In this art space the corners are all filled with broken glass and bottle caps, and I wonder just what it is I’m supposed to be doing here.  All these dreams of lost time, and missed events in far away states and provinces, and the trips that have been booked are all racked up on my credit card.  The limit of this plastic money lender is not the least of my worries for we’ve got plenty of time to chip it away.

All these expenses, these timely new friends and foes that have filled my belly and helped my ears and eyes experience more, all these expenses, are now welcome and at the same time completely inevitable.

My throat is all scratches, and it seems that the thing that we’ve all been fighting has finally been let loose inside of me. It seems impossible to keep on top of everything. It seems redundant at times to try and keep on top of everything. I wonder if I truly do “walk the line,” like they say, or if I’m really balancing on some sort of tightrope. Communication would be that much easier, if only, all the cliches actually, really meant something.

But I’ve gone from one extreme to another this week, and it wouldn’t be the first time. I’ve gone all the way from dancing and dreams, late nights, and extreme substances, to tea and textbooks, yoga and bedtime.

And it wouldn’t be the first time.

It saddens me to think of all the “firsts” that I’ve had and will never have again. All the things that seem trivial to me now, were all, at one point euphoric, exhilarating, and entrancing experiences. The sex and the substances, the music and the early mornings, the way the air feels in a sweaty room, and the way it feels on the walk home in the early morning, all still for me, hold something special.

But things become so trivial. No less trivial than the countless math formulas that I, daily, have to struggle with, or the trip back and forth from work. And I’m not here to whine and moan about the state of the world, but that’s seems to be exactly what I’m doing this evening.

Perhaps in my sniffles and scratches, I’ve finally come back to earth.

Maybe I’m finally forcing myself to take a hiatus from all the suffering that I voluntarily cause myself. Amongst my monk-like behavior during the week, I’ve found an excuse to voluntarily extend it into the weekend as well.

Perhaps, some of us need a little shake from head to toe once in a while to realize exactly how we’re behaving. Perhaps once in a while our bodies deserve more than 6 hours of sleep, and a regular schedule.

I’m beginning to think that all my brain really wants is a decision one way or the other. It would like it if I just took a good look at both sides of the fence, and jumped down onto the solid stable earth below me.

Just now, while washing the dishes, it came apparent to me that, more and more, I’ve started thinking in tweets.  These blips that run through my brain have become the majority of my absentminded thoughts.  I am forced now to ask myself about the affect that facebook, twitter, and social networking in general has had on our brain function, and perhaps even our brain chemistry.

Evolution is a many splendid thing.  With the invention of the typewriter and the personal computer, the brain was forced to think differently and the fingers were now required to move and operate in ways that seems unfeasible.  Is it then enough to only refer to the biological tendency to evolve physically?  Is it not possible then with the creation of social networking, our sharing of these status updates, these tweets, some of us might soon find ourselves thinking and behaving in a manner more consistent to life on the internet?

At the moment, for me, this is a delicious quandry.  It is a question that has me thinking deeper than the 160 allowable characters on facebook and twitter.  For me, it an exercise in something that is beyond my next hiccup on the page, and healthy, living proof that I am above social networking to some degree.

Critics of this form of communication ask questions about the value of the information that we so easily share with one another.  They wonder about the degree to which some of us share our dirty little secrets.  They ponder about the value of privacy and personal safety.  Many simply state: “Who cares about all the boring shitty little things that you are doing, why do I give a fuck that you just ate cherry pie, or petted an iguana?”

Well, I kinda do.

Weirdly enough, it brings me great satisfaction, from the comfort of my home, to know the little things that people are doing.  I suppose I believe that one of the greatest assets our society has is the information that we each hold in our heads, and our ability to share it with each other.

Sure I’ve thought about the sanctity of tradition and the loss of romance in communication.  Where once there was a phone call there is now the ever ubiquitous text message.  We’ve lost a lot of faff in some areas and introduced a whole slew of it in others.  Like the slow transition from traditional corks in wine bottles to the twist off cap, there is a romantical past that we have begun to leave behind us.  Even this blog, this plethora of thoughts knows nothing about the pen and paper.  This blog will never know the grace and distinction of being hand written, it will never feel the seductive slide of paper on paper as it is slipped out of an envelope, it will never know how truly exclusive it could have felt to be tucked away on a shelf somewhere, hidden and out of reach.

These things are all slowly being lost and I suppose, in turn some of us have become less uncommon because of it.  In a sense we have become something scandalous and are sitting with our legs wide open to the world, waiting for the wandering hand to slip its way down our knickers.

But, you know, as much as I’m aware of all the downsides to this loss of romanticism, and as much as I’m aware of all the trivial things that I could continue to keep to myself, I’ve never been much for keeping my legs shut, and frankly I love a stranger’s hand down my knickers.

