The Obligation to the Good Time
Let me stick an image in your mind for a moment. Those convoluted cerebral serpents are going to get a little clarity. Lets call this a thought excercise; one that I’m very accustomed to and out of my generosity, I want to share with you all. I made it up for myself, and it always helps me get my bearings in life. If you ever catch me looking up at the sky with the look of a daydreamer, this is what I’m doing. : )
(Also try listening to the song in my link while you do this. It’s one of my favorites and I find it helps put me in the right state of mind.)
Imagine yourself at a pool party, surrounded by the people you know best in the world. Whether they are friends or family is irrelevant, all that matters is that these are the people you know inside and out, down to the last speck of their personalities.
You’re having a wonderful time, playing games, splashing each other, talking about old times. The sun is high in a scarcely cloudy sky and it’s about noon, so you’re bathed in warmth while the refreshing water pools around you. Theres a light breeze in the air and the trees around you shift about humbly. It’s hardly enough to notice but it pricks your wet skin with a vivid wisp of cool air from time to time. A light tune is carried about on the wind and comes about when it hits the trees, a sweet natural melody. Physically, you are as relaxed as ever; the ebb and flow of the water lulling you into a cool daze as you play the day away. You can’t think of a time when everyone was having more fun.
Your friends exit the pool for a bit to get something to eat. “You coming with?” they ask frankly. You decline; the mood in the pool at that moment is just too good to resist, its something special that you just don’t want to waste. What you’re experiencing is a sort of natural harmony, some intangible aspect of the day has you trapped in awe and epiphany. So you sit and float. That seems appropriate, right? A day this perfect only comes around once in a while, so what better way to spend it then floating?
With arms and legs spread and your back to the water, you float right in the middle of the pool. Your eyes are affixed to the sky and your ears are below the surface. The tune of the trees is muffled, coming through in a warped, bellowing tone; like hearing the sweetest music through a paper-thin wall. The tune is different, but you welcome it all the same. Below the surface is where the true music will stay, the excess volume, the harsh noises of the day, it all evaporates away and your left with the tune of the trees, dancing about the leaves.
Above you is the most incredible sight you’ve ever seen. A palette of clear blue with a single cloud right in the center of your field of vision. The cloud has no shape, its constantly shifting, restless in reality, reveling in the rhythm of the day’s tune. This cloud is above forms, it’s perfect and flowing.
Your eyes never stray from it, you just keep trying to make sense of the ethereal shapes. Suddenly, the cloud urges you under, without words it asks you to drown. This request might seem jarring but at this moment it makes perfect sense, some innate function, a presence that exists in the deepest folds of your soul tells you know not to doubt the cloud. After silently accepting its request, the water begins to slowly envelope you.
Going under feels different this time. You notice that as the water crawls along your skin, it goes numb with warmth. The warmth envelopes every part of your body. Your skin perkilates with euphoric pleasure and your chest feels heavy and winded.Your head feels light, as if its sprung from your neck and floated off on its own. As the water gently washes over your eyes, you begin to go blind. The beautiful palette of warm blue is replaced by a dull lifeless black and your vision slowly dims into the gaping maw of a warm, sensual abyss. In the center of this abyss the cloud remains as it had before, in a transient limbo of shaplessness.
Stripped of your senses, all you can feel is the numb shifting of the water’s current. Your paralyzed form is finally flowing with the warm water, flowing with the tune of the trees, lost in the mercy of the ebb and flow. You are a cloud floating through a land of water and dreams, passing with the current through every font of reality. Every experience that you’ve ever treasured, every smile you’ve ever evoked on the face of a friend, every kiss stolen from the lips of a lover, every time your heart has grown golden in the heat of a perfect moment, everything that makes you real exists in a continuum of thoughts and colours below the water.
Congratulations, you’re drowning. : )
Edit: As usual, I’ll come back and revise this soon. For now, I’m going to grab my book, read for a bit, then get some z’s.
I realize its a bit rough. I wish I could’ve had more time to work out some of my thoughts, but I have a lot on the horizon.
For Someone Worth trying For.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDlCcGBtGd0&feature=related
Let it be, don’t be afraid to let me. I’ll be your rock, the pillar upon which you support yourself. I’m a man, a crude blunted rock of a man, the stiffness relying on you, to rely upon me. So I’m just asking, try as I might, give me reason to see, that we can be together; we can let it be.
