ghosts & admissons

Adventures In Babysitting

2009-10-19T22:55:00.003-04:00

So its been about 3/4s of a year since my last post and there is only one word to sum up my absence. Strippers.

Like passed-out-drunk-on-their-door-step-because-you-are-so-attentive-to-every-word-that-they-say-that-you-can-track-them-down, Strippers. The inner most workings of your reproductive system isn't the only detail I'm paying attention to...careful what comes out of your mouth.

Like getting-my-girlfriend-out-of-bed-and-begging-her-for-money-and-to-ignore-the-bouncer-standing-on-the-other-side-of- our-apartment-door, Strippers. I'm full of alot of things, and money isn;t one of them.

Man, I cant even count the amount of times I should have been arrested.

Welcome back.

Flux You!

2009-02-12T12:41:00.000-05:00

In an awesome continuation of my winning streak I won yet ANOTHER contest from 102.1 THE EDGE!

I’m going to see Bloc Party in March and the Toronto International Auto Show this Saturday! Happy Valentines Day indeed!

I got people from grade school that I haven’t spoken to in years calling me…I guess they’re just happy to know I’m still alive.

Fighting fire with firewood

2009-02-10T12:45:00.002-05:00

I was looking for a little excitement so I decided to become a drug dealer. The plan was to go to London to pick up a shipment that this Somali cab driver expected from his contact in Yemen. I was the perfect candidate because one, I’m well liked in the Somali community (I once worked across from a fine ass Djiboutian girl who taught me a few phrases, if you can say “I think its snowing” in Somali, you’re golden) and secondly, I was white and customs would never suspect me of being a mule for some Arabian Peninsula plant that nobody’s ever heard of or could give two shits about.

We made the deal over shwarma after declining to join him and his friends at a Somali dance club. I told him I wasn’t in the mood to paint my face and dance around a fire and he laughed so hard that tumbleweed soup came out his nose. We made the arrangements; I was to stay in a first class hotel in Fitzrovia, and meet his connect in a tea house by the nearest tube station. No guns or tough guy attitude required they considered me to be doing them a favour; I could just act completely natural, a Canadian guy in my brothers sweater sitting cross legged on the floor with a dusty ass, toothless Yemenite botanist just a block away from Piccadilly Circus. What could go wrong?

From there they’d take me out to the ports in Twickenham, where I would get the container vessel and the fake ass bill of lading. I was told I’d be more likely to get in trouble from IFAD than customs because they’d be more pissed about me moving invasive species rather than the fact that I was gonna get a whole whack of East African immigrants stone off their asses on this shit.

I was assured if I made the trip a few times (without getting caught) that I’d be living comfortably. Temptation is a bitch.

This is gonna hurt like hell

2009-01-31T21:59:00.003-05:00

This has been a trying 48 hours for me. I started by putting up plastic sheeting all over the apartment. I got off work early Friday so it glimmered nicely in the setting of the mid winter sun. It seems to breathe, the walls heaving collective sighs as I walk here or there, rippling in my path. It almost takes on an organic characteristic that serves to remind/embarrass me of my own failings. It has become my own enemy which I resent. I despise the fact that I can see myself in it, draped tightly over the windows and can hear the static embrace of the wall when my dry ear dares to get close enough to listen. The hair on my arm stiffens and I lament the lack of contorl over my body. But what else is new...

I stay in the kitchen, those egg shell walls are easy to clean.

But my girlfriend sure will be happy if things go wrong. I have a well thought out and comprehensive plan to keep my blood off these walls, and so far it seems to be working. My apartment is white, not nearly enough sun, but white in a non-descript overexposed picture sort of way. This is where we lead our lives; in this cloudy blob of whiteness that dulls our edges and mutes our features. I have 15 corners in my apartment, not counting cupboards or shelves, and I’ve mastered moving from one to the next with a sense of feline self consciousness where every step is at the same time cautious and adventurous. Megan once emulating a cat’s flat paw across my groin and I haven’t forgotten it since. Every step equal intrigue, every step equal impression.

I have 15 beers in me and a bottle of wine and a bottle on Tylenol. Now tell me if I will land on my feet? It would be a shame to waste all this nice plastic sheeting on the walls and globe and mail on the floor only to jump out the window.

Lucky for me I have a plan. What do they say? Jump right before you hit the bottom?

Watch and learn; this is how you get laid!

2009-01-27T15:42:00.000-05:00

Me: Drunkenly MSMing chicks.

Her: Loving my poor spelling

First off, girls love it when you can spot a good deal, so imagine how impressed she was when I told her I got 2 pounds of wing and 5 beers for 18 bucks! That, plus me crafting dope poetry at the same time, how could she resist?

Such romantic things like inventing a new karate move and naming it after her then going around punching old people in the heart so they can feel what its like to die alone without her. That doesn’t even make sense but it’s golden, she ate that shit up!

A few more lines like that and she’ll overlook the fact that I’m about one beer away from pissing myself. And I’m gonna think of her while I do it!

Doesn’t get sexier then that! Welcome to the bone zone!

Just be glad i didnt put it back in the fridge this time

2009-01-24T19:32:00.001-05:00

It’s Saturday night and I can’t even beg a friend to hang out with me. There was a time when I was double or triple booked every night of the week, and now, now I’m having a photo shoot with different wedges of cheese and a mason s’ jar of lemon preserves that I made. It’s hard to capture the cloudy mix of lemon juice through the reflection of the glass. It’s harder to come to terms with the fact that this is my Saturday night.

Oh Gruyere, you are such a good subject, this light flatters you nicely. And your creamy texture reminds me of passionate lovers that I also used to rub all over my privates!

the price of infamy, an hero...

2009-01-17T23:51:00.001-05:00

If planning for the future lets you know you have one, why the hell am I half heartedly dragging this toothbrush over my teeth? I watched myself laboriously with my puffy red eyes muster all my strength to pull my arm in broad horizontal stroke in an attempt to wash this bitter taste from my mouth. To no avail.

God, tell me about dire straits. I called my pastor and church buddy and they didn’t pick up.

Lets get a bottle and drink, tonight!

2009-01-16T13:26:00.000-05:00

I’ve been suffering juvenile fits lately. I swear I’m devolving or regressing or something and I love it. I dance erratically like kids in those kiddy pop videos from the 80’s. I head bang to rap, I jump kick to metal, I pack my face with as much beer as I can possibly fit and shake my head until its foams from my mouth and burns as it expands down my throat. I’ll thrash about until my glasses are flung from my face and I’m forced to squint into the faces of my horrified friends.

Fuck you, just because I’m driving with a suspended license because I’m too afraid to open my mail and I’m banned from my favorite strip club doesn’t mean you can judge me. Why do you care anyways? Sure it limits birthday activities and I’m pretty sure people can see through my meager excuses when I say I’m all of a sudden morally opposed to strip clubs.

Me not loving strippers? Its one of the only honest things I do!

Some finer points in romance

2009-01-09T14:50:00.001-05:00

So like in most things, my girlfriend has decided to copy me again. First she cut her hair short like me, then she got braces (I never needed them to begin with), this time it’s a blog. That’s ok, as in most cases mine will remain better than hers. She writes about the politics of feminism. I yawn and write stories that make people forget about politics or the fact that they might be a girl because I’m so funny.

Another usless blog, so sad really.

I heard they suck live

2009-01-08T11:27:00.002-05:00

Got free tickets to go see Andrew W.K. the first week of Feb. I won them from 102.1 for telling them that it was time for my prep-school girlfriend and her stuck up parents to be exposed to my dirty, shameful love for Andrew W.K.

Yeah boyyeee, me plus 3! Come to think of it, it’s never too soon to reveal your head banging and casual urination habits to the ones you love! Plus who can resist a show where 75 % of the lyrics are the words “party”?

That spells fun, me thinks.

2009-01-07T16:28:00.001-05:00

So I was lucky enough to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Revolution in Varadero, Cuba this New Years Eve. I’m sure these stories and many others will come out in due time, but right now I’m focused solely on my cyst. I have one, and it’s bigger than any I’ve found on YouTube. It's so big I call it my a-cyst-ant because it outweighs my girlfriend...well, in the looks department, atleast.

I got now, I dont care whos got next!

2008-12-24T10:22:00.002-05:00

The other day I was stopped on the street by an Ultra Orthodox Jew with his 3 children by the Eaton Centre. He asked if I were Jewish, his eyes seemingly lighting up on my approach. I said “no” and continued on my way but turned to my companion and said “Mazol-Tov bitches!”

Typically my Jewish friends don’t accept my partial Jewish ancestry and dance around singing things like “Gentile, gentile, there’s only one part that matters” while snipping their fingers like scissors and waddling side to side in a slow and what I can only assume traditional Jewish shimmy.

First of all; I’m pretty sure they use a scalpel and secondly you’re an asshole! Anyways, I wouldn’t give up my foreskin for anything, shit this thing could stop a bullet not to mention the additional benefits of prolonged endurance and auxiliary bladder if you pinch it right. Plus your dancing sucks.

In any event it was a nice, if not strange validation.

Lecheim!

2008-12-15T17:08:00.001-05:00

This last Shabbat was a big one for me. I guess everything sort of came together and I was able to have a meaningful transcontinental experience.

