that is the good thing about readings i think, they tend to outlast their bodies
i carry home little bits of reading-soul every time i leave
stuff them in my pockets
find them later
when i am doing the wash, when i am digging for change

oh, i think—i forgot about this one

remember.

remember. three readings in 8 days, maybe a fourth in late november. getting published in three different publications, and working at the link like it's no big thang. they treat you like you mean something. two articles in a row in three days on the maisy website after the internship was up. and you got published in rover arts this summer too, shit. remember: you are lucky. remember: you are happy to be here. you have opportunities other people aren't getting. make them work for you. don't get cocky; don't get jaded. try to stay happy. push the circle your world is circumscribed by. push.

funny

looked over at u&me noodles a few nights ago at work—

the neon sign inside was off, or gone, or both. anyway such was the effect that i couldn't see it from my store, just the reflection on their old windows of the mediaphile sign from across the street.

funny how things work out like that.

u&me

across the street from my store is nouilles u&me. it's got a big yellow sign that i guess it was kinda known for, before it got shut down a few months back for health code violations. i remember a tourist asking me and some friends of mine about the chinese restaurant with the yellow sign during grand prix week a few years back. i didn't know which place he was talking about at the time, but it must have been nouilles u&me.

anyway, i saw on this restaurant website that they'd had like 13 violations or something. maybe 13 is the last straw, once you hit 13 it's like, okay, clearly you have zero commitment to cleanliness or whatever. it makes me kind of glad i never ate there, i guess; makes me pity the poor schmucks who used to come in to my store and ask what happened to the place, it was their favourite chinese place, their stuff was the best. god knows what they were eating, although probably nothing so drastic as my boss joking to a customer that they'd been caught serving human flesh; that the chinese triads were disposing of their enemies in the food, bit by bit, little take-out boxes as tiny coffins. he really sold it; straight-faced and everything. the guy who asked bought it for a few seconds, even. he was so embarrassed afterward he told my boss to go sit in traffic for a bit. what a dope.

anyway the reason i bring this all up is that every now and then when i'm at work i look out the window, and my eye catches on the neon sign inside the restaurant. u&me, it says. u&me. it's still on, though the restaurant's been locked and dark and empty for, god, maybe five months now. i look at that sign and i just laugh, because, shit, what else can you do? it's the kind of detail that tells a story in and of itself, you know? i just look at that sign and i see all that is poignant and redolent of emotion in the stories we tell ourselves. it makes me glad it's something that exists in real life, and not in a movie, because if someone had come up with it, it would be considered heavy-handed.

"oh, i get it. the sign still being on after the restaurant has closed parallels the character still having feelings for his ex after the relationship has ended. how perfectly symbolic. though it burns bright within the dark, quiet emptiness of his life now, eventually, the restaurant will be turned into a new business, and the neon sign will be turned off and thrown in the trash."

well la-de-da, mr. screenwriter. and shit, who has a neon sign inside their frickin' restaurant? no wonder these chumps went outta business. that's top-down incompetence, if you ask me.

this has got to be

the most exciting thing i've seen on the internet since the dawn of forever

When The Link Dies, We'll Have Another Bastard's Peace

The Link is learning to skate in the 6th floor hallway with Clay's board.
The Link is I can turn corners now.
The Link is sign-out time 5:59 am.
The Link is listening intently to Tito stories when normal people are an hour or two from waking up.
The Link is two Alexes, two Julias, and a rag-tag bunch of other names.
The Link is Reggie's on a Monday night for a rum and coke and the Habs losing again, express.
The Link is Link nightmares.
The Link is lawyering up.
The Link is Tito: 57 articles, Justin: 41 articles, [...] Ashley: 22 articles, Manley: 13 articles, Diego: 9 articles.
The Link is drink machines that have "Out of Order" signs that are not out of order.
The Link is singing along to Coconut Records - West Coast.
The Link is a backrub for your ears.
The Link is pizza diplomacy.
The Link is comprised of the journalists you trust, since 1980.
The Link is using periods instead of question marks to reduce the chance of ambiguity.