“Something as insipid as love…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHyKDrGzn-I&NR=1
Another Matrix Revolutions quote. My originality is seeping away very quickly it seems.
But some good news! in the spirit of shoehorning in a flimsy reference for popular appeal, I’ve agreed to conduct an interview with one of my favorite characters, Agent Smith:
Smith: “Why, Mr. Manoukarakis, why why why? Why do you do it, why get up [every morning]?”
Me: “Because a new day is a new promise for hapiness that I renew with the first sight of the sun. Without that promise and the warming sun shining over it, I’d never get out of bed. Because there is a girl out there that is waiting for me to discover her, and I will not find her shunning the day away under the covers. I owe a debt of gratitude to this person that I can’t repay from within my room. Shes my obligation and my life as well as a clouded vision, made clear by the renewal of the sanguine sun and opaque by the nuance of night.”
Smith: “Why keep fighting? Do you believe your fighting for something?”
Me: “I believe all of life is a drawn out fight. You either win or lose. Winners are remembered long after they die, whether it be by only a few close loved ones or celebrated as a national hero, it makes no difference. Losers are the abysmal transient ones who never die, they just meander off into scrutiny and obscurity and live forever because no word will ever reach anyone of their deaths. I keep fighting because I want to be remembered. If my memory can evoke either a tear on the cheek or smile of one person, I’ll never need more in life to feel like a winner”
Smith: “Do you fight for freedom or truth?”
Me: “I’m an absurdist. I fight to define freedom and truth and am content in the struggle. Knowing that I can work towards my own definitions of freedom and truth in life makes me feel empowered.”
Smith: “Do you fight for peace, perhaps love?”
Me: “I’m a soldier of love, I’m on the frontlines every day, heart in hand; looking to take the life of some helpless young girl and make her feel beautiful and appreciated. As for peace, I’d never ask for that. This war of kindred spirits gives me purpose. I’ll keep fighting on and on because as of this day no bullet has struck me down into the open arms of my ladylove. My heart still beats too consistently, my thoughts too decadent and banal. I need the abrupt shock that only her bullet can offer.”
Smith: “Illusions, Mr. Manoukarakis. vagaries of perception!”
Me: “Um… I’m sorry, was there a question in there?”
Smith’s face contorts into a look of fiery, grim determination his words begin to bellow and roar out as he rages into a fervor. His face is taut with intesnity and his teeth grit between words.
Smith: “Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect!…”
Me: “Feeble human intellect? Should I be insulted?”
Smith: “…Trying desperately to define an existence that is without meaning or purpose!”
Me:”
…
…
… I’m sorry, are you done? N-no no no, I can wait. Don’t hold back on my account. It’s only MY interview, afterall.”
Smith: “Although… Only a human mind can invent something as insipid as love…”
Me: “Love? Insipid? Says the machine whose thoughts typically consist of 1′s and 0′s. 1010001001. There, I hope that was an insult in your screwy language!”
Smith: “You must be able to see it, Mr. Manoukarakis, you must know it by now?!”
Me: “And that ‘it’ is?”
Smith: “You can’t win! It’s pointless to keep fighting!”
Me: “Maybe, we’ll see when all is said and done.”
I get up from my chair and dawn a heroic pose.
Smith: “Why, Mr. Manoukarakis, why? WHY DO YOU PERSIST?!”
Me: “Because love and life will always triumph over the sufferance that is ennui and despair. I persist for you, for me, and for everyone I’ve ever loved. Oh; and ‘becuse I choose to’.”
Smith’s face immediatley returns to a happy reserved look.
Smith: “Haha, wonderful. Well I’m afraid thats all the time we have for today but this has been a really enlightening experience.”
He reaches over and we exchange a brief handshake.
Me: “Likewise I’m sure! You’ll say hi to Neo for me, won’t you?”
Smith: “Who?”
Me: “Uh… Mr. Anderson?”
Smith: “Oh yes, of course. Neo… Heh… Thats a new one for me, Mr. Manoukarakis.”
Me: “Hahaha! I’m sure it is. Thanks and goodbye.”
- – -
That Smith is a real character isn’t he?
On a serious note, this might seem like a flimsy joke but part of those are my beliefs on life. I like to think of it as my manifesto on happiness.