Standing in the snow among the evergreens of my farm I was able to place a stone I took from Auchwitz on my Naugpapa’s grave a year to the day that I stood beneath the Western Wall in Jerusalem. My Naugpapa had been in a concentration camp twice and had escape both times. As I did this, far away in that same city, friends of mine stood before the Wall as I once did. I had just gotten a pin to that affect confirming that I was being thought of.

I recalled its peculiar yellow glow and imagined how it would reflect off their fair skin or blonde hair. I wondered if they searched its crevices filled with the hopes of the devout and faithful, as I had twice before but neither time being able to seal the deal and have my prayers answered.

As I placed the stone on top of the Kopjafák, the traditional Transylvania funeral marker, I hoped that it could retain its superior position at least through the winter. Hoping is hard, sometimes things don’t work out the way you would want. As I walked away my girlfriend asked if I wanted to pray, I said I had friends at the wall thinking of me right now, and that’s more than I could ever ask for.

A gangsta and a gentleman...

2008-12-11T15:51:00.002-05:00

Some of my buddy’s pictures from his trip to Ukraine have started surfacing on his facebook and it got me remembering.

Remembering making eyes at a prostitute across the hotel lobby in Kiev while waiting for my passport they had in lockup. I had a pocket full of Hryvnia that wasn’t mine and I had to get rid of it anyways, I didn’t want to get arrested for capital flight. A problem we all encountered as a guy ended up giving me 200 UAH at the airport for guessing his tie was designed by Jerry Garcia. In any event I wondered if maybe I should clean the caviar from my teeth so she didn’t gouge me just in case I decided to go through with it.

I had already justified the porn mag I had bought earlier, I wanted to learn about local preference and sensibilities (didn’t know that hemorrhoids would be one of them) but this would truly be a cross cultural exchange. Maybe it was the romance of the revolution, I wasn’t exactly ducking bullets but I was all alone and my journalist friend was able to confirm for me back in Odessa the rumours of the stabbing of a Diplomat across the Dnipro just the other night, so that was enough to bolster the adrenaline enough.

Luckily I was saved by the young blonde (of course) in her leather jacket (of course). She said she was waiting for a ride from her sister but had no way of getting a hold of her. I offered my blackberry after being surprised that one of the few English words she new was “SMS”. The wedding was breaking up and the lobby was filling with people, as they started to shuffle out the door into the gently falling snow I tried my best to blend in and follow behind, craning my neck one last time to catch a final glimpse of that hookers’ panties, hoping that there wasn’t Anusol in her purse. She glowered at me and snapped her legs shut.

It was too early for them to go home, especially in the heady days following the revolution. There had to be a jazz club or a disco out there somewhere, and they were going to lead me to it.

The shape of things to come (/) in the not so distant future….

2008-12-05T13:44:00.002-05:00

Who knew that a year later this week these statements would come true.

…as necessity was always only the dominate force of progress, a new paradigm was required to mediate the differentials between an ever present future, a lack of pure or absolute present and an ideal of a past now so remote due to the rapidity of evolution that the concept of the reintroduction of the galaxies most sentimental creatures was considered…

What I wouldn’t give to have my Grandma back. How sentimental is that?

A year before I uttered these words; “Love supplements the human search for value with a capacity for bestowing it gratuitously.”

Who knew that I would just now begin to understand it...

Collecting Debts

2008-12-02T16:17:00.001-05:00

Oh Google Alerts, you are so attentive. Messaging me while I’m still asleep like the good friend that you are so that when I wake up I have lots of cute messages to start my day. Its ok that you’re not human, sentience is over rated and not entirely necessary for a fulfilling and sexy relationship.

I'd kill for the sultry voice of a telemarketer.

Setting fire to sleeping giants

2008-12-01T13:57:00.001-05:00

Up until this point I though sadness was violent. Drinking blood and breathing fire violent. Tantrums resulting in bloody fists and broken glass violent. Vowing revenge as you’re dragged away in handcuffs violent. Enduring years of prison sex just to make a point violent.

Quite the opposite is true. My phone hasn’t rang in days.

The course of human history (pt II)

2008-11-26T16:15:00.001-05:00

Shortly before feeling its feathers squeeze between my fingers I paused to impart one last piece of wisdom. Yes sleeping together was fun, yes waking up was better, but it would end there. You’re here now in the tender embrace of someone you love, what could be better? Did I not nurture you? Did I not pluck you up from your discarded place? Then whatever comes next is great-if it is swift. For I would never want you to actually feel the full weight of what I’m about to do.

I cooed the final words of Mice and Men, about gazing upon your own reflection and warning you not to drink from standing water. Then I very deliberately squeezed, and let me tell you, you struggled right until the end.

Playing with fire

2008-11-24T11:13:00.001-05:00

Ok, so maybe I’ve taken myself too seriously these days. A deep breath, a sober thought, an apology here and there and I can enjoy again. You look beautiful by the glow of Christmas lights. Snow fall cast an angelic illumination about your head; hot breath in the cold air is sexy. It’s not the best, but God it’s good.

Sure, let’s talk about magic. Why not just let? Let things happen the way they do, it’s not a good thing, it’s not a bad thing, it’s just a thing. Romance doesn’t have to be perfect, or free of consequence, it can just be. And that’s fine with me.

I’m just happy to be wherever I am with whoever I’m there with.

Ah there's lies that we've ignored...

2008-11-13T21:40:00.000-05:00

I think I said it before; miscalculation burns. Watch the disastrous effects as I rock this bitter metal edge back and forth over a fulcrum of human flesh. I teeter, I taught her. Enjoy bouncing up and down on this.

Go ahead, be carefree; it only saws right through me.

I tremble

2008-11-09T01:09:00.003-05:00

I feel like my sternum is split and splayed like oysters yawning open and exposing themselves like ripe genitals, quivering deliciously reserved to inhale, engulf,indulge -tensing as your breath falls upon them. Throw your head back and let that salty flesh slide down your throat. Wipe your sloppy lips, salvage your dignity and apply serviettes to your dripping chin, to your bleeding heart, to your venomous grin.

Help, I’m alive.

Modern love

2008-11-07T16:57:00.001-05:00

The best part of suffering is the horrified look of your friends when you’ve clearly lost it. That bewildered stare as pulpy flesh swings from your jowls, the tremulous caution that stays their hand as you gorge yourself on morbid and unsanitary risk. Devouring people is hard; it’s a detriment to your own well being. When you’re up to your elbows in guts you’re bound to catch something.

I’m scared of the future; I’m not really that satisfied. I didn’t envision my life like this, covered in all this blood.

Feed the animals

2008-11-04T22:30:00.004-05:00

I feel like a fool
So I'm going to stop troubling you
Buried in my yard
A letter to send to you
And if I forget
Or God forbid die too soon
Hope that you'll hear me
And know that I wrote to you

Talkers keep on saying things like… “You’ll be alright”

2008-11-03T15:10:00.000-05:00

My knuckles are bruised a lot these days. My ego’s bruised my stomach’s bruised. I’m fighting a lot; defending even more. I’m under siege and overwhelmed.

How often can I tell my self that love won’t simply pass through me like water through the grinds?

How else could I come out of this? Strong but bitter.

Talkers keep on saying things like..."You're falling apart"

2008-11-02T23:43:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I make wrong decisions, sometimes they’re dangerous, sometimes they can be described as unhealthy. So I need all the delicacy of disciplining a child for touching itself in public. “No its not wrong per se…it’s just not an outside thing.”

How can you judge me? Let’s just be happy that I can keep my hands to myself when necessary. Don’t even get me started on your sister.

Oh yeah, this is a tender tender flesh moment...

The Sound of Smoking

2008-10-29T11:39:00.001-04:00

Slitting your wrists is all the fun of partying with none of the regret in the morning. You get to be sloppy and wreck stuff and no one can really blame you. “Oops sorry I ruined your dress. We shouldn’t be dancing so close anyways, I have a girlfriend”

If honesty always comes out when you’re drunk you could mumble “I thought I already told you not to trust me” and give a playful wink and fancy yourself cleverer than anyone realizes. And if they challenge you simply retort “forget spilling my guts, I’m pouring blood here!”

No one ever really wants to hear the truth anyways.

At a 100 words a minute I'm taking my time

2008-10-28T10:54:00.002-04:00

As if you weren’t perfect enough already, now you’re a cybernetic organism. Seeing your IP address late at night is flirtatious, knowing your operating system is alluring. A Mac eh? That’s sexy and close to home, and in this case familiarity no longer breeds contempt.

Now if you would only permit me to place my fingers on you I swear I could come up with something compelling. I could punch out something dripping with pathos; you’d be disgusted at just how easy imagery comes to mind to produce the required intrigue to make you a thrilling ride right until the end.

You’re a tough read; but it’s worth it.

Juliet: when we made love you used to cry

2008-10-28T00:07:00.004-04:00

Comfort comes in strange forms, it can be laid out in front of you, kinked and creased and you can spread out like old maps in dusty libraries. I could run my palms over topography lines, and outdated destinations; I could trace the outlines of misguided vacations kept firmly under my thumb. You can curl your hands around the small of its back and nuzzle its soft neck. Regret is easier to handle when it comes in the form of a silk wrapped blond. We could turn the music up to drown out the sound of the self doubt ringing in my ears; we could turn the music up to feel the bass throb as we grow closer.