hey

life is the process by which old things are stripped from us. we are forced to make do with the new and that is how we proceed.

right? tell me it's going to be alright.

wading through the hot hummer heat. days slow and weeks slower still. someday i'll come out on the other side, right? this isn't like a stone one-entrance tunnel overfilled by german kids, right? no stampedes, happy, happy. i'm so easily scared. like cattle. rattle, rattle, let it rattle, clatter, clatter, cataclysm. i can't write anymore. no more words. i'm an empty well. épuisé.

Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light

Windswept is on the shelf. Indefinitely. This is a band breaking up. We are all still friends. Who knows what the future holds. It was time. Etc.

I've got a side-project. It's a novel about friends and the lottery. It's somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1000 words long right now, although the bulk of it is written on Loto Quebec printouts and needs to be typed up, and what has been written is a bit from all over in the narrative, cobbled willy-nilly from flashes of inspiration while at work.

Anyway, it's less ambitious, tighter, and I can see the whole of it in my mind much better than I could see Windswept when I was starting out. I loved that old thing but it wasn't built on a strong foundation. I guess I hope I'll have the energy and the guts to come back to it someday. But right now it feels like all the other novels that I started and didn't finish back in the day, through NaNoWriMo. Good in places but irreparably flawed and incapable of making it out into the world on its own two (whatever) legs.

New novel, code-titled J.H.W.H., is less frilly, less poetic. It's about a story. I'm going to try to contain my tendencies to go off ridiculously. It's a first person narrative, which I'm pretty new at, but the character is pretty there in my mind so I'm not too worried. Anyway we'll see how it all goes.

So that's that. Windswept was getting harder and harder to fly. I think I have a good chance with this new story.

So out with the thinning wings and in with the winning things.

Domino's and I Have the Same Ideas About 21st-Century Child-Rearing

Taken straight from the Terms of Service:

"In any case, you affirm that you are over the age of 13, as the Domino's Website is not intended for children under 13. If you are under 13 years of age, then please do not use the Domino's Website - there are lots of other great web sites for you. Talk to your parents about what sites are appropriate for you."

untitled grind

i wonder which i hate worse: being poor or working. we'll find out, i guess. i've applied to five jobs now so far this summer. it amazes me every now and then that i actually have gotten one and that i may get a second yet—better yet, that it is my avowed intent to do this very thing. i told elise—she from the upstairs, she of the mustache—this yesterday, albeit in french. who is this typing this blog? what has he done with the proverbial real me? who knows. i'm always being visited by the feeling, a few hours into a given shift: this isn't that bad. and then i get paid and that's a minor miracle. money money money. if i can actually get that second job i will wind up in a wholly new position: possessing money i don't have the time to spend. now that would be something.

i haven't been writing.

i got a job and i've worked 51 hours and people have stolen merchandise from under my nose and i sell crack-pipes to crack-heads day-in and day-out. at least my french is better than my german. but i guess what all of this serves to teach me is that i'm still never as bad as i fear i'll be—but at the same time i'm often not as good as i think i am. happy medium? what happy medium? i don't win prose-poetry online contests. i don't even enter them. my novel is shit, and i think it's probably the best thing i've ever written so there you go. 99th percentile my ass. if only i could stop thinking for a little while. i guess this is why people become alcoholics.

i'm not as sad as this makes me sound. still high off habs hockey. i need to stop—

you know, whatever. and start on those other things. (i read in the skin of a lion and it made me wonder if ondaatje doesn't deserve richler/rushdie/seth status. we'll see.)

out.

Tidal Wind

Let me walk with my emotions,
let me do the dance of life.
We are skin-cell dust in oceans,
balanced on a diver's knife.

You can never be too certain,
'cause of what can you be sure?
It's just air behind the curtain,
when life hooks you on a lure.

So I'll bob with my emotions,
and I'll kick the dance of life,
and I'll drink the strongest potions
when I balance love and strife.

