. I'm too (whooo) cerebral. You know what I'm talking about, pretty eyes. You know.

In M.I.A.'s Paper Planes video she's wearing a Ride the Lightning shirt.

I had this fantasy (I keep them, like old hockey cards, O-Pee-Chee, in the back of my mind) of getting to fuck an Indian girl with an adorably big nose and a Ride the Lightning tee. I don't know why but it was something a year or a year and a half ago, way before the video came out or probably I'd even heard the song.

The world is trippy like that sometimes, like rainbow coincidences and lightning on demand. All these things dropping out of the sky for me, almost makes a guy want to go back to believing in things. Almost.

And then long walks home and lucky, pretty eyes make it all crumble into forget grocery store's closed locked crumple into fear of failure fear of flying fear of trying.

We all know where this is going. I'm not going to ride this until the end. I get off here, this is my stop, goodnight.

August 5th. Thought, can we get a witness?

I haven't written (or read) anything in about a week. It feels disgusting. I don't know where it's come from but I want it gone. This job and these friends (neither of which really exist) and all these goddamn thoughts.

Tomorrow (today) is Biodome Double Pizza Bell Centre box office. Tomorrow (two days) is blankets lines rain Radiohead back home tired exhausted. And Thursday, maybe Jin and Sandy, maybe. Somewhere in there does Uncle Con get in touch?

(Discordant music interlude.)

Here's to my future, here's to no future. Here's to finishing behind. Hardons heartaches pistons piss-takes. Vipers and rare blood types. Still have to finish A Portrait and The Brothers. Still have to finish Day Sixteen. Still have to keep slogging. Clean out the sink, clean out my wardrobe.

Clean out my cluttered head.

July 27th. Thought and sold.

I wonder how much faith it's mentally safe to place on this story getting me what I want out of life. Two years from now, broken, a half-dozen or more rejection letters in hand, maybe 36 or so credits to my name at Concordia, will I quietly kill myself? Or have we moved past that? It's hard to tell if the writing's coming because I'm doing well, or vice-versa. Probably a bit of both. Even if I do finish it, though, and even if I finish it around when I want to, which is to say, early January, and if I edit it for half a year (God knows that will take some patience) before sending it anywhere... and if I get an agent early on in the process and get a book deal, there's still such a ridiculous gulf. Mexico, yes, sane. Tonkin, sure, no problem. This, however...

Well, maybe I'll learn how to swim, and things will go swimmingly. This is bull-horns-grab time, innit?

July 4th. Ink thought tests.

The air is all still in this place. Everything feels dead, though I know outside it'll be all too living for my livid lonely likes. A simple concept such as going out to get some food (two slices, piping re-heated) to still my prowling hungers turns into an epic quest. Huh.

It's been more than two weeks now. Fifty to go. I've read two books, though (The Children of Men and The Good Earth) so I'm a whole pile up on last-year-me. Maybe I can translate that into progress in other areas. I contemplated that last night, walking home. Maybe I'll come to love the mayhem. I'm already apparently pretty chill with talking to sans-abris (at least, when they force me to)... maybe in time I'll build up and tear down the respective walls I need to deal with regular passersby. Maybe I'll be better at phone calls. Maybe.

I've gotten some writing done—a short poem, some lyrics, some novelry, this blog—and had Dan over. Briefly I was competent under the spotlight. Now I've wasted two days fiddling, reading, hiding. I need to get over this, get into Pharmaprix and Canadian Tire and the Triada Corp. offices and all that shit. I need to get on the phone. I need clean clothing. I need, I need, I need.

Maybe Mats Sundin will sign a contract with the Canadiens after all. "Would you bargain your ways," Dan once asked me, "for a little taste of silver?" And I would, and I wouldn't. And well, is there such an one who would? And I know that yes, and also no. (At least I can tell my radicals apart, right?) So long as Marc Denis doesn't get the #2 job. Grabovski I can bear to lose, but Grabovski and Halak is too much.

Anyway. I have questing to do. It's like Lancelot's Armor: a solo quest, but easily winnable and it bears much fruit when it comes to dealing with problems. And off, and out I go, into the puny night, indeed.

June 1st. Just thoughting down some last minute notes.

