the first five times
Im having panic attacks daily, sometimes several times a day. I'm used to panic, perhaps I thrive on it. I imagine panic as a palpable thing, like i can see it in gust of wind or creeping fog that persecutes everyone in its path. Maybe i refuse to see it as an independant experience but more like mass hysteria, that snowballs and causes people to scatter and infect those around them. Because I can see it's lurking shadows and menacing grimace I can play with it and actually get a perverse enjoyment from it. When things are so absurdely difficult I can only help but laugh...well not always. But these past few days have been different, I've found myself on my back on the couch; my breath escaping me. Its not some monster clanging pots and pans around the corner, its a quiet internal presser squeezing the air out of me. I have to concentrate and force my self to relax. Theres no fantasy escape route to navigate without getting bitten, its this powerlessness that prevents me from having any agency over my own body.
I suppose at the moment my mind is strong enough to Jedi it away but to be honest I dont really want to leave the proper operation of my body's systems to my mind....it has already failed me before.
Labels: future?, going crazy, uncontrollable urges
There's nothing left to save
I am glad i ventured out tonight. It's dangerous business going out your front door. Ottawa was completely deserted tonight. I moved under the snow thick and delicate. It quietly frosted everything, and i owned it all. I looked over the canal at its far end and imprinted my hand in the carpet of snow, i passed under the towers of parliament and craned my neck upwards to watch the snow spin once caught in the lights. I imagined them as tractor beams beckoning the world, or indians or whoever reads and reacts to such things. I stood in the middle of Sparks streets and examined both my flanks and thought of all I could steal. I thought if I was the last human alive i'd never abandon this city in search of better fortunes if it always looked like this. Snow is like two asprins, it takes the edge off everything.
Labels: actual stuff, litle thoughts
Live Bloggin from home
11:00PM- Never done live blogging before so I thought I'll try it. I'm not actually at home, I'm at a friends house while my g/f is out of town. I'm waiting for Matt to call me to grab a drink, so i'm killing time.
11:01PM- Loving Stars, especially
this. I also found alot of
a cappella stuff I like on Youtube today.
11:03PM-Drinking my friends wine, hope he doesn't notice. No sense in waiting for Matt's slow ass.
11:05PM- Got a pin from my girlfriend. Explained why I'm killing time. She asked me to do work instead....boo!
11:06PM-Thinking about the time my friend Karen sang a song and said "this is bad new for animals" they cant read the news. They don't know if its really bad or not.
11:07PM- Just noticed that I've lost two friends on facebook. I got to track these people down. Wonder what I did?
11:09PM- People probably do this durring exciting events. So far this has been not exciting or eventfull. 1 minute to go.
11:10PM- What a waste of time.
Labels: actual stuff, bored
Lets call it a total eclipse of the heart.
I feel like a hypocrite but like a blood red moon that you only see its true shattered surface once something blocks it and it is caste into total darkness do I exhibit it. Only when something is between us and I'm dropped into the bowels of dispair can you really see its crushing manifestartion in me. Bottomless craters of guilt with smouldering pools of resentment, brewing hostile and disingenuous keep us apart. I hate that you can hurt me at a distance but when you do it's like swimming against 100 foot surges of God's good ocean gone wrong. Gravitational pull tear me apart.
Labels: bad friends, litle thoughts, science-ish
It's only a matter of time before we meet again.
When the smoke gets in your eyes, do you trust in me? Because we all wander out in the night..."I remember these
lines, I remember thinking them at the farm, smoking behind the barn. We were young, so young that we hid our smoking from our parents. Yet we were in love. We'd curve around the shed, jostling in the muddy ruts of the soft spring ground. In a borrowed truck, with a lucky bounce of having the right cd at the right time.
I wish I could believe alot of what you said, I mean, who misses a funeral? I know what things mean, and I know your fears, years later my fears are the same. Its always spring when we meet in my memory, snow clutches curbs outside your house and small streams of melting water cut jagged unseen scars beneath the banks suspending the ice above the pavement. I talked about getting a part time job then as I balanced on them, I talk about getting a part time job as I write this now.
I wanted to drop out of school then, I have since. I've always wondered what you wanted. You never told me, you started once and I turned up the radio. You were quiet for the rest of the drive, you were quiet for the rest of our relationship.
From: Forgetful ex girlfriend
To: el chupascabras
Sent: Feb 20, 2008 2:14 PM
Subject: I'm sorry
Jace, for whatever reason I thought that grandma jean's thing was this coming saturday. I feel like shit and am really upset that I wasn't there. It's my fault and I'm so sorry. I just figured that because I didn't hear from anyone it wasn't until this sat...please tell ur parents I'm sorry.
T
Your words leave marks. Your actions break bones. But I can't help but forgive you.
Labels: bad friends, kill yourself-suprise your friends, tender tender flesh
like a hiding sun...but it's almost summer
It’s been almost two months since the death of my grandmother and I can’t seem to write about it. I can’t really deal with it either, I’ve avoided it as much as possible, letting a single tear slip occasionally before burying myself in my work again. I attended the ceremony, listened to the music, got pissed off, and resented the people who stuck around to eat after.
I’ve been staying at her place a lot, sleeping in her bed, using her toothbrush, watching the plants wither then watering them back to health. I thought about all the things I didn’t tell her and it makes me mad, first that I have unfinished business and secondly at myself for thinking of myself as she died.
I was too far away, and I’ve refused to accept the guilt yet. I’m already eyeing her TV, thinking how it would look good in my new apartment; my attempt of moving on without ever havening dwelled on it in the first place.
