cool to see me still capable of meltdowns, bad nights and worse mornings. shuang started the night saying it felt like we'd arrived, like that was the moment when we realized where we were, and how far we'd come, and it did. nights when your cohort is like: full-time job and college professor (engaged), preparing to move to the states for a job, just bought a new car and a dog, "marketing director," etc. but red wine is like feelings in liquid form, and that house, and that girl. so we escaped, feeling too old, and i, too everything. and i am no good at cranium when i'm down, apparently. should have just fallen asleep on the floor like the puppy, instead went home and ate smartfood popcorn and chatted with all the wrong girls on facebook (just two, but at 2 am talking to two girls simultaneously feels almost overwhelming, especially when they were the two girls you'd wanted and not wanted to see at the reading later that night across town that you bailed on).

i feel like i'm blogging too much but also whatever.

1) had a job interview today, for the job. like we all interviewed: me, corey, colin, riley, laura; kalina from the other side. julia's got one of her own coming up too i hear. feels like everyone on a certain level was picked which is a nice feeling but also daunting cause everyone in that group runs their shit. and i feel like i probably fucked myself in the interview maybe. i mean i didn't, coming out of it, but the more i thought about it the more it seemed like a routine full of unstuck landings. i don't know what they are looking for, what they were looking for. i didn't go in with a clear sense of what i wanted to sell about myself. which they said was fine and was the point but it feels like you can't take them at face value when they say that. you can say you don't want anything for your birthday but you always kind of do. the main takeaway from a personal perspective (i realized this way later, hours and hours later) was that maybe job interview stress is scalable. i don't think i was that much more stressed than i've been for other interviews, like the multimags one or the maisonneuve one. like, i was stressed and off my game, but seven hundo a week for copy editing at a major city newspaper is so different from fact-checking for free at a hip niche arts & opinions quarterly or ringing up smokes and magazines for minimum wage in n.d.g. so maybe i'm just going to be experiencing the same stress levels at every stage, and i'll adapt to the changes? that would be interesting, and, while maybe not ideal, certainly better than what i expected.

2) described the loneliness i was feeling while at work in a fb message to sruti, because when you're feeling emotionally out of control you get to turn on your 3G. "there's this scene in the movie never let me go / where the carey mulligan character is like / freaking out" "i've heard of this scene" "about how she sometimes feels overwhelmed by sexual urges and feels totally helpless to her libido" "yeah" "and she thinks there's something wrong with her / and keira knightley is like / no everyone is like that sometimes / i'm carey mulligan right now / i just feel crushingly alone and desperate" which was beautiful in a way, but also fitting in that it contained within itself (as i realized midway through the texting sequence) the antidote: everyone gets like this. [not sexually; at least not fully sexually, but emotionally, anyway]

3) and then that girl i've been getting antsy about these past weeks followed up our two-and-a-half-hour conversation monday night that led into a vast, crushing expanse of no dialogue tuesday or wednesday into a fast-paced 20-minute conversation just then, just now, which made everything feel okay again. as if i could even feel the same thing for a few consecutive hours without accidentally then jumping on a train going in the opposite direction. christ. (that's another thing i forgot about myself: the flip-flopping).

okay. bedtime. class tomorrow morning.

incredible how lonely you can feel, though. i forgot about this entirely. i know a lot of it's because i've been sick and staying at home on the internet or trying to get to sleep and either succeeding or failing but i forgot, just forgot, about the brutal loneliness you can have, the way it pushes up against your skull and you forget everything else. like how you'll be happy again at some point, how you'll feel wanted again at some point, how you'll feel safe and comforted at some point. all this in time.

