Twenty Five & Five Days
That was an interesting Birthday Run. At the end of it all, I’ve discovered what I really don’t like about Coldplay. No matter how brilliant they may or may not be, every song sounds like it’s just price tag removed and been taken out of the plastic shrink-wrap. They just seem dishonest.
I blame it on the pianos.
WEDNESDAY
At anthony’s house, I stole tons of music and got Classic Blue Hardy Boys books. Good TIMES. Briefly interrupted nicole’s studying but then went to see Goldie. Fun. we were purely sitting in the back and just talking shit for much of the night, but I knew we weren’t too over the hill when I got asked YET AGAIN if I had/could supply some chemicals. Nice to know I still got it.
ME + WOP, AT HIS HOUSE
TOO MANY BOYZ WIT' CAMERAZ!
I'M SO HOTT, I GOT GOLD TEETH!
ME + WOP, AT GOLDIE
HI! SMILE! WHAT'S A GALLINETTA?
I'M SUCH A FLY DJ, I SCRATCH MY BALLS, NOT MY RECORDS!
THURSDAY
Went to see The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the Axes of Evil. Killer play. KILLER. Hilarious, but sad for two reasons. (1) the end is kind of sickly sweet. (2) it’s really not a comedy. It hits on all the issues not just of global politics and the problems with East-West relations and US Foreign Policy, but also of the simple facts of being an immigrant. That made it a bit odd. Sometimes I was laughing, other times I just wanted to cry.
It was garbage night in the Queen & Bathurst area by the theatre. After the play, I saw a Chinese lady with a severely hunched back scurrying up and down the street. She wore a red bandana and a large deep blue smock. Had she been able to stand up to full height, she probably would have reached a shade above five feet, but her back was bent at a 60 degree angle so that her head seemed to run in front of her body, projected outwards by her neck. Quickly and quietly she scuttled back and forth, picking up bottles from the uncollected piles on the street. She would pick up one load in each hand and walk it fifty feet or so ahead of her. Then she would head back a little further than where she had started and pick up two other loads. These she would walk another twenty feet or so past her first pile and put them down, before heading back to the first pile and moving it another fifty feet. Whenever she was walking back between piles, she would scour and pick at the garbage put out on the street, looking for anything of value to add to her load.
She moved down the street, her arms laden, the bottles and containers streaming out behind her as her head thrust forward searching out a safe landing spot. Her entire figure, tiny as it was, loomed over the street while at once seeming to be walking in a different dimension. She was there, but clearly not from here.
I left the lady to her bottles. Part of me wanted to offer her a ride to wherever she was taking them, but the infinite complexities of making such an offer stopped me. Not so much the where would I end up and with who part of it, but my inability to avoid constructing the situation in a patronizing manner. Sometimes by trying to help alleviate an abstraction of social inequality, you can easily aggravate a more personal form of inequality. You need to be able to step delicately around certain issues and I refused to believe I was ready to do so.
Instead I made a brief stop where Danielle gave me a subtly brilliant present. Too subtle, it seemed, for as I’m wont to do, I completely missed the point. I was obviously undeserving, but am lucky nonetheless. Thanks.
HUNCHBACK LADY SCURRIES AWAY WITH BOTTLES
CLASSIC NOODLANDING
FRIDAY
Night of the Big Party. Wooh. Terrible fun. Mad respect to everyone who came out, but especially all those who I didn’t get to really chill with. Ashley blew my mind when she showed up, having made a ridiculous run on intercity buses to get there. Lots of bananas from Nicole. Lots of dancing. Lots of smiling. It was a really good night. (very simple sentence fragments here).
There’s not much to say. Not everything worked out the way I would have liked it too. At the end of the night, after Ashley and I finally got home, I went to bed with an empty feeling, like the whole thing had been in vain. Unfulfilled. It’s a troubling thought and I couldn’t really sleep that night. Part of what happened on Friday is on me and part of that is just the way things go. Part of it is just a story for myself, and part of it is a story not yet finished.
ME + WOP, AT FEZ
ARE YOU SISTERS? HOOK THAT SHIT UP
WHY IS THIS HEAD COMING OUT OF MY STOMACH?
MARISSA DESCRIBES HER FAVOURITE MOMENT FROM LORD OF THE RINGS
"DAMN, THIS GIRL'S WAY SMART!"
"NOT SMART ENOUGH TO NOT COME DOWN HERE WITH ME!"
"I WILL DEFEND YOUR BIRTHDAY HONOUR!"
1 PICTURE = 1000000000 WORDS
"THERE'S WAY TOO MUCH DICK IN THIS BAR RIGHT NOW"
"MORE PLEASE. THANK YOU."
