And I kept thinking that as we were all getting older, only some of us are getting prettier.  The rest of us are losing our hair and finding curves in the places where new hair is forming, taking the place of the ones on our heads.

I keep stumbling upon pictures on social networks of your receding hairline and the school that you now teach at is the same one that I went to so long ago.

I keep wondering how so many of you finished up with the classroom so quickly, and how so many of you just don’t care that you’ve escaped it entirely since high school…

I keep thinking about how many of us are left in limbo still, just hoping to see the finish line.

All of a sudden Fall came back again today, blew in the door, and made all the houseplants shudder in their pots.  The clouds floated curiously on top of all the blue that is left on the horizon, and kept us secretly warm from the air pressure that’s been knock knock knocking since the end of October.  I’m reminded of Halloween last year, the cold, the body paint, the strips and strips of movie film that I’d sewn onto that black t-shirt of mine.  This was long before I knew the meaning of clothing that fit well, all the while just displaying my belly button to the world.

This was all long before New Years, the night that redirected everything.  The night I met so many of you.  And it’s cliche and simple to think that on a night like New Years we should be so redirected, but when I look back at the pictures, I certainly look older, simpler, and more worn out.

And we’ll all find the wrinkles to form on the back of our hands, and I’m sure that if I ever combed my hair there would be bushels of hair between the teeth.

For now I’ll ignore these signs of a wasting mind, and just continue to build upwards, skin tightening, hair thickening, eyes brightening.

If only the Jar Hippy really knew that she was the subject of so much of my writing.  The quiet woman who fascinates and infuriates my days at school, surely deserves a thank you, even if she never receives it.  Somewhere under her facade of wool and patchouli, is I’m sure a tender soul who thinks nothing of the mason jar that she totes from class to class.  And me, the frustrated, overworked fellow in the front row could use some of your chill, adverse attitudes about the pace that we take in life, and the vessels in which we drink from.

And you help me to wonder, Jar Hippy, just who is following my every move?  Just how many people take notice to me speed walking around this fair Vancouver campus of ours, scarves trailing, shoes clicking??  How many observers are completely filled with rage to see the texture of my jackets, the countless disposable coffee cups that I also tote around?…  How many of them would want to consume me too?? Or completely deconstruct me?

There is something about those of us that silently sit in the corners of the room, looking still and transfixed by the books in our hands and the music in our ears, while completely hypnotized by the bodies in the room and the jars that they drink from.

And I’ve watched you run across 49th, and I’ve seen your body move in ways that a gay gold star would never understand.  For the male form in all of its simplicity would never know the complexities of your layers and layers of feminist propaganda, or truths, or sentences that surround the center of every page and each period; all of it padding for something deeply interesting and intriguing inside.

I’ve learned how to walk in my best saunter, and still, I’m standing tall, strong, and new in this skin, and some might care to tell me that it’s all temporary.

And still, I must wonder, Jar Hippy, if I can feel such rage and fascination towards you all these months and days,

then surely there is hope for this new happiness too…

This newly formed vegetarianism, I return once again to my roots.  Only the liquor, the beer, the merriment, time and time again seem to bring me back  to the hot dog.  These menageries of meats, encased and enclosed, smothered in cheese and condiment, they sate me, and disgrace me.  But these sauces are not the only things that I wear on my hand, and I am far from disgraced from this.  The developments of this city, the long, cold walks through these streets where it seems there is not another who is home and awake.  This city ascends beside me, while I, in time am awaken, by these developments in my self.

Apparently, these “two dudes”, and the congee noodle house’s poor sign once again know the taste of the pavement.

I think you may have tried at once to carve our names into a tree, and the outcome seems a foreign thing.  I cannot seem to piece it all together, although I know that we were certainly those people who cling to the terrace and cling to each other.  And perhaps we disgusted the masses, or brought them to curse obscenities to love, and tell it to go and fuck itself.  And for these things that would have normally disgusted myself as well, I am far from concerned.  I am newly comfortable, I am newly aware of the changes in myself, and the recollection of feelings that I’d almost given up on.

It’s hard not to jump.  It’s hard not to want to dive in, swim, and just dissolve into solution.  And there are those that would tell me to slow down, to take it easy, to embrace this pace.  And I’m trying to calm this racing mind and the things that want to keep fighting and flighting all the way to the end.  I know the feel of my adrenals, I know the temperature of my stress, and the way it tastes.  I know the eventual return to the masses, and the feelings inside when all the voices get at each other.  I know how easily happiness and sadness change into madness, and every step in between.

I’m standing still.  The diving board is quivering under the weight of these feet and legs.  My toes grip the surface, feeling curiously sandy and aware, of the texture of everything. And the sand might like to simmer and boil just like the tempers of all those cursing profanities at love, telling it to rot on the edge of the board and never quite test the temperature of the water.

The spectators disturbed… by the sound of the cars, or the pace and the taste of the wind on the first of November, all of them distracted, fail to notice my knees.  The joints and the muscles all bending, descending toward my calves.  And my arms spinning backward, my wrists facing frontward, I bounce and rebound, and sail furiously forward.