It's not lessons you'll need teaching,
should you strive to walk the rift.
Leave to whales the art of beaching,
when you're swimming all adrift.

Kid, just tread with your emotions,
dip and loop the dance of life;
when out snorkeling, with notions
you will find the corals rife.

If there's thoughts down in your belly,
cough 'em up, they're enemies.
Hold 'em long, they sting like jellies;
oh you'll see, anemone.

Don't Read Too Far Into This

I woke up around two into a fever dream. I'm not even that hot anymore. I don't know. Absurdist theatre works its veiny magic. Like that time I saw Hotel Rwanda feverish and dreamt of genocide. For a good couple of minutes I was awake but afraid to turn and face the room. They—they from my dream—seemed as though they must still have been real. I don't remember exactly what about them was scary anymore. They were four; at least one a woman, and well-dressed all. But there was the scent of someone murdered on the scene.

I turned the computer on and the light it shed on the apartment was enough to get me up to spend a few minutes in the bathroom coughing. Did I really dig up a red speck, or was that just my imagination? Everything seems wrong and twisted and just a little out of reach. Like trying to play goal in Côte-St-Luc's barn on cold meds and missing every other shot. And I couldn't understand what was wrong with me. It's important to have one's wits about one. Do you believe in your hallucinations? Do you read too deeply into what you read? Do you see too deeply into what you see?

Ça a l'air grave, mon gros. Get well soon.

Notes From a Reading Week

I'm still jobless and that has to change pronto. And by pronto, I mean, by the time classes start again on March 1st.

I had a good talk with Sina about getting published which calmed me down a bit. She made me forget for a moment how badly I want to get Windswept published as soon as humanly possible, that I don't want it sitting around in my brain forever, that I want to get it out and be done with it. I don't know why. Part of it is I'm afraid it won't be as original if I let it wait. It's set in 2008 and 2009, and it's... I don't know. I don't know if I'm at a vocalizing-this-coherently stage yet. I just want it out, I want it being read. But she made good points in favour of a slow-bubble-build.

I'm doing okay, passably, in school. I want to be doing better, though. I said three A-minuses at the least. That should be realistic enough, right? Right. Okay, let's do this.

I've started working on a new short story, titled "Runners," about a member of a high school track team. It's quite apart from Windswept or any of the Montrealers stories. I think it takes place in the States, in the Eighties or Nineties, though I'm not quite sure of everything yet.

It's very inspired by the bit in Hunger where Bobby Sands recounts a symbolic anecdote from his time on a track and field team to the Catholic priest. The pure aesthetic beauty of that scene—both the story he was telling, and what the viewer got to see—was too rich too ignore. My brain sprouted a little story, a little germinating bud, while it was lying in the loam, in the thrall.

The piece is about 1,200 words right now and I'm envisioning the final product as falling in the 10k range. It's narrated in the first person, which is very new for me, and I'm keeping the wordplay and references out, because he's a high school kid and he's a runner not a writer. It's all very fun, imposing constraints on myself. For some reason writing ends up being the only thing I'm not afraid to start working on the way I'm afraid to start essays or studying or getting a new Medicare card or stuff like that. Sometimes I avoid it, of course. I avoided starting the robbery scene in Windswept for two years. But by and large I am much more afraid of forgetting an idea before I've written it down than I am of starting something and being disappointed in it. I am capable of editing, of revising, of re-writing. I am capable of renovating.

I like renovating because everyone thinks "home improvement" when they hear renovating. But the word only means "making new again." It's a beautiful, beautiful word concealed in the muck of plumbers and carpenters. But it's all there if you look at it the right way; it's hidden in plain sight. I want to write a paragraph someday where I take off "renovating"'s dorky glasses and undo her tight pony-tail and then just like in the Breakfast Club the ugly girl is prom-queen beautiful and everyone is surprised, even though she was there the whole time. Metamorphosis. Whoo.