CHARLIE'S ANGELS - THE UNDERSTUDIES
JACOB'S NOSE
"LOOK! WE HAVE HANDS! YAY!"
SATURDAY
Saturday morning was spent with Ashley. It was ridiculously good to see her. I hadn’t seen her since September when we were in Kenora. Saturday afternoon, I got a call while with Nicole. It was from one of my former clients, to tell me that she had gotten her health card and work permit. Such small, meaningless things to many, but it really brings home the notions about statelessness and migration that Ali & Ali hit upon. Saturday night was spent easily, watching movies.
Bowling for Columbine wears on me. A third of the way through, it loses its linear structure and suddenly you’re not quite sure where Moore is taking you. It seems like the same direction as before, but the path is a lot less clearly defined. Each little segment begins to seem more like a piece in a patchwork quilt and you can really sort of see the television production cues come in at certain points. It focuses itself at certain points, particularly when discussing fear and consumerism, but the ending is not nearly as tight as it ought to be.
I went to bed dissatisfied. Partly from the movie, partly from the day before, partly from people who weren’t around on either day.
MONDAY
My old roommate and one of my best friends Dharm came to visit. He had to work on Friday, but also he wasn’t sure about the whole concept of ‘worlds colliding’ as necessarily a good thing. We hung out for a couple of hours and caught up on where we had been in the last few months. It was, as ever, an enlightening discussion.
After our brief conversation, I seem to have a better handle on some things that have troubled me, even though I don’t think we spent much time even talking about these things. Some for a few weeks, some for a few years. I know what I want from a relationship now, which is something that, particularly in the last couple of months and indeed last couple of days, I’ve really needed to sort out. Too much of myself has been invested in the finer points, and worrying over details, possibilities and outcomes and when really it is all much simpler than that. And much more real than those abstractions.
That’s a dramatic step. I’ve also realized I’m such a loner that I need to be living on my own to accomplish the things I want to get done. The question now is, am I willing to go into debt to do that, because that was the whole reason for moving home in the first place? Probably. But when?
Part of what bears on it all is the cultural cloud. Reconciling various pressures is a contortionist act I’m not capable of continuing, nor is it healthy to try. All that stuff is reconciliations of expectations that others have of me, which is a very fine difference from sorting our what I expect from myself. Instead of combining all these elements and ideas of other people into a potion that is me, it’s about taking who I am and focusing on where I want to go and what I want to do. Sounds pretty straightforward, but you’d be surprised at all the mundane (and not so mundane!) shit in your life and mine that will bog you down before you can figure it all out.
A WISE MAN
I blame it on the pianos.
WEDNESDAY
At anthony’s house, I stole tons of music and got Classic Blue Hardy Boys books. Good TIMES. Briefly interrupted nicole’s studying but then went to see Goldie. Fun. we were purely sitting in the back and just talking shit for much of the night, but I knew we weren’t too over the hill when I got asked YET AGAIN if I had/could supply some chemicals. Nice to know I still got it.
ME + WOP, AT HIS HOUSE
TOO MANY BOYZ WIT' CAMERAZ!
I'M SO HOTT, I GOT GOLD TEETH!
ME + WOP, AT GOLDIE
HI! SMILE! WHAT'S A GALLINETTA?
I'M SUCH A FLY DJ, I SCRATCH MY BALLS, NOT MY RECORDS!
THURSDAY
Went to see The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the Axes of Evil. Killer play. KILLER. Hilarious, but sad for two reasons. (1) the end is kind of sickly sweet. (2) it’s really not a comedy. It hits on all the issues not just of global politics and the problems with East-West relations and US Foreign Policy, but also of the simple facts of being an immigrant. That made it a bit odd. Sometimes I was laughing, other times I just wanted to cry.
It was garbage night in the Queen & Bathurst area by the theatre. After the play, I saw a Chinese lady with a severely hunched back scurrying up and down the street. She wore a red bandana and a large deep blue smock. Had she been able to stand up to full height, she probably would have reached a shade above five feet, but her back was bent at a 60 degree angle so that her head seemed to run in front of her body, projected outwards by her neck. Quickly and quietly she scuttled back and forth, picking up bottles from the uncollected piles on the street. She would pick up one load in each hand and walk it fifty feet or so ahead of her. Then she would head back a little further than where she had started and pick up two other loads. These she would walk another twenty feet or so past her first pile and put them down, before heading back to the first pile and moving it another fifty feet. Whenever she was walking back between piles, she would scour and pick at the garbage put out on the street, looking for anything of value to add to her load.
She moved down the street, her arms laden, the bottles and containers streaming out behind her as her head thrust forward searching out a safe landing spot. Her entire figure, tiny as it was, loomed over the street while at once seeming to be walking in a different dimension. She was there, but clearly not from here.
