Sure I’ve done my fair share of writing about the state of the #3 bus route on Main Street. Sure I’ve ranted and raved, I’ve stomped my feet in tangents of tangents. I’ve bitched and I’ve moaned, but through it all I’ve managed to take a deep breath and just walk instead.
But, you know, when I see the following at 11am on a Sunday, it all has a way of rushing back in a hell-storm of anger and frustration.
Glasnost at POP UP...the Shop
POP UP… The Shop, located in the heart of Gastown is an exciting concept in Vancouver retail. POP UP provides local designers, vintage dealers, and retailers the opportunity to showcase their wares for a couple of days in their very own shop.
On October 16th and 17th, local designer Stephanie Schneider will be unveiling her Fall Collection to Vancouver. Her line, Glasnost, consisting of skirts, shirts and jackets complemented with leather work designs including hip-sacks, wallets and custom flasks for the gents will all be priced to sell.
Come down and check out Stephanie’s exciting new line on October 16th and 17th between 11am-9pm.
More information on POP Up… The Shop:
Located in the heart of uber-hip Gastown, this unique concept store offers an ever-changing installation of retailers and products from emerging designers & vintage dealers to bigger brands blowing out discount stock and samples.
The bus driver greets me this morning with the most exuberant “good morning,” that I’ve heard in ages. My sleep-ridden eyes and bed-weary bones seem to immediately protest to his cheery demeanour that’s doing a pretty shabby job of hiding the fact that his bus is 10 minutes late. The computerized voice that announces the next bus-stop rings through the vehicle along with the irritating chime that they’ve installed the last couple of weeks, bringing a confusing nautical charm to an already frustrating daily commute up Main Street. But the bus driver, who’s apparently popping “good-time-sunshine-pills” this morning, feels the urge to announce the stops to the passengers as well, stifling the friendly computerized bus-lady’s voice into the background.
“And here we are at…. 25th avenue… KIIIIIIING EDWARD!”
And with that, I’m all of a sudden transported to a time of trolley cars, stovetop hats and pinwheels, a time when there was more excitement in the little things. This old-timey age in my mind echoes an age of sounder planning and decision making, where I surely would have left more time to catch my morning transport than the thin margin I now allow myself. In this time I would have happily sat on the bench waiting for my ride with a smile on my face and a pipe in my lips, and it wouldn’t have phased me in the least if the bus was 10 minutes late.
But this morning, as gaily and cheerily as I was greeted, I still couldn’t help but be totally gutted by the tardiness of the bus and the added stress that it would add to my morning. Thankfully though, through this fictitious stress I manage to accumulate, I take a moment to think about reliance: reliance on the services that we expect to have available to us at our beck and call, and the reliance that we have on the people in our lives.
I’m always amazed at the ability of public transit to completely fuck itself up schedule wise, when perhaps I should be more amazed at its ability to somehow co-ordinate itself in the intricate manner that it does. Busses, trains, and boats snake their way through our fair city every day creating what would seem to be a massive web of convoluted routes and patterns. So I ask myself this morning, is it fair of any of us to rely on anything other than ourselves, for, well, anything?
I’m sure that each and every one of us has found ourselves at one time, completely fixated on the silent phones in our pockets, or our empty email inboxes. I’m sure at one time each of us has fallen head over heels for someone, or at least convinced ourselves that we’re falling, when we’re in fact just getting hooked on a highly addictive form of sexual narcotic. I’m sure many of us have in an awkward situation, hidden behind the coat-tails of a friend, or sent another to deal with a problem that we don’t feel fully prepared to face ourselves.
Each and every one of us exhibits reliance on something; money, sex, power, and religion all play key roles, becoming enabling agents pandering love on street corners. Happiness, peace, and the devices in which we achieve them, all at once become sturdy crutches for us to rest our weary bones. It’s only when we can’t remember walking on our own that we should concern ourselves with this reliance. Spend too long on your crutches and you’ll all too soon realize that your bones have deteriorated and your legs no longer know how to stand on their own.
But once in a long while, the cell-phones in our pockets begin to buzz, and our inboxes are no longer the deserted expanses of cyberspace that they had so fervently let us believe. Once in a long while things turn around; the world surprises us, and we find this reliance isn’t such a terrible thing. The busses all seem to come down Main Street eventually. We all get where we need to be day after day. We all put in our time, clocking in and out. We get done what needs to get done, and we do it with the help of an intricate web of connections that all seem to come together when they need to. Once in a while the world surprises us in even the most irritating cheery voice, when all we want is a little peace and quiet.
People surprise us…
And… Once in a while, hopefully, we surprise ourselves.
As posted on homorazzi.com
None of us likes denial. And though it’s something I’ve despised about myself, I’ve been ripe with it for as long as I can remember. And it’s not just denial about myself, but it’s also the denial that I dish out to others. Pushing and shoving, I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life completely content in doing it all on my own.