We could spin on empty dance floors; we could lie to each other in silence; we could betray ourselves with simple disingenuous glances. We could stab blindly at silhouettes and curse what substance we know of each other. Intent is a funny thing, subtlety is biting and I hope it leaves wounds. Because if I were to leave an indelible mark on you I wouldn’t want it to come from my hands. Because just to spite myself I just pulled my teeth and found a new word for everything.

Juliet; the dice was loaded from the start.

Someday in the future there will be a day like this

2008-10-24T12:18:00.001-04:00

I imagine staying inside all day because it’s cold and rainy out. Tracing the outlines of skeletons and placing them in romantic embraces and guessing at the comfort that would provide on a fateful day in Pompeii. We would grow drowsy surrounded by the dry heat of our apartment and lay our skeletons to sleep, candle light still flickering as we closed our eyes. We’d dream and speak in backwards German and sip strange wines and it would smell like hearty nuts and soft spices. We’d take advantage of the fact that it grows dark early and take comfortable naps and wake up with lots of time left to just lay there and smell your hair before it was time to actually go to bed.

The once and future king

2008-10-22T13:05:00.001-04:00

I’m starting to understand what Mars Volta is talking about. It’s starting to get cold and it feels like Christmas. That reminds me of that album, cranking it in Jason’s car and trying to explain the significance as snow fell heavily on the windshield wipers that he ended up replacing. I could see the CN Tower from my bedroom and I’d sit in the chair we rolled down the street from the end of someone’s driveway and read and watch the sky darken behind it. I’m feeling nostalgic; it’s just different this time.

Demons swinging hammers? I understand that now. I can isolate that sound and I can appreciate why its there. Somewhere between Latin rhythms and the horns section its there, percussion is amazing regardless of impact. So just imagine how that feels when it hits you.

I tried explaining it by applying pressure on your body once. Your skin was too soft and my fingers too weak. I did manage to get a sound out of you but it didn’t end in a bang.

My fortress of solitude

2008-10-17T15:46:00.001-04:00

I go there with a bitterness in my mouth, a hollowness of spirit, a weakness of constitution. Montreal; with your strange sofas I wake up on, your fluffy omlettes with weird ingredients, your deep glasses of wine and candle light and cigarette smoke and your fluid definitions of morality.

Things look like they were filmed on 8mm...romantic, distant, scattered and hazy.

Yesterday I had déjà-vu a couple times.

2008-10-10T16:22:00.000-04:00

Slowly curling around a highway off ramp in the late afternoon I watched a seemingly out of place grassy hill bathed in sunlight. It was a deep yellow and I watched the wind seductively wrap its curvy body in the silky grass. It rippled and surged under the invisible waves and I knew what in fact was playing on that hill. My fellow motorists were unaware of the impending danger.

Then late last night driving down a dark and slick Bloor Street I watched the streets teem with young blood. Globs of flesh protruding from thigh high stockings, networks of vein and bones mischievously dangling from short skirts and unbuttoned necklines gave pause for caution. Just because ghosts were following me shouldn’t preclude me from gazing as muscle and sinew worked hard against the unseasonably warm autumn air. It was warm enough to expose bare skin, but I bet it would rise and tighten under the gentlest of touches. I continued on…

I witnessed the romance of a haymaker, the betrayal of alcohol, the hyper vivid realization that we are not as strong as we appear and that maybe self doubt is a good thing. There are a lot of forces at work; in the grass, in my rearview...the most powerful of which is in my head, keeping me safe by telling me “I can’t”.

B-sides are a funny thing

2008-10-08T15:09:00.001-04:00

About once a month I have to sit through this excruciatingly boring meeting about soil contaminants. It is horrible, not just because of the topic, but the purpose, hammering out precise language for a best practices guide. Oh, and I’m also there for no reason!

So at this meeting there is this slightly older woman that I have a real soft spot for her as the only female around the table. Sometimes we catch each others eyes and we suppress small grins, sometimes we scowl at each other pretending to ruminate over the inane talking. We go until one of us cracks a smile and looks away. We go until I’m dizzy considering the possibilities.

So as I was walking into the room today I collide with her as she was exiting. Our bodies pressed against each other and my hands fell delicately on her hips. Her hands raised and placed her open palms on my chest. We blushed deeply at our accidental embrace, betraying us to the entire room. We both took a step back, cleared our throats and uttered soft apologies before continuing on our way. Some of the older men commented on what a “soft landing” that must have been. In my head I agreed.

This is how I celebrated my 1 year of no smoking!

2008-10-01T14:58:00.003-04:00

It is a strange moment when this is what your friends become. How is it possible that these random vapors escaping your face hole are received and interpreted in a way that I can only conclude you’re talking about history? Who talks about history? How did you acquire this knowledge when everything we do is random and you’re only here because more particles were magnetically attracted long ago to a glob of a baser version of yourself than they did to the nothingness that was beside you?

A collection of guts and bones wrapped in plush skin acting randomly while completely disconnected from the system that allegedly binds us together. It reminds me of a punctured aerosol can rattling loudly against solid objects while ignoring any of the all too apparent mental constructs that filled and failed the room. It just spins and flutters; impervious to any sentiment, devotion or cognitive dependence on those around you. You can will it to stop, but what is will? You could rely upon social norms and precedent, but where has that ever gotten us? Does this feel normal when I put my hands on you and try to still your flailing body? Instead I'll just stare, a body in motion wants to stay that way and there is no friction in the space between us. Ignore these giant strings of theories and etiquette that drape the room, you can pass right through them.

Yet I still can receive this transmission despite my own bizarre and uncontrollable hissing and sputtering.

2008-09-30T15:14:00.000-04:00

I don’t spend nearly enough time with my Dad. Whenever we’re together it seems it's always circumstance that brings us there, dinner, a car ride somewhere…

We choose to meet each other this time for no real reason, aside from proximity maybe. We sat cross legged amidst a book fair and watched people as they lined up for jerk chicken. I think the empty nest is getting to him.

So he didn't mind waiting.

2008-09-23T14:44:00.000-04:00

So there’s been a real rush lately on Federal Candidates resigning over blog posts or inappropriate behavior.

Although I’d never fancied running for office I think it would be fun to have resign in disgrace over some of the stuff that’s been said on here. C’mon, loving prostitutes is charitable, talking to monsters is endearing!

Imagine the press conference and the awkward questions. They’ll be so rich after breaking this story that they’ll all be taking golden showers!

Losing is easy

2008-09-22T15:04:00.001-04:00

I should write this down before I forget. Grass in Australia is flat and broad, sort of like little leaves poking up towards the hole in the ozone layer. I sat on it once, speaking Spanish then listening Portuguese, there was a lot of blushing and gesticulation. My head was swollen from that sign post I hit the night before; we were waiting for something, maybe for Meghan to get off work. She had a three month stint at a bar in the arcade. We waited in Veterans’ Park by the pedestrian scramble and the long line of old and twisted trees. Not sure what they were called. Later Danni would have an allergic reaction to aspirin by one. Maps in Sydney didn’t work; I had a room and it as over that hill, that’s all I knew. Took a bus once, and would never again, Bondi beach was great, nude surfing and cops in thongs, but that walk back through Kings Cross was terrible. Not terrible, just long, even without our delays trying to haggle a few Victoria Bitters from a tranny. Never take a bus.

It's name was Smokey, but I knew it as Tamas

2008-09-19T15:17:00.001-04:00

Going door to door last night I ran into a woman who owned a Hungarian sheep dog called a pulli. I grew up around these very unusual dogs because my grandparents used to breed them, and sure enough after a few more questions it came out that she had bought it from them.

It was weird to stand in that doorway staring down at perhaps one of the few surviving dogs that my grandmother had raised. It was 12 years old and it had out lasted her, it had outlasted my memory of her. It took a while for her name to come back to me, but it felt nice when it did.

It was the last thing she put her hand to, fighting Nazi’s, fighting Commies, raising children, immigrating, building a business and then this, this floppy little dog. Far from home and it too dying, happily.

The Suffering

2008-09-17T15:38:00.001-04:00

The current market situation gives way to the prime conditions for a zombie attack. Slowly a gulf emerges between haves and have nots. People witness the suffering of their neighbors but aren’t compelled by the human condition to come to their assistance because they have yet to feel the looming repercussions of the global collapse for themelves. Insulated and preoccupied by the fact that they still have a job to loose a family to die a sports team to tear the flesh from their teammates bones; they are impervious to those who have already lost all theirs.

The insular mindset that clouds your brain, the tenseness that stiffens your muscles; all indistinguishable to the undiscerning pallet of the undead. Ignoring your frail and feeble friends as if they are already dead and gone is a bad strategy. You’ll become reacquainted soon.

I'm feeling directionless, but thats to be expected

2008-09-16T09:04:00.001-04:00

Last night I and a couple of friends hit a pub and as we chatted I wondered if I would remember the night for years to come because this was the day the market crashed?