I left the lady to her bottles. Part of me wanted to offer her a ride to wherever she was taking them, but the infinite complexities of making such an offer stopped me. Not so much the where would I end up and with who part of it, but my inability to avoid constructing the situation in a patronizing manner. Sometimes by trying to help alleviate an abstraction of social inequality, you can easily aggravate a more personal form of inequality. You need to be able to step delicately around certain issues and I refused to believe I was ready to do so.
Instead I made a brief stop where Danielle gave me a subtly brilliant present. Too subtle, it seemed, for as I’m wont to do, I completely missed the point. I was obviously undeserving, but am lucky nonetheless. Thanks.
HUNCHBACK LADY SCURRIES AWAY WITH BOTTLES
CLASSIC NOODLANDING
FRIDAY
Night of the Big Party. Wooh. Terrible fun. Mad respect to everyone who came out, but especially all those who I didn’t get to really chill with. Ashley blew my mind when she showed up, having made a ridiculous run on intercity buses to get there. Lots of bananas from Nicole. Lots of dancing. Lots of smiling. It was a really good night. (very simple sentence fragments here).
There’s not much to say. Not everything worked out the way I would have liked it too. At the end of the night, after Ashley and I finally got home, I went to bed with an empty feeling, like the whole thing had been in vain. Unfulfilled. It’s a troubling thought and I couldn’t really sleep that night. Part of what happened on Friday is on me and part of that is just the way things go. Part of it is just a story for myself, and part of it is a story not yet finished.
ME + WOP, AT FEZ
ARE YOU SISTERS? HOOK THAT SHIT UP
WHY IS THIS HEAD COMING OUT OF MY STOMACH?
MARISSA DESCRIBES HER FAVOURITE MOMENT FROM LORD OF THE RINGS
"DAMN, THIS GIRL'S WAY SMART!"
"NOT SMART ENOUGH TO NOT COME DOWN HERE WITH ME!"
"I WILL DEFEND YOUR BIRTHDAY HONOUR!"
1 PICTURE = 1000000000 WORDS
"THERE'S WAY TOO MUCH DICK IN THIS BAR RIGHT NOW"
"MORE PLEASE. THANK YOU."
CHARLIE'S ANGELS - THE UNDERSTUDIES
JACOB'S NOSE
"LOOK! WE HAVE HANDS! YAY!"
SATURDAY
Saturday morning was spent with Ashley. It was ridiculously good to see her. I hadn’t seen her since September when we were in Kenora. Saturday afternoon, I got a call while with Nicole. It was from one of my former clients, to tell me that she had gotten her health card and work permit. Such small, meaningless things to many, but it really brings home the notions about statelessness and migration that Ali & Ali hit upon. Saturday night was spent easily, watching movies.
Bowling for Columbine wears on me. A third of the way through, it loses its linear structure and suddenly you’re not quite sure where Moore is taking you. It seems like the same direction as before, but the path is a lot less clearly defined. Each little segment begins to seem more like a piece in a patchwork quilt and you can really sort of see the television production cues come in at certain points. It focuses itself at certain points, particularly when discussing fear and consumerism, but the ending is not nearly as tight as it ought to be.
I went to bed dissatisfied. Partly from the movie, partly from the day before, partly from people who weren’t around on either day.
MONDAY
My old roommate and one of my best friends Dharm came to visit. He had to work on Friday, but also he wasn’t sure about the whole concept of ‘worlds colliding’ as necessarily a good thing. We hung out for a couple of hours and caught up on where we had been in the last few months. It was, as ever, an enlightening discussion.
After our brief conversation, I seem to have a better handle on some things that have troubled me, even though I don’t think we spent much time even talking about these things. Some for a few weeks, some for a few years. I know what I want from a relationship now, which is something that, particularly in the last couple of months and indeed last couple of days, I’ve really needed to sort out. Too much of myself has been invested in the finer points, and worrying over details, possibilities and outcomes and when really it is all much simpler than that. And much more real than those abstractions.
That’s a dramatic step. I’ve also realized I’m such a loner that I need to be living on my own to accomplish the things I want to get done. The question now is, am I willing to go into debt to do that, because that was the whole reason for moving home in the first place? Probably. But when?
Part of what bears on it all is the cultural cloud. Reconciling various pressures is a contortionist act I’m not capable of continuing, nor is it healthy to try. All that stuff is reconciliations of expectations that others have of me, which is a very fine difference from sorting our what I expect from myself. Instead of combining all these elements and ideas of other people into a potion that is me, it’s about taking who I am and focusing on where I want to go and what I want to do. Sounds pretty straightforward, but you’d be surprised at all the mundane (and not so mundane!) shit in your life and mine that will bog you down before you can figure it all out.
A WISE MAN