successfully made it through nash. what a fucking week. thrilling to watch myself in action, surrounded by friends and strangers, constantly interacting with people. still not sure how i made it with so little alone time, or without self-destructing and skipping out on everything (i did miss like... four blocks to stay in the hotel room and either sleep or laptop, but still) and i managed to push myself and get drunk with the crew every night without going massively too far (saturday night excepted) or making any big mistakes (returned home w/ body, possessions, finances intact [minus the $750 attendance fee and somehow managing to blow through the $130 i had in my wallet in five days. main costs were alcohol, chipotle burritos, and a belt after mine broke before the sheezer concert]). oh yeah, thursday night there was an all-female weezer cover band who played exclusively from the blue album and pinkerton. that was a fun pit. there were two girls having a little romance moment with each other through the whole show around me, which was adorable, and the whole link crew was in the same general vicinity just going nuts. during the blue album songs i was in pure ecstasy. corey and julia and this girl i had a crush on, a copy editor from waterloo, all crowd surfed, and i coolly outmanoeuvred the urge to drunk text you-know-who. it was a sensation-fuelled week. during the final keynote speech before the gala saturday i tried to count all the people i'd developed mini crushes on over the course of the conference and it was something crazy like 12. after the gala i was drunk and, sitting down at a table near the bar, drinking to get over the pre-award ceremony nervousness and the not-winning-an-award comedown (and post going at it a bit on the dance floor), i kept calling over members of the 12 as they passed by to tell them that they'd won the award for best this or best that. it turned into three legitimately interesting, drunken conversations, with said copy editor (who had a boyfriend) and a senior news writer from ubc (who left when the copy editor came back to talk to me and i was too drunk to talk to both of them at the same time) and there was also the cute guy i told was the best-looking at the conference who, after promptly going, "even better than [name redacted in case he self-googles]?" and i was like "yes" even though it was a close call (but this guy had more flair), turned the conversation into a discourse about bryant "big country" reeves, ex- of the vancouver grizzlies, whose jersey he was wearing under his blazer, which was adorable. then we were all leaving (me sans award but too drunk to brood anymore) and clem stole a pylon from the library and that's as surefire sign of the impending doom of a night as any, i think. when we got back to the hotel he made us all kiss the pylon. then security cleared everyone out of the hallway and it was maybe 20 seconds before i started puking in the bathroom. erin took care of me; stayed with me for probably an hour just talking me through it and distracting me and being my friend and it was really nice to feel cared for in a powerful, platonic way. i guess kind of the way i felt about vivien through the week, leaving early to walk her to her bus stop and stuff like that. then crawled into bed next to hilary (who also puked a lot that night; it was her birthday) and fell asleep. it was weird sleeping in a bed with a girl all week, too, of course; every accidental brush was weirdly thrilling, and every turn from one side to the other felt political. but that was it. which is probably best.

been having talks with friends. talks with friends are good. weird to combat the feeling of being utterly alone with the feeling of being not. the feeling of not being sure where you fit or whether you fit anywhere not as quite as inviting as the feeling of being sure you don't fit, you don't fit anywhere. but i think i'm responsible enough by now to be honest with myself. i'm going to miss human physical contact for a while, i think. remember kat and shu telling me back in cegep: it's worse when you know what you're missing. almost lost it last night after prod was done, waiting to leave with everyone, when i remembered that there's no one i can spoon with anymore. who knows how long til i spoon again. i'm gonna try not to rush it, though. i think that's the important thing.

to 2013, a year of being alone. more thoughts to come.

i dunno if i have any big wrap-up thoughts. 2012 was a calendar year. there were some shifts and trends and stuff. there were some one-offs and some moments. i learned some things about myself and forgot some things. same goes for the world at large. i don't know if i feel like a better person or better version of the person i was this time last year. i feel maybe less vulnerable but also maybe more like i'm getting unavoidably trapped behind all my walls. more than anything i'm starting to feel old, like i'm just not young anymore. just into the big void of 'nothing' that is the mid- to late-twenties. you can't be a child prodigy at anything anymore at this age. if you're good at anything it's like, 'okay, cool' and if you're not then you should feel bad. i realized last post that this blog has quickly become something like 'alex's naked ambition on sad display' and it's doubly sad because it's not even like, big-time naked ambition, it's really provincial, it's all small potatoes. maybe... nah, there isn't quite a resolution there, i don't think. maybe next year.

well what do you know. i did get a johnny nom after all. for illustration. i can't tell whether to be elated or disappointed so i'm settling for bouts of each. more happy than sad i guess. i threw everything at the wall and something stuck. now i can feel bad-ass at the gala. oh, what were you nominated for? nothing? too bad. you should try it sometime. it's nice. anyway, they haven't released the arts writing shortlist yet. i may still be on that. that's what i'm telling myself, anyway. keep trying. fuck.

