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.