But we grow through these things. In time even the hardest of us comes to terms with our weaknesses, and all of a sudden we’re heading in a different direction. 10 years ago I would have never guessed that I’d be in business school, that I’d be living in Vancouver, or that I’d be slowly taking out my piercings and chopping my hair shorter and shorter.
Even the little wrinkles that have found their homes beside my eyes are surprise visitors to my visage.
So I shouldn’t be surprised to be struggling. I shouldn’t be shocked that there are those amongst me–wandering the streets and the gay bars–that are also fighting with denial and struggle.
Dating in this city has become a tug-of-war, a fight between one side and the other.
Surprise results to seemingly amazing experiences. Over and over, nights that seem to break the mold, all end up stale. Moreover nights that seem exciting and hopeful, turn into empty phone calls and emails.
Perhaps I truly have entered my Saturn return. Perhaps all the cells in my body are becoming geriatric; all of them in diapers and walkers. Every last one of my cells is ready to end their 7 year journey and make way for the next round. Pheromones have began to shift and alter themselves on my neck and in my wrists, and everything I’m transmitting to those around me is confusing and misleading.
Perhaps, I’m just waiting for my head and heart to catch up to all the cells that are race, race, racing away.
Yeah, that's right, the swine flu's cute little curly tail can shoot waves of fire out of it.... BEWARE!!!
So for some inane reason, Matty and I decided to set up the television once again.
And yes, we are now stuck in front of it as the sun shines outside and as children are laughing and playing in the street, we are cowering on our couch experiencing the dire consequences and terrific trauma that await us with the oncoming swine flu.
To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure if I would have heard about this so-called “swine flu” if I hadn’t turned on the news this afternoon.
In its so typical way, the news once again is instilling fear and paranoia in the minds of the masses.
Apparently pandemics come in waves, and we are experiencing the first wave of this one. The stern faced anchor on the television so graciously tells us that the third wave of the swine flu should be coming to Vancouver just in time for the 2010 olympics.
Maybe I’ll look back at this a couple years down the road when the swine flu has fully thinned the masses, and the world has become a realistic portrayal of Outbreak or Resident Evil. But for Christ’s sake, does everything on the news have to be so God-damned exaggerated and thematic??
Me thinks it’s time to put the television back in the closet where it belongs.
Watching anti-gay ads on the internet has become an obsession of mine. Finally, I understand the fascination with twisted car-wrecks and fist fights. Apparently some hormone is released in me when I see how truly fucked up people are. Morbid as it is, it makes me feel good.
How Fucked is that? Am I alone in this?
Perhaps watching the United States battle over something that seems like such old news, just confirms the primitive nature of their politics and culture to me. Perhaps, being raised for a time in the US, I get some sick pleasure from knowing that I am happily, a Canadian citizen. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but time and time again, here I am browsing anti-gay websites, feeding their egos with my presence on their soil.
So I sit here in bed this morning, watching the newest disastrous monstrosity to grace my screen. While other gay men are cuddling in bed with each other, or taking advantage of another beautiful day, I’m sitting here watching the storm clouds come rolling in.
Naively in my dwindling hope, that marriage, for me, might someday actually be a possibility, I try so hard to believe that I’ll figure out how to love someone again. Naively, I pretend that the pursuit of love these past years has been a breeze, and that I’ve actually enjoyed it. Sure, there’s been moments, but I’ll admit that dating has just become more difficult and confusing the older that I’ve got.
But at least for me there’s the reality of union. What it means to me I don’t know. The idea of marriage to me seems outdated and superfluous. The only idea of marriage that seems even slightly appealing is the potential for a good party (you see where my priorities are). But at least it’s a reality.
So good luck to all you homos in the States. And watch out for the storm clouds, and that terrible unkempt portrayal of a lesbian in the following commercial.
Can you seriously believe that the National Organization for Marriage has the audacity to call themselves a rainbow coalition?
And again, what is with the lesbian? And what is she talking about? Does the National Organization for Marriage really believe that they are going to win over the general public by convincing them that there are gay people out there that feel their rights and freedoms are in fact being altered negatively by an expanded set of rights?
Dear god, are there?
Anyways, while watching my acceptable daily dose of mutilated victims, I stumbled across a much healthier form of YouTube perversion. For some reason YouTube had decided that the following video was somehow related to all the hate propaganda of an undereducated and confused nation that I’d been watching all morning.
Perhaps it is YouTube’s way of telling me that I shold be looking on the lighter side.
After a sudden, if not overly embarrassing moment on my bicycle this afternoon, I not only realized something about keeping my bike in tip-top shape, but also something about the oncoming season.
We are all awaiting summer as anxiously as we await our student loans; all of us sitting in our homes, waiting for the next sunny day to give us an excuse to tow ciders down to the park, or ride our bikes to the sea.