The booze made them look like flash animation cardboard cut outs moving smoothly over an unfocused background. The conversation around us sounded almost musical and the table stunk of beer soaked rotten wood.

I thought is this what 1929 in slow motion looked like? We kept our Tommy guns out of sight and raised our Tom Collins and Mint Julips and toasted to the end of the world. A 500 point fall left me wondering if it was time to sharpen our straight razors and run a warm bath; no one else seemed to be concerned. Although I did get a frantic PIN earlier in the day saying there hasn’t been a worse day in the markets during our lifetime.

What did we talk about again? My friend just bought a house, that’s probably gonna suck. We laughed and I wondered if my internet would be working when I got home, would it tomorrow?

2008-09-09T16:33:00.000-04:00

So finally I’ve finished my flagship piece for the industry magazine. It’s going to be the cover story too. Feel pretty cool about that. I have to go get a glamour shot so they can include my pic in the byline, ah vanity. I got 1800 words of pure genius plus some kick as photo’s from google images!

I wonder if they’ll run it through turnitin.com?

Encircle me, i need to be taken down

2008-09-08T16:35:00.001-04:00

Perhaps it’s cruel that only now does my mind recall the soft pastels and flowing linens of my room in the south of France. Come for the weekend, I’ve got a whole jug of petrol, we could probably make it all the way to Amalfi. We could eat oranges in dusty pool halls until it cools off enough to go down the cliffs to sit on the rocks and watch the waves.

Then we can suck salty clams from shells and wash it down with the wrong bottle of wine and laugh the metallic taste out of our mouths. We could watch the lights come on by the nativity scene then scope out the wait staff leaving the seaside resort. We could listen as the concerto is drowned out the din of more families appearing in the square and finally, we could wander back to our hostel bare foot. I’ve never liked flips flops and these cobble stone streets aren’t made for heels.

Man I hope my boss in't watching me right now. 35 days to go…

When I get a little scared...

2008-09-05T15:44:00.001-04:00

I’ve started listening to Tom Waits a lot recently. I’m really into the imagery that’s very unique to him. So much different than popular music where the imagery is just of other pop culture. He talks about chopping down trees and his drunk piano. They talk about how love is like a Fendi purse…stuffed in your vagina!

I wonder how I speak, if my words betray me. I use funny words like a fish out of water. Do you get the sense that I’m serious when I’m say I’m crushing on you? No? What about when I’m curled up on your parents’ driveway clutching the beer i snuck out of the club? What about then?

Don't let me live a life before my life flies by

2008-09-02T17:02:00.002-04:00

In the year 799 AD Pope Leo the III fleeing his enemies in Rome took refuge with Charlemagne. Along the way his friend and trusted confidant St. Liborius was injured and died. The Pope laid him to rest at the site of a spring and eventually a cathedral was built and a town sprung up named Paderborn. Not far was a town named Lemgo which served as a trade stop for merchants of the Hanseatic League who were a medieval trading association of free cities in northern Europe.

Directly between these two locations was the site of a hard fought battle where in 9 AD the Cherusci war chief Arminius defeated the Roman legions and drove them from Germany and is ultimately credited as the beginning of the slow decline of Rome’s power in Northern Europe. Centuries later the event was used to stir up anti-Napoleonic sentiment and deep in the Teutoburg Forrest now stands a giant statue commemorating this decisive victory. In that blood soaked clearing among that dense forest the Hermannsdenkmal was erected by Bismark to rally a newly unified Germany around ancient triumph.

Down a small path just a few miles from the site is the Hochschule für Musik Detmold. And just out side that small town was Holtzhausen, a small barn with an apartment loft converted above a horse stable where the rent was just cheap enough for the a Hungarian bartender and his young wife who was studying opera to afford. It was there that I was born.

I googled it for the first time today.

2008-09-01T14:06:00.000-04:00

Listeria is no laughing matter it seems. After 48 hours of the greatest diet ever I'm only now starting to clear my head. Staring up at the ceiling I imagined that giant pheonix swaying like the one above Alexandre the Great when he died. It was always moving and I could never tell which way the horizon was.

I gave my girlfriend my last wishes and sang "give my love to rose" by Johnny Cash which allowed me to instruct her to move on after I was gone without actually saying so.

Its just so sad that I will forever be a stranger to my son :-(

Pulled along, pulled apart

2008-08-27T16:26:00.001-04:00

I remember hiding in Ottawa, under the covers…so close to the floor that was my responsibility to sweep. I wasn’t working so I was in charge of house work. How was I supposed to make it up to the woman who was supporting me when all I had to sweep could be crossed in two paces? There was a lot of white woodwork and molding that collected dust in ways impossible to clean. It decoratively framed my prison and I remember trying to stay out of the corners; regret, much like dust, settles there. I would sit all day and worry and watch all my efforts erode into lists of all that she gave me; and all that I didn’t give back.

I would open the window and shake out a rug or stack the cd’s that were sprawled on the floor but generally I would have the will only to hide in my bed dreading the fact that I would have to return the movie before she got home from work. If I found a few cents I would stop by the Sugar Mountain on the way back; that would make it bearable.

You, appearing.

2008-08-22T16:08:00.002-04:00

On a roof top patio in Montreal recently I sat and watched as the only modern crush I’ve ever had systematically dismantled me. I rarely truly fall, tempted certainly, but never reduced to this. So as words failed me she leapt upon the ever increasing power differential and exploited my vulnerability. Her nostrils flared at the smell of blood as it came pouring out of me; through my hemorrhaging eyes that couldn’t meet hers for the shame, my silence pouring giant red waves into her ears as she listened to her barbs separate flesh from bone. She struck, and she struck harder. I always preferred blunt instruments, I see she did too. Carefully and recklessly bludgeoned the fuck out of my heart that I was foolish enough to expose.

I remember thinking how did she gain this leverage? And why is it that I’m less concerned with my absence of power as a political tool and just totally engrossed in every word that crossed her teeth. I would never treat her this way. Miscalculation burns. The only solace left to take on that cold and empty roof was knowing that because of her tremendous anger towards me, that at least at one point, she must have cared about me too.

My words they dont come out right, but I'll try and say I'm happy for you..

2008-08-19T16:51:00.001-04:00

For the first time ever, I’ve edited my blog. Often I’ll sit down drunk and rant, then awake the next morning embarrassed. But through it all, I haven’t deleted any of them, until now. Below is the edited version…

Feb 26, 2007

Her(e) I am, drunk as (non sexual expletive) and ready to party. My OCD is acting up and I can’t stop smacking my lips. I pull dirty cigarette butts from the ashtray and sip water out of a champagne glass, its not that I’m classy but it’s the only clean glass. My head is swinging like a metronome to the (band that I no longer hate) and I’m chewing on candy. This post is a big fuck you to (Organization I was once mad at but have since moved on)

I just sat through a (aforementioned org) social where I heard tones of stories about fun trips to Harvard and (non judgmental description) (appropriate noun that conveys correct amount of respect) Juicy from (Italy, still hate that country. You SUCK Italy). I didn’t go cuz last year (unflattering remark) (non gender-specific insult) caused such a fuss about my giant (unintentional testosterone byproduct) and my impossible sexy eyes. I made (sucky organization) and now I sit back and watch it get slapped in the fucking face with a (post modern social movement that I have since gotten a lot of respect for) shovel. I’m cut out of the loop and can’t enjoy any of the fruits of my labour, because someone took it upon them self to (exert their free will, and I’m happy for them and their autonomy). Grrrr! I’m (unreasonably) angry (but legitimately) upset; I’d like a point of parliamentary privilege to shit all over them.

I’m dizzy and mad, my head is heavy and my lips are dry and I can’t figure out this damn backspace on my new computer. If I could pull my shit together I’d tell everyone they need to eat a dick! I could have been the (long winded self aggrandizing rant, that exposes my own insecurity more than anything else) In stead I’m stuck at this computer like a jerk complaining, sucking my lip and blinking in a fit of tormented rage and self deprecation.

I choose to feel it but you couldn't choose...

2008-08-15T14:36:00.002-04:00

One time our bodies swayed when we hit an uneven bump on the highway. Our arms even touched. That was the first time and it was soft. I told you how I was stealing your negative ions and that at a molecular level that you were flirting with me. You laughed and tried to understand and I took myself too seriously.

I told you how my vocabulary was unfortunately insufficient to be able to describe everything I wanted to say. And that was the reason I always acted out the way I did. When words fail-fists will do.

I explained why everything is symbolic. How would you feel if you knew that just over those hills there were monsters? You'd read into things too...

I’ll see you in hell, and it’ll be nothing like it seems

2008-08-13T10:56:00.000-04:00

Further afield, deliverance will rain like meteor showers where each and every streak across a dark and endless sky will excite an illuminate. Nations will gasp under its magnificence; people will wish upon or kiss beneath them as they pass.

Scientists will scramble to study them and scribble coordinates late into the night. Young lovers will wrap them selves in picnic blankets and endure mildew and strong coffee and early mornings all at once.

Once every 10,000 years I will feel like this.