seems like for the past year my means of personal advancement has been to throw a bunch of lines out all at once and wait for one of them to come in. if at least one of them does then i feel fine. so far i'm two for two, in a sense. at the beginning of 2012 i submitted to soliloquies, the scrivener creative review and the irving layton award. and i somehow got published in both and took home the award. so that was weirdly insane and insanely gratifying. this fall it was headlight, the johnnies, and the gazette and globe internships. i whiffed on the globe and headlight. i assume nothing's going to come of the johnnies even though i'm imagining it a lot. just cause the end of the bookstore cat somehow got a nomination made it feel like, 'who knows, anything could get a nomination' so i submitted in every category. but i'm sure it'll be a bunch of random crap and who knows. it's gonna feel weird this year cause every link piece that gets nominated i'll have copy edited. and for every piece that should have gotten a nom that doesn't, i'll be like, 'but.' i wonder what it'll be like next year. a bit less of that cause there might be content from after my tenure. anyway but the gazette is giving me an interview for the summer internship. so there's my validation. now i just need to set up the next row of pins. irving layton again i guess and then i have to pick some other publications. carte blanche seems obvious but it's not due til march so it'll be further down the road. i need some instant verification. i want to step it up a bit though. emma was telling me i had to quit kicking it small-time and not getting headlight was like, 'ok, why bother anyway. time to ante up.' which is scary cause it feels like it'll lead to more rejection. but if i'm still getting rejections from concordia then i might as well be getting rejections from places that pay or whatever. i'm still feeling kind of salty about headlight. i wish matrix did open calls so at least i could whiff on that. i wrote a french piece that i feel like submitting to the void for their spring issue but who knows what the theme will be. i need to start writing this band story. it's been kicking around in my head for forever. feels like it could be the irving layton submission this year instead of 'on the road' which is still super unfinished probably. i wish i knew where to submit 'you run with the devil' or whatever i'll call it. i'd love to get that published somewhere but all the places that take non-fiction are looking for like 3,500 and under and i don't know if i have the energy/wherewithal to cut it in half and not add anything. this feels like it probably sounds very self-involved and it is. there's a reason i wrote this in furs.

i came across a french blog while stalking someone earlier, which led to some thoughts. one, i've been liking french writing a lot lately, which seems, i don't know, obvious in retrospect. it's like, of course, there are talented people in that language the same as there are in english, i can understand it, too, but i have this whole blind spot for it so, i don't know, everything seems fresh and exciting and exotic and the more so when it's fresh and exciting and exotic writing to begin with. and it was just this shock to my system, like, fuck, why aren't i writing things like this? what the fuck is wrong with me? it was so daunting. not, "i can't write like this," or "i can't write this well" but "i am too much of a lazy bastard coward to do something like this." it's just a question of a groove you get yourself into. and i haven't gotten myself into any good grooves lately, it feels like. i talked to a guy at work yesterday, the guy that i once falsely accused of stealing porn mags. he asked me how the writing was going and i told him i'd hit a bit of a rough patch. he asked why and i told him i didn't know, because that seemed easier than listing all the things i thought probably were holding me back/slowing me down and also because it would expose less of my soft underbelly etc etc. i tried to spin the problem of being a writer whose material isn't coming as something funny, i.e. interesting to people who don't ultimately care about writing, which i assume is this guy, regardless of his continued interest in my writing career. things like that tend to be more about the relationship between you and the stranger than the relationship between the stranger and the act of writing. at least that's the sense that i get in this case. so i compared myself to a farmer waiting for rain to come. in retrospect i think that's kind of ridiculous. but you know.

can i even post things here without anyone i know reading them? i want to start a diary but it seems ridiculous to start an offline diary. but i also don't want any of my friends reading these things. like, i guess i'm ambivalent about strangers knowing details about me, it seems hard to imagine that having an impact on my life in any way. i've been thinking of re-starting this in a sort of high-school-y diary-ish kinda way just so i can have a log of what i was like and what i was thinking at this age later on. because i try to remember what i was like and what my motivations were sometimes and going back two or three years i sort of forget and i unconsciously rewrite my scripts. is that a better system? i don't know that it's worse, necessarily. but i kind of want to just keep track of myself for a bit.

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.