I finally got some more writing done on Windswept. Christ am I bad. When I read that Chabon wrote 4000 words a week I kind of cringed. Way to not be an author at all, Alex. God knows the distance separating me from the Stephenie Meyers of the world is more than the Montreal to LA, a couple of years and being driven by desire. I think. (I know?) Fuck it. It doesn't matter anyway, that's not really where I want to be, but it still weighs on me.

So I got four paragraphs out. 410 words. I kind of like how it went. I might decide to keep this rolling. (I hope.) Writing's probably going to be my main thing six months from now. I'm going to have basically one friend, give or take, probably going to be spending chunks like 50 hours or something without saying anything meaningful to anyone or hearing anything in reply. Eating poorly, sleeping worse. Just me and my desire to get straight As. That is, if Concordia even lets me come back. If not, I go nuts. (I guess.) A year of work and a terrible novel and nothing else?

(Notice, if you will, that I just called it a novel. It is no longer a short story or novella or anything else. I need it to be a novel, I need it to be long and majestic and everything I have so far been completely unable to produce. Windswept is my saving grace. I told Dan during the winter I wouldn't kill myself so long as it wasn't finished. I need to keep writing (and I mean actually writing, not just putting it off indefinitely) until either it is good or I am. That is going to be my life from here on in.)

Maybe I will make enough money to start getting the tattoos I'm going to start dreaming feverishly of. "This is the number love. This is the letter fuck." And so on.

I'm not going to get into my other problems. Mostly everything sucks right now. I take great yet tiny pleasures in my music, in my felt-protected chair feet, in my stupid candy and my ugly, broken daydream fantasies about everything. Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and get hit by a car when I first leave the house and be spared the rest.

On second thought, it's dad's birthday tomorrow. That would be kind of a dick move on my part.

POSTERITY EDIT: The 410 words swelled quickly to 1000+. I am not a failure. Also I ended up doing lots of other little edits here and there and adding some stuff from wsadds. So... on the whole... a very positive experience.

May 1st. What have I thought in my pocket?

On my way back home from Will's and watching The Aviator, I stopped on Claremont not far south of Westmount and pissed in an alleyway. Christ, it was magnificent. Then I walked over to my Royal Bank branch and deposited my mom's winter-coat cheque and floated on home.

Today's session with Jamie was interesting. This might not get me anywhere—it hasn't so far, but I feel like maybe he's still feeling me out a bit—but it's nice to have someone listen to me while I talk. I guess that's one of my main problems at this point. I don't feel comfortable telling anyone how shitty I feel about things. No wonder being my girlfriend is no fun. At least Jamie gets paid, and he only has to deal with me 50 minutes a week. On the other hand, he says "wizout wanting to..." and it makes me laugh. Whizz out. I dunno. Wizard?

I just watched Juno last night. I told myself I was going to wait until I had someone (you know, someone) to watch it with but that's going to take forever. I'll let Atonement be my waiting movie. Anyway, Michael Cera was fantastic and I enjoyed it a lot... so much so that I watched it with the director/writer's commentary on right afterwards. And... Olivia Thirlby is hella cute.

The Habs suck. It is frustrating to be a fan of theirs right now. It could be worse, I guess. I could be a Washington or Boston or Calgary fan. I guess all the other teams' fans have had a bit more time to get over their heartbreaks. Anyway, we'll be better next year, I think. With a core of these guys, maybe a free agent or two and some grit for the playoffs... who knows. We could make it to the third round, even.

I guess the post-Seder party malaise has died down a bit. It burns bright and then pooft there's no more wick to burn. I hope? I know that's not true. But it's just gonna be embers for a bit, I guess. Until next party. I wrote like two-and-a-half songs and I listened to Piazza, New York Catcher a lot and school is over so I can sleep whatever. Plus, the apartment monkey looks like it might be off my back. That would be super. Now for a job and a place. Presto hey chango, I'm functional. (Let's not get amibitious. Semi-functional. I still do my banking at 3 a.m., for Christ's sakes.)

I'm so torn as to whether I want to be more or less like Howard Hughes. Oh for a time when 352 miles per hour made you the fastest man in the world, and you could crash land in a beet-field without fear of rap jokes from Alex Manley.

P.S. Next time I'm out at 3 a.m. I think I might bring some sidewalk chalk and some poetry. No sense in sitting around not adding to the surrealism of everyone else's lives, right?

April 19th. Specks thoughting the horizon.