It was all good just a week ago (part II)

2008-08-07T13:00:00.000-04:00

Well I think this is funny at least. While taking full advantage of the self serve bar in the Elk Lodge in gay old St. John’s I stumbled upon an unused 2L milk jug. So I pumped it full of Kitty Bitty light and staggered around the dance floor pouring sloppy mouthfuls to semi-willing party goers. By the end of the night I’m pretty sure that most everyone (save a few, who due to a miscalculation, received an icy splash right down their shirt) put their lips directly on the jug. So between the beer baptisms and meningitis swapping I forgot about what happened next. Then a pic surfaced on facebook of me sticking my dick directly into the jug.

Its all rushing back to me now.

Waiting and wondering whether you’re falling apart.

2008-08-05T12:57:00.002-04:00

I’ve done it; I’ve now been in every province in the country. And I’m proud to say I couldn’t have gone out in a more lude and inappropriate fashion. The same night that saw me peeing on the floor of the Memorial University cafeteria next to our make shift bed of discarded knitted blankets of the rez we broke into because we were too drunk to find our proper building also saw me rent my shirt at a George Street bar and offer free licks to whoever dared. I was a mess, which has become an Atlantic tradition for me.

Sorry for all the LOTR comparisons but Conception Bay looked a lot like it. Towering cliffs adorned with 15th century fortresses split to offer a peak of a distant and hostile Europe beyond its dark waters. Everyone was impossible to understand when they spoke but their glowering stares were quite clear was we chanted our way up Water Street during their Gay Pride Parade. It was worlds apart from Toronto where the whole community comes out to celebrate. Here its was definitely making a statement, windows rolled up as we passed so thy wouldn't catch our AIDS and fishermen scowled while hiding in recessed shop door ways. It made me keenly aware of what it would be like to be judged and unaccepted by your community. It was an important lesson for me especially since for some unknown reason I was right at the front, and it was so small that I could interact with people as I passed by. There was no security of anonymity like you would experience in Toronto. Each person you walked by you spoke directly to them, with nothing between you except misunderstanding.

How will we know what to forget?

2008-07-29T16:56:00.000-04:00

Had drinks with this girl last night. We had a long and curious history that would allow our hands to shake and our eyes to burn across the table from one another. Her smiles were more like ticks; her lips would curl and just as quickly return to their customary form as if only to acknowledge that human emotion should be inserted there and nothing more. Her eyes were evasive and they gave me pause, her excuses piqued my interest but ultimately the whole exchanged seemed forced. We talked about French horns or about how she wanted to move to a different city, it was really strange and we were done as soon as I had finished my first beer. She left half of her gin and tonic unfinished.

Moving on.

What’s so amazing about really deep thought?

2008-07-28T17:45:00.001-04:00

It’s been raining a lot lately, I’ve never really been aware of weather patterns all that much. I do remember that one winter/spring/summer/fall and following winter that I spent locked up in my room looking out the window. I’d smoke til the fog in my room would match beyond my window, and I’d sit as the balance churned ugly around me. Then I’d crack the window and watch that balance slowly be ripped away. I’d keep it open until the pages of my newspapers would curl then finally stick together as the moisture would spread across my bedroom. I’d shiver in bed or watch the mosque across the street from above. Whatever the case I would fill beer bottle after bottle with wet cigarette butts while studying maps by monitor light. All the while smoking, smoking, smoking…

Guess who missed my birthday?

2008-07-23T13:48:00.000-04:00

I’ve been re-reading the emails my Mom and Dad sent me while I was in Israel telling me about my grandma dying. I can also see it in my blog posts while I was there how it weighed on me. My mom would describe how the doctor explained that her systems were shutting down one by one and the physiology behind it. My Dad would speak of her eating patterns and how her personality slowly faded beyond recognition. I was full of hope despite the prognosis because she seemed animated on the calls but it was all for naught.

Apparently the doctors had given her the wrong sort of blood thinner and it had complicated thing and contributed greatly to her passing. I’ve had this bitterness ever since. I’m off my game, I’m terrible, I’m tense. I’ve been sucking my tongue until it swells and is too big for my mouth and I constantly bite it. I’ve started to drool, and it hurts my teeth as it pushed out against them.

My Grandmothers’ last wish was that if you had an argument with someone and bad blood remained that you would reconcile ith them. This one’s gonna be hard.

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford Comma?

2008-07-22T15:59:00.001-04:00

One of the best summers of my modern life had to be 2006. I lived on the first floor of my crappiest apartment yet, above a mold infested grow-opp and under a raccoon nest on the border of Kensington and Chinatown. There was no public space and if you came over to my house there was nothing much to do but sit smoking out my window facing the brick wall opposite the small lane that lead to the scene of many a crime. There I would listen to my old metal C.D.’s, books and call sheets scattered at my feet, my stained and dusty mattress causing allergies.

I didn’t realize that I would be evicted in just a few short months and my roommates came and went. I didn’t cook once that summer, sometimes I’d re-heat something from New-Ho-King or I’d sneak down the street to meet someone at the Red Room and sit on the sidewalk eating discount soup and shooing beggars away from our pitchers of steam whistle.

So I write this because I found two of my old and transient room mates on facebook recently and we had a laugh about the few months we shared together.

Mozel Tov!

2008-07-16T16:39:00.001-04:00

So all this blogging has paid off, I finally have two columns of my own!

Well sort of, ones under my bosses name in a quarterly Ontario construction report and the others in the trade magazine that my company publishes. So it’s either me or the receptionist who would have to do it.

In any case, I’m not publishing myself so I’m not a loser like that communist dance party asshole.

Yeah I said it, watch my hits go up.

Witness the thickness!

2008-07-14T16:57:00.000-04:00

Alberta really looks like middle earth where sweeping planes filled with spinning oil rigs and heroic dwarves end in an impenetrable and gloomy border of giant mountains. It’s really weird, and as you approach you must endure these surging waves of hills that undulate and pulse as you ride them like tides toward the evil capital of Calgary.

Despite its medieval likeness; I still like Saskatchewan better for the time being.

This is bad news for animals...

2008-07-07T12:58:00.001-04:00

I visited my grandmother’s grave for the first time this weekend. I didn’t even know that she was buried; sometime I wonder what the fuck my family is thinking. There is was, as per my mother’s directions, flat and rectangular three rows in and beneath the big black heart. Five years make a difference; my grandpa’s engraved details looked old above her precise incisions. It looked dusty but it wouldn’t wipe off, there were dried out flower in front and to the side, I wanted to remove them but where would I put them. Certainly not in my car, I wouldn’t want to steal them. An ugly little tree encroached upon them from a neighboring plot, and I wonder what my grandmother, the avid gardener would have thought.

It really sucked there.

Man this poison is great!

2008-07-05T21:27:00.000-04:00

Tucked my friends in last night. I use to do this a lot.

I was the one who had to leave town because I left town. Coming back was never good, fights started right away, back dated awkward apologies followed current stumblings over the latest misunderstandings. Still I’d cruise by their homes late at night and pay my respects silently from their driveway.

Drive by apologies. I got it; and hoped that they someday would too.

“It’s always important to preserve the foil”

2008-07-04T13:34:00.001-04:00

That is what my brother said to me last night in a dream. We were elevated on the second story of a house or barn, looking down at those who would surely arrest me. He said this as he passed me a jacket which I just sort of knew was a costume to wear while doing bad things. I have this dream all the time; I knew what to do…

My perplexed reflection on the sentence indicated that by reinforcing negatives about your character it provides a sharper relief to those good qualities that shall surely free me from my oppressors. So I donned the brown suede jacket with fluffy lambs wool stuffing bulging from the collar, fastened the big round buttons and dashed off to have my innocence illuminated against the harsh juxtaposition of intolerable behavior.

I was seized immediately.

I feel like an idiot

2008-07-02T16:07:00.002-04:00

I forgot the URL to my blog so I goggled it and found this

I’ve been having trouble sleeping…maybe it’s the same thing. Where the hell is Chennai?

Forgot my glasses today, I’ve been squinting into my computer through my sunnies all day. Also got a package from Iceland; check it out here.

Enjoy

Historically, I tend to hate you.

2008-06-24T12:58:00.001-04:00

“In the not so distant futures” aside, going crazy isn’t as fun as you might think. I cried a lot about my grandma recently. Don’t worry I managed to milk a hug out of one half of a set of twins that I’m crushing on. Even in despair I got my eye on the prize. Although I mustn’t have looked very cool, eyes red and puffy while trying to bat my eyelashes in a meager attempt to have her notice their lusciousness.

Got madder then I can ever remember, and it did something to me. An unassociated gush of emotion that I had sequestered came out at the most inopportune of times. Crowded rooms and flashing lights didn’t help; enemies lurking in every corner trying to have couched conversations about irrelevant things didn’t either.

Fuck you doctors who suck at your jobs. Fuck you shitty cousins and know it all aunts who descend upon my house with stuff to fill the freezer.

Spinach pie aint gonna help no one right now...

Some things I dont take part in

2008-06-23T13:22:00.002-04:00

With nothing else to do I watched the flesh of my fingers part to reveal the outline of my bone as my hands struggled against the wind out of my car window. Maybe I’m getting too fat? I drifted in and out of radio reception and was content to listen to static and was pleasantly surprised whenever tone emerged. Tops of hills sounded great!