Hasty-mart tonight has its doors wide open, and the weather isn’t even all that warm.
I discovered a little musical whimsy on my usual escape from school books this evening, that I must share with the world.
As quickly as the changing season is upon us, so too are the anthems that will keep our feet fueled on all of our inevitable late night dance-a-thons.
That’s right, I’ve actually started following Spencer Pratt on Twitter. What started as a way of keeping in touch with nerds like myself, has now transmuted itself into something not-so-entirely scary, but perhaps a little frightening none the less.
It’s incredible to watch the evolution of social networking. A fascinating concept that has already been beaten into the ground with millions of blogs, articles, and news features, but none-the-less,I’m intrigued by my own utilization of the whole experience.
Our conversations keep getting shorter, and I’m not surprised that my attention span keeps shrinking at precisely the same rate as social networking limits the number of characters that I can use to express myself.
I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t excited about the evolution of everything. I love change, dynamic and exciting re-construction of everything that we know to be true. And it amuses me to watch those out there that are still naive about the ubiquity of the internet. I choose to sit back and let them relax for the moment, watch the world pass by without them, and I do envy them, if only slightly. I remember my angst-filled years as a teenager, fighting against change, conversion, and construction. But this man I am now is only a slight approximation of the boy that I was. I’m still passionate, but it was just as my mother told me: “Trevor, one day you will settle down.” And though there is little evidence of this gradual escape from extreme in my belly–my spare tire has yet to be seen– my mother was entirely correct.
I completely embrace progress. I embrace the gritty-nasty structure of the mass media, the abuse of Spencer Pratt and all of his minions. I feed off the tweets, and the buzzing of my cell-phone, and all the while my brain keeps moving faster and faster, in time with my quickening heartbeat.
It’s a scary proposition for my body. The same body that, like my mother keeps telling me to “just settle down.”
Facebook keeps telling me in streams of status updates that Britney prematurely evacuated the GM Place this evening, but I’m more content with Beirut at the moment.
It’s comforting to know that the fellow has finally lifted his chin.
I’m shocked to find myself at home this evening, and amazed at the potential to actually use my brain in the morning. Free time can be a curse to a man who finds it hard to escape the sleeves, the cans, and the bottles of another mindless evening. But think of the potential? Think of all the possibilities that I could be shying away from. What am I missing out on? Keep yourself down Trevor, tied to your worn mattress, because you, are as worn as the weary springs and the wooden beams that seems to bend slowly, their bellies swooping closer and closer to the floorboards.
So, Facebook, once again you’ve given me something more to prop you up for. In a peculiar combination of keywords, you, Facebook, and that little magical googlebot, have directed all these silly readers my way.
Trying so hard to write for an audience that I’ve formulated in my mind, and all of a sudden I’m talking to a room that’s basked in shadows, wondering where all those ideal readers–the ones that I concocted in the bathtub, and on drunken smokey stoops– have all gone.
But I’m not afraid to take a diversion.
Granted, I’ve struggled with transition, and the thought of moving up and beyond anything, has kept me in one place or another longer than I would like to admit.
Thailand had me scared and shaking on its islands, eating pasta and bread from a woman who invited me in. And I wish I could admit like all the lonely old men that venture forth from their dingy Canadian basement suites, that I too had come to have found a Thai woman’s arms. But I was taken by her food, by the opportunity for anything that seemed familiar.
Maybe it was the bulldog, but I blame it on her bread.
Then the home at the back of the building, the one through the parking lot. The house we tried to make a home. It so easily became a prison, and I never would have guessed that I would have put myself somewhere with such little windows and such little ceilings that knocked down on me. And the ones upstairs that moved across the floor with a clunk and a scrape. Slowly dragging their imaginary walkers across their hard wood at all hours of the night and day.
And the bakery. The one where I woke at three in the morning just to arrive on time, back when I still listened to music in the chunky green discman. Back when I lived on the other side of the bridge, on the other side of the Georgia Straight. And it wasn’t the long walk that finally deterred me from coming back for more, or the cutting off of all those dreadlocks of mine (the ones that hung so low), and it wasn’t the lack of compensation, or the heat of the ovens in the middle of summer, and not the depression, or the fear that I would be stuck there morning after morning, under-rested and overworked.
Perhaps once again, it was the bread.
So what? Perhaps I’m stuck again, and although I trudge along, this week I’m lost in the bottle and the bars.
Free time can be a curse to a man who’s easily swayed.
And Facebook can be a most peculiar mate, who’s warmth comes less from the baking of bread, and more from the hum of all its funny little stories.
Well dare I say welcome to summer?
It seems as though we’d all completely forgotten how to leave the house during the day and wander with the tops of our feet exposed to the air.
Old habits are easily picked up once again.
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