It’s a funny thing, the time that it can take to discover something hidden.  A favorite scarf behind the couch, the channel changer, or a note written by a past boyfriend, hidden in a book for years waiting to be found.  The most former of these things is something I had the pleasure of uncovering today.

This discovery of such an old and dusty treasure has me thinking about why it could possibly have taken me so long to discover it, why I kept shelving the book to read later, and what I’ve learned since the little comment was written.  I suppose that sometimes it takes that time to fully appreciate what it is we’ve lost.  Relationships are broken everyday, and as much as we would like to think that they are just temporarily scarred, most often they are fixedly unmendable.

In truth, this note couldn’t have came to me at a better time.  It has been over 2 years since I ended the most committed and long term relationship of my life.  It has been over 2 years since I broke the only relationship in which I shared a home with someone, a set of dishes, and a mailbox.  It has been over 2 years, and only very recently has it become a relationship that I think the two of us feel is worth salvaging.

I’m naive when it comes to breakups, completely and totally socially backwards.  I never see the true reality of the situation until I realize that something special is fully gone.  I have a tendency to break up with someone before communicating it, and believing that it is actually possible to break up, take a couple minutes of silence, and pick up the friendship where it was left off.  You see, completely and totally socially backwards.  I’ve always thought of myself as a realist, others would prefer to describe my behaviour as selfish ass-hole-ery.

But besides the fact that I break up with people abruptly, there is this hidden thing, this little note that sat waiting all these years.  When I read it today I am filled with a sense of accomplishment.  I understand for a moment what it is I’ve been doing these past 2 years.  I get it that I’ve grown, and I get it that I’m behaving pretty much identically to how I’ve always behaved.  But amongst all this growth and repetition, there’s the relationships that we encounter only once in a while that are really worth saving.

And, really it is about more than a simple love note in a book, it’s about the little things that we are leave with others every day.  It is the tiny little changes that we unintentionally make when we hurt someone or bring them joy.  It is these relationships with others that shape us in the past, and all out of nowhere, on page 333 of the book you’re reading, completely shape us in the present too.

Well, it’s time again to ring in the New Year, and I’m just thankful to have an internet connection that consists of more than two bars.  I never would have thought that all the cliches were really correct after all these years: that it is really only the value of family and friends that matter, the value of having a home to return to and a place to feel warm and comfortable.

I suppose New Years will always be something of a hard time for me.  It has been the beginning of many ends for me.  Although, I suppose every beginning, is truly the start of some end, New Years has held a specific significance for relationships past.  I have began one significant relationship under the pretense of a brand new year, and just last year I made a jump across the ocean in an attempt to see if love could indeed straddle both hemispheres.  Undoubtedly, it couldn’t.  So to look back now, across a city that is still, may I remind you, still, covered in snow, I am a little forlorn.

I can’t help but think about last year, my bags half packed and my heart on a fragile limb waiting to be broken by the reality of moving from my precious Vancouver haven to the harsh summer sands of Western Australia.  It is always a funny reality, no matter how old we become, to look back a year and realize how young we were and how small we really are.

And, I suppose that is the essence of New Years for some of us.  I suppose that is why I become so depressed when this apparently momentous event rolls around.  I become so enthralled by the things that were happening at this time last year and all the things that I was supposed to accomplish, that I somehow miss out on all the celebrations.

Well not this year my friends.  I am haphazardly throwing myself into the thick of it.  I’m here for the ride and I’m in Vancouver to stay, for now at least.  So amongst all this New Years doubt about beginnings that are domed to end, is a knowing that things are on the up and up.  I’ve got a home that I love filled with an interconnected net of connections that are as complicated as fulfilling, and to top it all off, I’ve got 5 full bars of internet connection…

So, top that off Mutha Fuckers!

It’s pretty hard to imagine that at the same time as I’m arranging my new found thrift store treasures people are dealing with the body of a woman that was incidentally incinerated in a shopping cart.  I don’t feel like dabbling over the details or fussing with how it could have happened, what should have been done, the infrastructure that should have been in place to protect her, etc, etc.

With how caught up I am with everything in my life, it’s impossible to not sit and take notice to something that runs so contrary to everything that I consider a need.

I’ve been pandering to all of it:

• My frustration over money and everything that goes with it
• The Christmas presents I can or cannot buy
• How many times I make it to yoga
• The spots on my face
• How often I drink
• What I’m eating
• How gay I come off to others
• How commited I’m willing to become to others

This won’t be the last time that some frustrated youth, seeking deeper meaning to things, questions the thought that run through his head or how very lucky he is, but I’ll tell you this.  While standing in my kitchen re-arranging the things I just bought at the salvation army a woman covered the only home she’s known for some time, a shopping cart, with a tarp.  In an effort to stay warm this same woman lit a candle and burned to death because of it.