Regrets: I missed Paint It Black. That was terrible of me. I wish, of course, that I had someone, anyone, to go to shows like that with. Maybe the fault is my own for not asking anyone. Maybe not. But McDonald's and an OT win do not make up for a mistake like that.

Vlada is returning to Vlada. By which I mean: I can never seem to reconnect properly with her. Maybe it's something, maybe it's nothing. I have to try harder.

I'm being really bad at this tax shit. Bureaucracy is one of those things that scares me way too much to deal with. At least I can listen to The Loved Ones here and there and try to forget how tight my stomach is wound.

I'm not eating well. There's a bit of pudge, I think sticking out where my stomach used to be. I'm not fat, not by a long shot. Not even, I think, by "The Devil Wears Prada" standards. But still. I don't like it. Maybe Shirine is onto something with her "repressed anorexia" business. But: I'm afraid, deep down, of my father's post-teens weight gain, and it'll just be chickens—or, in this case, chicken wings—coming back to roost.

My loneliness doesn't help my awkwardness. The less I talk to other people the further I feel from normal when I do. And it always matters too much to me. I can't count how many times I construct conversations to improve the ones I messed up at. Maybe I'm just being overly perfectionistic.

I can't write Windswept for the life of me. God. I wonder how I always see myself as a writer. All I'm good at is coming up with cute little snatches of dialogue that I never remember long enough to type or write down. That and self-critical, soul-search blog posts.

(Oh, and the Habs suck giant monkey cock. But I guess I maybe should have seen that one coming. The number one part of being a serious nut about a sports team is you have to have a really ingrained sense of pessimism. So I'm good to go, right.)

There have been some positives, I guess.

I've been able to keep the apartment as a whole, and my room in particular, pretty damn clean.

The subletting business is going less badly than I expected it to. The superintendent's wife is bailing me out bigtime.

I got to see Brick, which is fantastic, and is now one of my favourite all-time movies.

(At this point the list hits a snag. I can't think of any other positives.)

No, I was right. That was all there were. Unless you count "still not starving despite complete and utter laziness due to the pity-in-the-form-of-money support from parents." Because I don't.

Well. That's all the pessimism-as-catharsis I can manage for tonight. Cheers.

April 7th. Got the thoughts for you.

I'm back to my old mistakes. I skipped both my classes today, and my poetry reading last night at O'Reagan's Pub (wherever that is downtown).

I've got my second psychiatrist appointment tomorrow. I don't know how that's going to go. I don't have much to say, except that I'm lazy and impossible to work with. Either as a teammate or as modeling clay.

I'm also wasting an afternoon I could be spending doing laundry, buying groceries, seeing Vlada, buying Paint It Black tickets, whatever, sitting around in my clean room with my unwashed clothes and my dirty body. Oh and also I need to pay rent.

To add to the list: I've written one, count it, one poem since I handed out my second package a month and a half or so ago, and I've made pretty close to zero progress on Windswept. I'm so glad I don't have any final exams to write or I'd have to be really worried. I guess maybe hopefully I can pull myself together for the final chapbook. God. I hate that I'm in a program where I have to make chapbooks. I hate stupid fucking workshops. I hate being scared to show up for class because I'm not willing or able to participate in honest and frank discussion of other people's work.

I wish I knew where this was going. I wish my birthday was midsummer. I could at least get a taste of being twenty before school starts (or doesn't) again. Eugh. I need a Trillian and a trip to Madagascar.

At least let me get 16 more wins. That would be nice.

March 26th. It's been a year. Thoughts?

I feel saner than I have in years. Not years, but. I guess that's what school does for me? At least, normal school. Like taking tests instead of writing poetry. Oh and also, I'm way too smart for my Linguistics class. Like I come in and be all "I drop science, mother bitches!" and the class be all "Oh Alex, even though you have only been to four classes previous to this one all semester and even though your studying for this test was, like the infamous Chappelle joke, bombed out and depleted... you still finished the test faster than everyone.*" Fuckin' right A, I did. Now, for naps.

Oh and also: what's with the four day break, NHL schedule? Laaame.

*Actually third, but the class is like 100+ people big so it's about the same.

March 24th. Thoughts in the dark.

Alternate title: "March 24th. Autothoughts, transform and roll out!"