Labels: actual stuff
Handle with Care, I Dream Hard
I’ve been harbouring certain suspicions as of late. I had this book that I was convinced was cursed, it was with me as my plane shook violently over the Rockies, the pages soaked in sweat as I clutched it in freight. It was in my backpack when security guards hustled us across the tarmac in Tel Aviv trying to escape an unseen suicide bomber. It was all about other and outer worldly stuff and I started wondering if it was making my imagination run amok or if I was becoming more enlightened to the inconsistencies of our physical world.
I wanted to give it to a library or a used book shop but my girlfriend though it would be rude to pass on a cursed book to some unsuspecting soul. I thought about burying it in the sand or throwing it in the ocean or simply burning it and watch as its magic was rendered useless beyond the pages that housed it. But then it vanished, I figured it knew its time was coming and all I could do was kick myself for not administering that final punishing blow.
And yet it reaapeared, my brother brought it home yesterday from the Dominican.
I’m stoned in love, just not with you.
My friend just came back from Australia, he did a lot of the same thing I did.
I’m defeated by my nostalgia; I have tones to do, yet can’t get my mind off that heavy bass line I heard that one night. I remember the shivers as a phone number was drawn on my arm, I remember the struggled to decipher the smudged lipstick the next morning. My unused drink ticket, the upset and opportunity that options provide, the ever present sense that what I’m doing is wrong. I had time to run back to the hotel and rescue that girl, or I could catch up with that girl from Vancouver-- I hadn’t really seen her since we fooled around at the cab stand, or I could return to the red couch where perhaps the most interesting prospect, regardless of the outcome, awaited me. I wanted it all; selfishness abounded, in a fit of hedonism I choose all three. I couldn’t get the image of that poor girl with the knocked out teeth out of my mind. I helped her and her baby just last night, how could I be a bad person? My heart raced as I crossed into the street, my friend lay crumpled against the wall, sputtering as she puked. My head swam as my plan had been altered. I picked her up, her friends had tried to wheel her to the bar in a shopping cart, she never made it. I threw her into a cab and headed back to sherbourne next to Captain Cook backpackers. I told the cab driver to wait as I dropped her on her side on the couch, a bucket by her face. I headed back downtown and as I got out I saw my other flat mate from Leeds at a bus stop with a middle aged man. She never made the right decision and we both knew it, I pretended to be her boyfriend and cock blocked the guy. Back in the cab she grabbed my crotch and begged me to fuck her. I lived with her boyfriend, but not for long, I was leaving, ever since Danni’s new b/f showed up we had been fighting, and anyone can tell you that if you’re from northern England there’s no such thing as too drunk. Still I couldn’t do it; we kissed as I struggled to get her through the door, past our other drunken room mate gurgling on the couch, I lay her flat on her back on top of her crumpled blankets. She kissed me deeply and tried to pull me on top of her. Lucky for me she passed out with in seconds. Back in the cab, I headed back to Sports Bar, as I arrived the girl on the red couch was gone, the girl in the smoking room with the lipstick was gone as well, damn these English girls all look the same, and who knew where that Triny girl went. I ran back into the street, nervously I panned the streets teeming with swaying party goers, I swung around and there she was, smoking by the entrance, watching me in my frustration she smiled. In her heavy carribean accent she told me her friend was at the Tropic, her eyes were barely open as she spoke. Earlier in the week I took her roommate home and I felt bad like I was responsible for her, she gave me the hotel room and I climbed in a cab to grab her. I was instructed to circle the block a few times to buy her time, for what I wondered? I dashed into the bright lobby of the hotel. I climbed the stairs and searched for the room, no response when I knocked. I decided to check the club in the basement, and there she was, bathed in blue light dancing by herself on the empty dance floor, her belligerent gangband squad off in the corner laughing at her gross level of intoxication. I grabbed her and dragged her back to Sports Bar where her friend waited. I left them there, they were there for at least another week, and that was a lifetime in cairns. It was 2 o’clock, at that time everyone moved from Sports Bar to the Woolshed. It was there that I met up with Larissa; she was dancing on a table like we all did on Thursday nights. She was a local girl and I couldn’t believe she bought into the novelty. The place was always over run with tourists and the locals considered us annoying. She seemed indifferent at the time, didn’t she remember that I was Canadian and she loved my accent? Didn’t she remember how funny I was when we spoke on the red couch? I thought all was lost when she left for the washroom. I leaned against the wall and laughed at those who got bit by red ants while they played with the palm fronds attached to the wall. I had gone to the municipal dump and collected them this morning, they were always infested. Then when Larissa walked out of the washroom I grabbed her arm and she immediately snogged me. I would be lucky for this in the weeks to come as she eventually became one of the most important people in my life. She looked like JLO, and I liked her from the moment I saw her even though I couldn’t understand her townie accent. It was only then that the night truly began for me.
Please, keep these word safe behind my teeth
I think I will take a bit of a break from my Israel diary. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to try and tie together all the loose ends and make all the salient points required in summing up the trip of a life time.
It’s snowing again in Ottawa. Like little paratroopers of guilt or shame bombarding you, they stick around only long enough to get caught in your eyelashes then melt away. So that much like guilt, you don’t remember the actual infraction, just the consequences of.
Raining on me today were my failures at school, the disapproving glare of my girlfriend, my inability to get out of bed in time. I’m moving to Toronto, I hope that it will put some distance between me and my most recent failures. Awaiting me back in Toronto are some original ones that I can get reacquainted with, it’s been a while since I’ve had to confront those cold alleyways that I crouched against in shame and ridicule. Or those slush filled street that slowed my retreat from the advances of regret, they always follow the same path, across Carleton then south down Jarvis to behind the hotel. I’ll meet it there, I always do.