Things in Montreal were good, I drove a lot. I didn’t need a 300 pound friend puking in the rental. I didn’t need to have my car towed or to be locked out of the hotel, sleeping in the parking lot in my puke car. Topless breakfast was good, but not as enjoyable as I had remembered. I guess it was a slow day, only one girl was working.

Most importantly I thought a lot about peoples eyes, you always know where to find them. Suspicious sideways glances on dark city streets, two sets of eyes will dart from their feet to meet each other and back again as strangers pass in the night. Vivid wide eyes, feline or otherwise, still catch you even as they twirl on a dance floor. Why is that? Little round orbs alerting you to ones passion, betraying the anonymity that unfamiliarity provides.

Damn.

You know when I heard that? When I was back home.

2008-06-16T15:17:00.001-04:00

Going back to Ottawa as good for me this weekend.

Had a great hotel room paid for by great company, it was worlds apart from my small bachelor apartment I had moved from just 4 months earlier. I was just down the street from my old apartment and I could probably even see my old office building from my 16th floor window had I bothered to even think to look in its direction.

Now that I think of it, I felt pretty good about that.

Oops…I get side tracked sometimes

2008-06-09T22:09:00.001-04:00

I heard city and Colour and thought of Saskatoon because they sing of it and I heard it for the first time on a dusty backroad while drinking and driving on the way to the lake. Then I thought of the giant sky… that expressive giant sky.

I wanted to tell you my plans for the summer. Edmonton and St John’s this summer. Completing the circuit, I will now have been to every province in the country. I’ve met both Albertans and Newfies and they’re both kind of fucked and delightful, perhaps I’d be more disgusted were it not for my sexy indifference to incest (no one should tell you how to feel!).

Alas, I’m excited, both seem to be the very extremes of the parts of the country I like the most; the prairies and the Atlantic. Its like Africa...but with like...more food.

I’m getting the feeling my days are numbered…

2008-06-09T21:56:00.000-04:00

It’s positively apocalyptic outside. Violent shades of red stab forward beyond menacing and embattled clouds that seem to bleed across the sky in a punishing wind. The sky is threatening, the heat oppressive, the air clutches the sides of your lungs and it makes me feel under attack personally.

I remember the stench of Manhattan in July, the stickiness of a long drive home, the lightness of your fingers trembling in the wind at 100 miles an hour. The air it seems has always been indicative of my feelings, a manifestation of the fact that were all connected despite our best efforts. You think carbon emissions suck? Try breathing in the sloppy seconds out of my lungs bitch.

I just can’t help myself sometimes

2008-06-06T15:30:00.001-04:00

So after a particularly raucous final night at the bar I headed back to my hotel. And as usual I started planning out my pee schedule. This is a nightly thing especially when drinking, when I walk down a street rather than taking in the sights or checking girls, I’m scouting locations to pee. That dark alley, that potted plant, that sleeping bum, all catalogued because even if I don’t need them now, I may on the way home.

I was very proud of myself for holding it all the way to my room (although I did have a weak moment in the stairwell when I saw those empty bottles). So when I arrive to find my washroom otherwise indisposed I started to panic. Of course the window was locked and I wasn’t really in the mood to share this side of me with my roommate who was getting lucky in the bathroom, so I headed back out to the hall. Could I make it back to the stair well? This is Poland people prob just piss against the wall all the time, what to do? So as I did my quickest, “oh shit I’m gonna piss myself hobble” down the hall I spotted the garbage can right by the elevators. I had no choice I whipped it out and started pissing. It was a glorious high intensity stream that rang off the inside of the polished metal bin. All around me elevators blinked and beeped up and down as I tried to force out this massive whiz.

I was actually surprised when I didn’t get caught, I have become accustomed to all sorts of embarrassing conversations, although I did have a twinge of awkward shame when waiting for the elevator the next morning and one of the girls on the trip remarked that “this hotel smells like piss”

still awsome

2008-06-05T01:24:00.001-04:00

So one night I woke up on the floor of the hotel hallway in Krakow. My head was tingling and my teeth were itchy so I figured I must have been sleepwalking then physically passed out and collapsed. So I looked up as these two Polish security guards were yelling at me (in Polish) and then I realized what the big deal was…I was naked.

What the eff right? Yeah, I’m not really sure either. So I’m trying to explain to the guard that he needs to calm the fuck down and if he gave me like two seconds to get my shit straight I could remember my room number and we all could be spared the awkwardness of my poorly timed morning wood. SO he clues in that I don’t know where I am (my ahem. ..”divining rod’ isn’t exactly helping) so he starts knocking on doors to see if he can find my roommate. So the last thing I need is more judgmental people from my trip to cry about my dong in the circle the next day so I have to figure something out fast.

Just then I see my friend Alexi and he lets me into his room to hide while I try and remember my room number. So I agree to hide in his bathroom while he goes to the front desk to figure out my room number, of course that’s precisely the moment his roommate wakes up to find me naked in his bathroom…awkward! So after a few embarrassing minutes we determine the coast is clear and I’m able to creep down the hallway to my hotel room which I know remember. As I’m tip toeing out of his room, a group of people on the trip come around the corner to catch me sneaking out of his room naked. Great.

The pictures are already on facebook.

There's nothing special, I swear

2008-06-04T14:14:00.000-04:00

One of the things I really wrestled with in Europe was over whether or not to take a stone from Birkenau. I wanted it for my Naugpapa’s grave, as he was Jew who survived the Holocaust; I though it would be a nice “fuck you” to the Nazis. Not really sure what it meant, but I guess control over the very soil that housed these atrocities, the simple fact that you were able to leave and take what you wish was empowering I suppose.

So I stood on the rusted tracks at the platform where selection would take place, to my left you were sent directly to the gas chambers, to my right, you live another day. So where the track split I bent down and picked up the stone closest to the division between life and death. I was worried that I would be bringing evil back home with me, and I made several attempts before I could finally do it. I considered leaving it behind as well, first at Birkenau, then in Warsaw, then at the airport. Now it’s sitting in my living room waiting until I can visit my Naugpapa’s burial site.

Going to visit Auschwitz is kind of like kissing your sister; totally awesome!

2008-05-27T15:25:00.001-04:00

Well that’s not true, I can’t say I felt anything. Nothing but a hollow emptiness as I stared upon row upon row upon row upon row upon row upon row of stark chimneys striped bare of the barracks once surrounding them. It went on forever, I would gaze down the row, 10 barracks down, that’s the distance to the bar across the street. Double that and it’s the distance to the Brass Rail around the corner, beyond that is the length of every shameful walk home filled with regret over the past semester and further still is the duration at which I have hauled this sense of self doubt for years. It didn’t end. Measurement is funny, you’re aware of it but only in the strangest of ways. I could squeeze out two maybe three songs on the way to the gas chamber, if nothings in my way I can do two artistic renditions of “our hell” complete with meandering and sad piano solo’s while watching the wonders of perspective curl my eyes from temple to temple across a see of these brick pyres of despair.

My shoes are wet, I am so selfish.

MRH 2008

2008-05-14T15:54:00.000-04:00

Here’s a sample itinerary of my trip for those that are interested. The days will be different but by and large the activities will remain the same.

FRIDAY MAY 16
Afternoon:
• Visit to Berlin suburb - Wannsee - site of the infamous Wannsee
Conference, a meeting of senior Nazi officials on January 20,1942 where the "Final solution to the Jewish question" was formalized.
Evening:
• Traditional Friday night Dinner
• Overnight: Berlin, Hotel NH Alexanderplatz

SATURDAY MAY 17
Morning & Afternoon:
• Depart for Bebel Platz followed by visits to the following: Reichstag, Checkpoint Charlie, “Topography of Terror” Exhibition, Jewish Museum & Holocaust Memorial.
• Overnight: Berlin, Hotel NH Alexanderplatz
SUNDAY MAY 18

Morning:
• Drive to Krakow, possible stops en route in towns of significance (Wroclaw and possibly others).
Afternoon:
• Arrive in Krakow. Begin visit in Plazow, infamous Nazi labour camp featured in Schindler’s List, Visit other sites in Krakow including Kazmiez (the former Jewish Quarter)
• Overnight: Krakow, Hotel Express

MONDAY MAY 19
Morning:
• Visit Auschwitz I Concentration and Death Camp
Afternoon:
• Walk to Birkenau Concentration and Death Camp
• Visit Birkenau
• Memorial Ceremony in Birkenau
• Overnight: Krakow, Hotel Express

TUESDAY MAY 20
Morning:
• Depart to Lublin
Afternoon:
• Walk though Old Lublin
• Visit Majdanek Concentration-Death Camp followed by Memorial Ceremony
• Depart for Warsaw
• Overnight: Warsaw, Hotel Novotel Centrum

WEDNESDAY MAY 21
Morning & Afternoon:
• Begin walking tour of Warsaw including: Okapowa Cemetery,
Heroes Walk, Umpshlagplatz, Rappaport Memorial, Warsaw
Ghetto Walk, Korczaks’ Orphanagae, Nozyk Synagogue, Old City
• Overnight: Warsaw, Hotel Novotel Centrum

THURSDAY MAY 22
Morning:
• Depart for Tykocin
• Tykocin Synagogue and Cemetery
Afternoon:
• Visit Treblinka Death Camp followed by Treblinka Memorial Ceremony
Evening:
• Closing MRH Ceremony in Warsaw
• Overnight: Warsaw, Hotel Novotel Centrum

FRIDAY MAY 23
Morning:
Depart for Airport in the AM

They say it doesnt get emotional/disturbing until Poland, I guess I'll keep you posted.