I watched some movies. The Devil Wears Prada, Semi-Pro, Horton Hears a Who. I gave myself a haircut. Matt didn't invite me to his birthday party for me to not show. Maybe people are getting smarter. Tonight: Skittles and the Habs play the Sens. Me, fate. In that room like Keira and Matthew and just "shall we dance" bitchy-bitcheyes. And again I have my fake-confidence character, all "hell fucking YES I DID" on his chest and all "nine tymz" across his knuckles. Grarrr. A reminder: it could be worse. And another: You could be a character in Dawson's Creek. You may not deal with them well but at least you can deal with other people's mistakes at all.

Okay. Breathe.

March 21st. More thoughts.

My head hurts. The difference-gauze is fading. I'm back to the lab again. I need a job and something to keep me hopeful. And a 4-3-0 record, minimum. I can only hope Alexei Kovalev, in His wisdom, hears my prayers. Shit, it is Easter. So sue me for the religious crap. I'm going to take a nap. Let's all hope I wake up better.

I need to live in fiction for a year or more.

March 18th. Thoughts.

I'm too stupid for my own good. I have to write this all in one go because god knows I can't handle opportunities to edit. Nothing will ever be perfect enough but I feel like getting something off my head.

I haven't blogged in ages. I don't really know why I stopped, or why I started, or why I'm re-starting. It's all a matter of the little unimportant idiocies that added up build a life. My only hope is the same reason why the slowest person in a trio (in this case, Gimli) doesn't get left the fuck behind: the adaptation of pace to correct perceived deficiencies as they develop. And maybe something about cinematic intra-film logic. But then we could always blame John Ronald Reuel first, right?

Part of that of course is that Legolas and Aragorn slow down and stop occasionally. Does the same hold true in life? The jury's still out. "We've got our rope neckties. The light fixture, shedding sawdust, keeps us hanging on."

So I'm angry. Every mannequin with dyed hair and decent shoes is a life-raft. Too bad I'm no Szut. Or at least, if I am, I'm dying in the ocean without remorse. Does the fact that I got to fly a fighter plane make it okay? Or is it enough to get shot down by the Tintins of the world? Is reading fiction any stupider than reading one's life into it? And does the quality, or the maturity of the underlying thematic elements, factor into that?

Fuck. I was thinking, earlier. I think I like being confused by art because it means I don't have to bullshit my perception. "The Bank Robbery" by Steven Schutzman. "The Benefits of Thinking Out Loud" by A Wilhelm Scream. "Paprika" and parts of "Manhattan." The shit in the new collection at the MAC by Geoffrey Farmer. I can just sort of lose myself in the beauty and not psycho-analyze it to death. I'm fighting growing up.

Is that going to come up, in my therapy sessions? How old I feel? Or rather, how young I feel? Am I going to feel bad that I can talk about myself and my perceived personal problems for hours and hours on end? Will whoever has to listen to me talk about the stupid things I say to his or her friends over dinner in black and white a few nights later? I do and I don't hope so.

Am I ever going to be able to keep writing my poetry? Will "Windswept" ever take shape? And is it okay if it doesn't? What about submission and both of its meanings? And on that token, will I ever be able to write a sestina? Hopefully we'll find that one out sooner than later. But that leads to another question: Will I ever be a good student?

And will that ever even matter? So.

So I'm angry. Apparently that's obvious. I guess my obviousness filter is completely off. I just want honest opinions from everybody about myself. Is being that self-involved analogous to insanity? I'm afraid of the consequences of letting myself stop long enough to be studied. If it's not medical then I'm out of a crutch and I'm out of the illusion that I'm functional regardless. At least that means I don't have to consider how much brain shit is like or unlike "a broken elbow" or whatever stupid shit Dr. Karayan told me. I don't want to suggest that my elbow isn't as complicated as my brain (it isn't) but come on. My elbow doesn't govern all that much, in the end.

Anyway. It's late. The last track has stopped playing. I wish I could write fiction this fast, these days. I wish I could make what I'd just written fiction, even. That would be something. If only I could exorcise my demons by writing about them.

If that were possible then probably nobody would know how to write. You gotta pick your battles.

In my dreams I'm giving a reading in the basement of the MMFA and all the questions are getting asked by people I know. I only ever want to be famous to impress people I've already met. Maybe I should be a fireman after all.

My dreams would all be about pulling myself out of burning buildings. Hah.