So what do we really need, to survive?

I’ve grown accustomed to waking to the sounds of ladybugs in my room. the way their wings sound and the tinking noises as they land in the light fixture hanging from the middle of the ceiling.

When Meghan and I moved here a year ago it was impossible to miss the multitude of ladybirds on the window sill of my room, climbing up the walls, or decaying slowly to dust in the corners of the room, crumbs of the previous tenants as their pillows.  Over this time here I’ve come to find these beetles in my bed, on my person, or even in the pockets of my swimming shorts at the pool.

Myth says many things about these little creatures and you’d be hard pressed to find someone that has distaste for the bug.  Some think that the number of spots of their backs can tell a great deal about the future, from the number of children one may have to the direction that one’s true love will approach them from.  Although I’ve always been a sap for myths and fiction I’m truly beginning to think that there is something supernatural about them indeed.

I’ve been waking in the middle of the night completely racked with fear.  Searching with groggy eyes around the darkness I can’t help but feel another’s presence in the room.  Am I going mad, or like those who have lived in this room before me, is there something haunted in this place?  Are there reasons beyond the south facing windows and the creaky floorboards drawing ladybugs into this place?  Are these creatures merely attracted to the warmth of this wintery hideaway or is there something beyond me that I cannot see?

I’m riddled with questions this morning, in search for the reasons why I might be waking in the night with a fear that is only comparable to my late nights in bed after watching Unsolved Mysteries as a child.

I’m riddled with questions this morning, because unlike other mornings, I can no longer hear the wings of the lady beetles, I can no longer hear the sounds that their shells make against the glass.

I am forced to ask myself whether it is the coolness of the season that has driven them away or the lack of love that fills these chilly walls.  I wonder if they, as some myths have said, can understand human language and have sensed my confusion over everything.

So perhaps, for a time, not only the ghosts in my room are the dearly departed.  Perhaps, in time the ladybugs will come again to haunt me too.

Meghan and I had our first Christmas miracle today.  After tromping around in the snow, that I don’t detest nearly as much as I’ve let on, we took a trip to Kingsgate Mall in search of rubber boots and soup.  The melted slushy puddles that I foolishly clomped through had sent the chilly water through the pores in my shoes and the two pairs of socks that I had pulled over my feet this morning.  My chilly toes left me grumpy and in need of some so-called Christmas cheer.

So, you ask, what’s this Christmas miracle that I speak of?  Well, if Kingsgate mall wasn’t a miracle enough, with its copious selection of fine consumer goods and the decrepit street car out front in all its glory, there is more to this miracle than just the jam-packed goodness of the mall itself.

After wandering the halls of Shopper’s Drug Mart, all starry-eyed, the unnecessary cosmetics calling us to spend our hard-earned dollars, Meghan and I checked out with shaving creme, soup, and Melba toast.  What could be better, I thought to myself, than delicious soup, dehydrated mini-bread, and a good shave?  Well free bread, of course.

After leaving the store and only a block away from our chilly wooden house, I decided to take a look at the receipt from Shopper’s to see how many of those silly points I’d acquired.  And guess what? the poor sap had forgotten to scan our box of Melba toast.  That’s right, a Christmas miracle indeed, food for the needy.  In this time of economic collapse, and dire circumstance, the kindness of Shopper’s, providing me with my mini-toast, has brought a little warm fire to my heart.

You know, Christmas miracles make Melba toast taste even better than usual.

Alley | Vancouver

Sometimes it’s all that we can do to try and avoid an unavoidable situation.  In essence it’s impossible.  It doesn’t matter the pace we take as we are racing towards a wall or our ability to turn quickly, something that is unavoidable is exactly that.

No matter what the signs say along the way, we plunge in, and sometimes it feels like we’re drowning.  Everything feels so similar, and yet, so nearly unique.  We become accustomed to our worlds, the places that we create by just being alive.  We can cause them all to crumble by speaking a couple of words, and often we do just that.

We are intricately tied to this delicate place, and it is impossible to avoid the unavoidable, and though each of us has come to know this, it doesn’t make the unavoidable any more easy to avoid, and it doesn’t make a crash hurt any less than it does.

oops,

crash…

I woke this morning to an insect buzzing in my room. I became accustomed to the wasps and flies during the summer, but I am stumped as to what could have made its way inside so late in the year. And, with all the windows sealed this last month, I am shocked to see the corner of my room clustered with ladybugs. From my vantage point on my pillow I can make out four of the little insects moving erratically around the walls and ceiling of my room.

I have friends who would have me count the spots on the things and relate them to charts and meanings in numerology texts. Some of them would have me take some deep meaning from the insect’s love of my room; a spiritual beacon perhaps?

I’m just happy to see movement, the sun still shining, and the backdrop of this city still as blue as ever.

It helps me not to miss the summer so much.