2008-05-12T16:51:00.000-04:00

I’m 4 days away from returning to the country of my birth for the first time. I was only a few months old at the time that I left but I have one lasting memory. It’s really just an image and even now I can’t even focus on the detail of it. I’m on my back staring at the corner of a ceiling; the walls are grey, maybe a light blue. Also in my field of vision is something wooden, but very dark, like a deep mahogany. Sometimes my mom and brother spoke about this ugly bird clock in Holtzhosen, very campy, very German. Maybe that was it. I also for some reason I envision a white carpet. Not sure if it was white or if there was even a carpet at all. Maybe it’s because of the light in the room, maybe a window was open. There was no sound, no movement, there was nothing at all. Just a corner and a wooden thing that my eyes weren’t developed enough yet to focus on.

Wwe're paralyzed, we apologize

2008-05-07T00:51:00.002-04:00

got a new office in missisauga. sucks i guess but i love the ride if i have something to read and somewhere to sit. i get nervous or clostrtophobic when the subway swarms with people. i get real scared and cant wait til their gone. but once i get my seat i cant move. even if theres empty spots on both sidres and ettiquette requires a shift over...i just pretend to be so self absorbed that i dont notice. as if i dont notice everyone elses observatation of me.

when i stop my hands will shake... my eyes will burn

watching you turn from me to where you're from...

hosted some enemies tonight; let grace rain rose petals and soft excused about me...

Let me introduce you to the end….

2008-04-29T15:53:00.002-04:00

Trying to reduce my carbon footprint. Took a test that said if everyone in the world consumed like I did that they would need 5.5 earth’s to sustain that lifestyle. Trying to slim down. Opened a mutual fund account today, only sustainable Canadian companies who also value diversity, there was some index explaining it. Also, wanted to subscribe to National Geographic again, I love maps, but gonna try and get an online subscription. Same for Toronto life, I love their recipes. Even made my facebook page green, I’ve saved 0.03lbs of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.

Lets celebrate.

Is summer over already?

2008-04-28T16:36:00.000-04:00

Think I just bid a fond farewell to the city that connected me and my girlfriend. I wonder if I would be where I am today if it wasn’t for Montreal. Room 402, Molson Hall, popcorn stuck in your teeth from Biftek, garlic potatoes delivered from Boustans’ clashing with the bitter Boreal blonde. I never wanted to sleep in; the bed propped up on pieces of particle board pained my back, and why not, I had a whole city of aliens, and old friends to visit.

My second home; half Montreal, half amazing. Free from the oppression of Toronto, my mind was allowed to wander. Who knew I’d grow to love, who knew I’d grow into the man I am today. She was infuriatingly smart, I had to change and fast. Not really change I guess...but apply myself.

Thinking of reviving the blog circle.

2008-04-24T00:05:00.002-04:00

just putting it out there...

I was part of a crew then got too famous and struck out on my own...
maybe they'll see this...

It's hard to keep track of you, falling through the sky

2008-04-22T14:31:00.003-04:00

Not really sure what’s been happening to me lately. With a song in my heart, I’ll press my finger tips to the subway window and gently flex them to the softest down beats of the music. As I emerge from the dark tunnels to the bridge at Broadview, or the old houses by Jane, or most favorably, the cemetery north of St Claire, I pulse colour from my fingertips. Well, not really from my fingers, the colour is already there, it just sort of smudges as my fingers pass before my field of vision. I leave bright trails, as all coulors run together along the path my fingers have ventured, swallowing green hillsides, and erasing cars.

I’ll smile crookedly, and let my eyes glaze over as I curl my fingers and dig beneath the public veneer of the world at large. I can swirl great pools of brightly coloured vortexes and let it drip and stain the ground as my hands drop to my sides. I hide it guiltily like it’s a murder weapon. I hide it like I want to get caught.

I can close one eye and position my thumb over your face only to remove it to have it look like someone attacked a picture of you with photoshop. I suppose the most important part, other than the master pieces I stroke out of mid air, is the fact that beneath the canvass that we rarely see beyond, there is still beauty. To me it seems like the world is oil based.

...lets not try to figure this out all at once...

2008-04-17T13:32:00.001-04:00

So it’s been about a week and a bit since my tragic encounter with Cindy in that convenience store, and I’m still puzzled as to what to do. I have her card after 5 years of longing for way to reach her. I’ve sat down a few times and attempted to email her but never found the words. And I seem to be okay with that. Maybe I’m just glad to have the ball in my court for the 1st time. I could rip it up if I wanted, I really could. Maybe I'll just keep it in my wallet for a little longer...

handing sandwiches out at the gates of hell

2008-04-16T15:51:00.001-04:00

I recently had the opportunity to see Samantha Power speak at the local Indigo. She wrote a landmark book on America’s involvement during genocides, that Steve loved and cited probably everyday while we lived together on Thorncliffe. She wrote a new one about this peacekeeper and was being interviewed by Heather of those “Heather’s pick” stickers.

For the most part she spoke about Barak Obama as she was an advisor to him, and it reminded me when you’re at a concert and bands reluctantly play their hit that’s years old at the behest of a crowd that hasn’t bothered to buy their new album.

One thing that she said stood out, because of the specificity of the internet we can get exactly the news we want no more no less. We self identify and compartmentalize and insolate ourselves far away from ugly truths like genocide because “African slaughter fields” didn’t pop up in our search engine when we entered celebrity gossip. She says we’re lacking these “serendipitous encounters with inconvenient truths” and I tend to agree.

If I hadn’t subscribed to the Globe back in ’04 I never would have heard about the Orange revolution, and I never would have gone to Ukraine and I never would have started down the path that many credit as my launching pad to my current success. What else are we missing, by choice or otherwise?

Anger will pass, as will the world you know

2008-04-13T01:58:00.001-04:00

It appears my friends are ill equipped to handle a zombie apocalypse.

To help them I’m providing them with a helpful list as compiled by anti-zombie warrior Max Brooks.

1. Organize before they rise
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head, cut off theirs
4. Blades don’t need reloading (take that Graham!)
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes and short hair
6. Get up a stair case, then destroy it
7. Get out of the care and onto a bike
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert
9. No place is safe, only safer
10. The zombie maybe gone but the threat lives on.

This isn’t some stupid list, it’s been battle tested and takes into consideration outbreaks regardless of type, durations or locale.

Graham- Your fool hearty ways will visit disaster on the rest of the group. My suggestion is to use him as a decoy.
Janice- You’re greatest strength is also your biggest weakness. Good call on being a vegetarian, fresh, healthy meat will be hard to come by. But unfortunately (?) you don’t have the killer instinct
Jason- You’re a good problem solver but you’re stubborn. I’d say it’s because you’re from Alberta, but I think you all are.
Zita- My money’s on you. You’re resourceful, and your size works for you. You can fit into small places and require minimal food to heat and energize you.

Best of luck to all of you, but fortune doesn’t favour the bold in this case. There’s only one goal. To survive.

The simplest things

2008-04-11T16:03:00.001-04:00

Working from home is really getting to me. Productivity is down this quarter, and I’m afraid it’s gonna cost me. I have one contract on the go and it just cant compete with You Tube. Now I got a second fulltime job and it is gonna make completing my first pretty hard and even worse eliminate You Tube all together. My life hasn’t changed much since I started working, I still get on much like I did in undergrad, and I’m worried that will all come to a screeching halt.

On the bright side, I will be traveling to Germany and Poland next month; I’m actually angling to get to Kosovo just to say that I did it. I’m a fan of revolution whether or not its justified and I wanna be there in their first year. It’s kind of like taking that sloppy mess home from the bar just to say you could. Yup that’s Kosovo, the big sweaty hammer case of the Balkans.

Thats the sound of settling

2008-04-08T11:45:00.001-04:00

Allow me to be self indulgent for a moment. This is my 200th post and I know people stopped reading me long ago. It’s sort of like being isolated, where you slip deeper into irrelevancy and grow more disturbed with each passing day without the comfort of a human caressing their keyboard for your sake. There’s plenty of spam bots that you think would keep me company, but invites to online poker or to make money from home grow tiresome fast.

If you listen to a lonely drum long enough you’d be surprised at just how hollow it becomes.

In the not so distant future...revisited

2008-04-07T22:18:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I imagine my hands like large mechanical pincers such as a robot would have. Too bulky to feel the delicacies of a lovers embrace, but unrefined as to be painful even to the slightest touch. Smashing your bones means I love you, and ignoring you would probably be a blessing in this case.

It was exactly how I pictured it, except in a convinience store, and i was dirty, and it really didn't go that well...

