All of a sudden it’s too much green tea that’s the problem. Another scapegoat in a long list. The source of all my body’s weariness yet to be found.

Yesterday it’s the lack of pictures, today it’s my antioxidants.
Still searching.

All in time these dear friends of mine are all accompanied by the much too celebratory music in my ears, but even death can’t keep me from reorganizing my life.

Still getting things done, still sorting through the mass of papers on my desk, still fighting to keep awake while memorizing the flowcharts, the methods, models. Still trying to pack and clean the house for Monday’s move. All the while fighting back the thin saline and my mind trying to wander to the car flipped upside down. Just dangling there in seat-belts.

Unimaginable fragility, all of these bones of yours.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.