I'm off to bed. Let's hope I don't wake up too buggy. (Here is the shortest part that doesn't embarrass me:)

We practiced together every weeknight. We would get together and go running. Normal as anything. It's important when you are a runner to be able to separate your mind from your body, like a surgeon might cut out a piece of cancer from a patient. Thoughts do not win races. You do not have time to think to yourself about the guy pulling ahead of you in the next lane. That does not even enter into it.

bla bla bla

everything is just alright.

i worry too much.

the end.

December 26th. Thought gonna be around for a while.

She left for two and a half weeks in Paris and the French alps Thursday night.

It's been 41 and a half hours since I last heard from her, which I think is the probably the longest we've gone since July or maybe even June. I keep on over-thinking everything about everything (this letter, that letter, the third letter, the goodbye, the return, the time in between, for her and for me), which I'd forgotten about my tendency to do in the absence of actual contact. That may be the most dangerous aspect, like the cold of the water which kills you long before your legs give out. But I've been trying to keep tabs and caps on my thinking. So I'll just leave it at the dull lull of loneliness and try to focus on other things.

I should be getting more done, for instance. I told her if I didn't feel like I'd made enough of a change by the time she'd gotten back I'd call up my therapist again. I don't want to have to do that. And yet the reason I am the way I am is because it's what's easiest for me.

There's the protein issue, there's the Olympics issue, there's the job issue (no magazine puns, please) and also my new phone is a near constant-disappointment. Strange that something so much newer could be such a step back in terms of functionality in so many regards. But it looks nice, right? The struggles can be private. That's what I always look for in things: can it make me appear problem-free? Because I'm always better at solving problems when nobody's looking. I just need to be able to concentrate. That's why I turn my music off when I'm doing new things out in public, even though I keep my headphones on. I just need to be able to think.

Ironic.

October 15th: Cashmere Thoughts

I think it's a pretty good thing that I haven't gotten around to posting anything in 6 weeks or so. Don't you? I'm too in the thick of it, and not getting sick of it. It's nice. I think I'll stay, border disputes and all. Maybe it's just the music talking, but I feel like I can do this. Bring it on, if you think you can rock. Confidence is a strange mistress. Like "Happiness is a warm gun," you know. Same sorta sentence structure. Okay, enough for today. I've got a life I can live.

the September issue

Two weeks from now I'll be contemplating life from the other side of 21. Circumstances being what they are, I s'pose I'll be thinking more about age and time and maturity this 9/16 than usual. Hopefully I'll be too aged and time-worn and mature to condense them into simple equations and straightforward answers, à la Wiesel, though.

Things have been going really well, though. My worry-muscles are atrophying. Slowly. But—

surely.

I'm not thinking too much about school yet. I'm not working too much. I'm not writing but it doesn't bother me too much. There'll be time for that, to write and to un-write, for visions and revisions which a minute will, etc.

A few weeks ago I was hit for the first time by a fear of death. Those that know me know that I can be an uncommonly morbid person at times, but for some reason, the idea of dying never scared me that much, though. Perhaps my morbidity springs from a lack of fear. Perhaps the lack of fear springs from the morbidity. Who knows.

Anyway, I was riding the train home from Oshawa, and wondering what it would be like to be 70. I've never expected to live that long, but it's my grandmother's 70th birthday two days from now. It must be scary to know you're so much closer to death than birth. The mouth looming, the issue but a distant memory. And the inevitability of it. Like the open ocean.

I guess that's why I always wanted to be able to take my own life. It strips much of the fear and powerlessness from it. It becomes more a personal decision than the end of all that you are. You can even half-trick yourself into believing it won't kill you. (The mind knows nothing of death; it never can. The whole of it is life.) And then it does. Rien de plus simple.

And yet I don't think I've ever wanted to kill myself less. Life's balance-like once again. The more precious living, the more feared dying. Like lyrics in a Conor Oberst song.

Anyway. I have stuff to do. This thing isn't going to live itself for me.

Adios, muchachos.