2008-04-04T15:15:00.002-04:00

I’ve always imagined how it would happen, my cold, scared eyes catching hers as I huddle against a brick wall. Maybe she would crouch down and ask what happened and wonder at the promise I once shown as she dropped a loonie in my cup. Or I’d be in a booth at a swank bar surrounded by women and she’d come up to serve me and only then realize her mistake.

For the past 5 years I’ve wondered where we’d meet, what I would say and more importantly what she would. Not much, not much beyond “…you’ll have to remind me…” I could have sworn she was still wearing the bracelet I bought her as she asked me this.

In the not so distant relatively distant future

2008-03-25T23:57:00.003-04:00

Spectrums are abandoned all together. Rainbows were in vogue for a while, as were disorders like Klienfelters and SARS, but now only absolutes ruled the day.

Conjecture went by the way side, as did circumspection and deliberation. Now things were cut and dry as enforced by the interplanetary council of responsible assurance. There seemed to be some unsavory moments resulting from unruly questioning of rationale in our past that lead to a crack down. Now if things weren’t certain they weren’t considered for public consumption. And of course by “seemed to be” it is universally regarded merely in its historical context where such things as “seeming” still existed, and not in its now common occurrence of absolute being.

Somewhere a robot yawned lazily while gently stroking its circuitry.

You can go fuck yourself...at an atomic level that is!

2008-03-24T22:59:00.002-04:00

If gravity is simply the force created between two masses then there really is something between me and my girlfriend. I argued with my friend that even though she’s in Montreal right now it remains unbroken and relative to the sun, actually stronger than the gravity we experience here on earth. He says the sun is larger and the distance greater relative to me and my girlfriend standing 6 hours apart, thus the power exerted greater. I told him he had a jaded view of proximity and he can’t judge closeness; up close or with the perspective that distance provides.

I imagine it as a thin white ribbon that flutters in the cold Quebec wind while draped around her shoulders. I can spin it tight enough to get musical cords out of it and send her harmonic messages like snapcase in high-school. Much like my girlfriend, touch a guitar gently enough and you’d be surprised what you can make it say.

2008-03-21T02:41:00.001-04:00

I’m going to have to limit my drunken walks home to half an hour max. I thought I escaped my monsters, left them in my dust of a rotten shell game that bounced me back and forth between different bodies of water. I saw there shiny underbellies arching over streets, their wings fanned out as they leapt from building to building. In Ottawa they were smaller, taking the form of people passing by or lurking ineffectually, now they’re the size they were in Saskatchewan, just their harmless demeanor is replaced by hostile acrobatics threatening and abrasive.

I saw their claws dig into the side of buildings, their gargoylian faces scowling into the darkness. I clenched my fist ready to punch in a final fit of futility as they would smile upon the stroke that murders me. Yet they suffice to simply torment me. Welcome back to Toronto.

I'll smashee your noseee in a second

2008-03-18T14:51:00.001-04:00

I’m finally settled here in Toronto. On my first night, Noah joined me from our Mivghash (encounter) in Israel. She said funny things and we fell asleep, but it was good to “break the distance”. The next day I awoke to a protest against Scientology, people in Guy Fox masks crowded the streets and shouted obscenities into their masks that just reverberated in their own ears while emitting only a muffle beyond the plastic. The next morning I awoke to the St. Patrick’s Day parade and my girlfriend was thrilled to live into Toronto.

It’s good to be back, its good to be famous. I feel like a returning conqueror and when I walk into a room half of it hushes the other half light up to see me. I stand at my balcony and let my eyes glaze over at the overwhelming view. The CIBC tower, the Bay tower, this tower, that tower all glowing, all amazing. It was a full week before I noticed the small side streets lined with red brick homes 25 floors below.

I like the idea of giants hulking and their wonder distracting from the smaller virtues that scurry below them. I like thinking of myself like that too.

the first five times

2008-02-26T19:43:00.003-05:00

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.

There's nothing left to save

2008-02-26T01:49:00.001-05:00

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.

Live Bloggin from home

2008-02-24T23:12:00.001-05:00

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.

Lets call it a total eclipse of the heart.

2008-02-24T11:28:00.003-05:00

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.

It's only a matter of time before we meet again.

2008-02-22T23:27:00.002-05:00

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.

like a hiding sun...but it's almost summer

2008-02-18T17:13:00.001-05:00

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.

Handle with Care, I Dream Hard

2008-02-14T14:41:00.000-05:00

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.

2008-02-07T16:13:00.000-05:00

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

2008-02-06T19:12:00.000-05:00

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.

Theres only so much abuse you can be expected to take before needing atleast a little nap

2008-01-21T15:39:00.000-05:00

I fought every moment to keep my eyes open. Fixated on the road ahead I resisted the urge to sleep, trying to burn every vision into my memory so when I needed to escape or avoid monsters descending upon me I could close my eyes and be back there. Years later I can still squint into the sun and remember Australia and the comfort that distance provides, or concentrate on the slush filling my boots and pretend I was a revolutionary standing against a cruel regime in the streets of Kiev. I’d channel these memories at times of hopelessness and despair and use them as a guard against the prevailing wind of doubt, to shield a vulnerable soul and wrap it in escapism to pretend that I am mighty beyond what my feeble body would suggest.

Alas, I slept. Up until this point I couldn’t, exhaustion punished my body, questions tormented my soul, grief and regret followed me around every corner of the old city and its icy feet kept me awake at night. I could see the veins in my eyelids and drifted off to sleep in a field of red.

When I awoke we were at Givat Haviva, they were some sort of NGO that deals with the conflict and brings both sides together to pursue solutions or something. A woman bordered our bus and spoke about the problems that proximity present. We cruised past the new subdivision on the fields where Armageddon is to be fought and crossed a flat valley to see the towns of Jena and Edin. They were a 12 minute walk apart and maybe 15,000 each, they were also in the news during the second intifada because suicide bombers from Jena would blow themselves up in Edin. It was hard to believe that a place smaller than the town I grew up in could produce suicide bombers, and perhaps stranger, that you would have to worry about it in a place like that. The wonders continued. We climbed a mountain and looked over an Arab city bathed in sun. From that mountain we could look east and see Jordan beyond the West Bank and the Mediterranean to the west. It really started to hit home just how tiny this country was.

Finally we looked down the hill at East and West Baarta. Once a single town, it was split in half and different citizenships were given out. The towns were predominately a few families who now had to endure the humiliation of checkpoints just to see each other. Perhaps the single most telling event of the trip happened when dusk hit and the Israeli side lit up, while the Palestinian side remained black save a few lights at the mosque. To the East as far as Jordan and to the west as far as the Mediterranean the trend seemed to continue. Out of the darkness of the east came the call to prayer as we boarded our bus.

Next stop Tel Aviv

I quit half way through this

2008-01-13T23:19:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay, been a bit of a mess lately.

Fuck off to all my friends that suck BTW.

So we’re back on Dec 17th at the Synagogue of Capernaum. We sat where Jesus taught and I regretted my black shirt. The sun was unforgiving but the breeze was merciful and amidst the blossoming trees it all seemed to balance to provide a tranquility that defied the temperature.

We curled in and around the river Jordan which is much more a stream than anything else. We passed a pleasant grove where pilgrims in white robes dunked themselves in the sluggish waters. We drove between impossibly high cliffs on our left and banana plantations on our right, the plump bushels were wrapped in plastic as they dangled from the trees and we all joked at their obscene nature.

We followed the coast past Tiberius and once again our tour guide pointed out yet another hotel. This was a habit that they had and I started to wonder if it was some attempt to highlight their flourishing tourism industry which was indicative of safety and to differentiate themselves from the Palestinians and flaunt their industriousness.

We then went to the Druze village of Daliat El Carmel, climbing out of the bus we heard the sound of gunfire coming from the valley below. It all caught us off guard as you could feel the pressure change in the air around you. It’s like no matter where it was aimed it still hit you in a sense. We all hurried across the street hoping to avoid the sound of its impact. I suppose the fact that it was fired in an unknown and inconsequential direction was soothing, but we all dreaded the sound of breaking glass or cracking cement. That would bring it to close for comfort; we weren’t here for the real experience, just the highly prescribed and manicured version. Taking back some lead would grant this trip some much needed realism that I was prepared to live without at that moment.

We spoke with a remarkably beautiful Druze woman who knew nothing of her secret religion. She had to live with the burden of being forced to believe in things such as reincarnation and abstinence without the benefit of knowing any of the scripture or doctrine behind it. It was a weird mix of innocence and abuse that was both heartwarming and frightening at the same time. You couldn’t help but love her as she batted her eyelashes while describing the insignificance of love but the importance of not smoking. Perfectly and politely she dismissed one after the other of our questions which is her “duty as an ignorant”. She perplexed us in her slender, fashionable jeans and her tight, tantalizing top and we all grew sleepy in the comfort of her charming voice. She seemed to whisper through plump lips how the family is the most important thing and we struggled to pry our eyes away from her curves to observe her animate gesticulation at the disgrace of abandonment by the community. Excommunication was the punishment for the thoughts that began running through the minds of every person in the room. We then climbed down the stairs in a bit of a daze to the chorus of fire arms.

I will end it there midway, through the day. Even know my vision is closing in on me at the thought of her.