Anyway, I guess the purpose of this post was to inject a little optimism, joy and humor into my life. I kind of need it at the moment to get over her. I’ll get more into who she is later but for now, I’m still tiptoeing around what to do. I’d love to win her back, but I don’t even know what I did wrong in the first place. Hard to remedy a problem that you don’t know about. 
- – -
Oh, and a brief poem I wrote when she and I were in a happier state. I took an older poem that I wrote and modified it a bit. It really seems finished now that I had someone to inspire these feelings in me:
The Rascal Queen Recovered Me
Have you ever experienced that feeling you get when you stick your hand outside the window of your car when it’s just starting to rain? The air is cold and murky, full of fog and anticipation of the upcoming shower. But your hand is not. It was in the car, being warmed and placated by the heaters around it. It’s not yet used to this foreign environment and it feels uncomfortable and out-of-place.
Every touch, every subtlety of the outside world is magnified by your hand’s predisposed condition.You feel refreshed, vibrant and free but above all scared. Scared that this new condition is fleeting, that it won’t always be with you, that you might have to return to the decadent warm placation of heaters; return to convincing yourself that you’re happy shunning yourself from the rain. But you accept this fright because it is new and exciting, because anything worth doing is a risk; a gamble.
The rain begins and it starts with only a drizzle. A sparse downpour that isn’t noticeable to anything else in the rest of the world. Even you have yet to really notice until it finally hits. That one raindrop that has found it’s way from the sky above, that defied the convention of all the other drops around it and hit your hand. It’s the single intrusion into your otherwise sedate and mundane world. And though it’s shocking at first, you begin to welcome it. The sudden sensation tears through your body like a harsh shock. That one pinprick feeling that has more of a sobering effect on you then anything else. At that moment in time, it becomes the dearest thing to you; A feeling like no other.
I’ve experienced that feeling…
Sometimes the most durable barriers we create can withstand the blunt force of everything conceivable in this world, but it only makes the defeat that much more amazing when it succumbs to the force of just one determined raindrop. For being that raindrop, I’ll love you always.
“Why do you persist, Mr. Manoukarakis?! WHY DO YOU PERSIST?”
(Matrix reference, if you don’t get it you have no business being here)
Oh and Manoukarakis is my last name. I don’t know if I explicitly mentioned that but it’s there now, just in case any predators are looking for that last little bit of information to track me down.
Back to the title, however. Sometimes I just wonder what I’m moving towards. After last weeks little tirade (a path I’ve decided I won’t be going down again for a LONG time) I feel like I shattered a thin layer of happiness that held off the threshold of sadness welling up in my heart. I’m going to go against my better judgement and not delete it. I feel I should leave it there if only as a reminder of my past; we all need to remember where we came from. That, and I really did mean it when I said it felt cathartic to expel all that anger and melancholy corked up inside me and if I deleted it I would just be short-changing myself.
Any who!
After last week I have felt consistently drained. I won’t go into specifics about what happened last week that triggered it, but judging from what I was complaining about, I’m sure you can piece it together well enough. Needless to say, things haven’t been reconciled so my condition continues to stagnate. But I’m used to it, I’ve been stagnating emotionally for years and after a while you just reluctantly accept it. It’s just like a wafting odor, the more it hangs around the less you realize it until someone walks into the room and says “god damn, this stinks!”
I’m trying to be positive, but at the moment the best I can really muster is a sluggish pop to get me out of bed everyday, and for now I’m happy with letting that suffice. I’ve found that if you really try to force a mood onto yourself, you end up just adding to the problem and it all accumulates into something much worse.
God, I’m being incredibly vague. I just realized that this moment
But hey, what is life if not a big vague, ambiguous clusterfuck of things rushing past you so quickly you feel nauseated?
Sorry, apparently I didn’t get all the angst out last week.
I’ll update when I feel my mood affords me some respite.
- – -
If you read what used to be here and were hurt by it, I’d like to apologize. If you’re back here reading for a reason to hate me; please understand that I’m really sorry for what I put you through.
The Thanksgiving Grind.
I can’t stand the weather around Thanksgiving. Nothing robs a person of the holiday spirit like a damp, cold, grey and unsettling enviroment. It just feels like the weather is making a conscious effort to strip you of your happiness by coating the day with such a bleak aesthetic. Thats why I call it the Thanksgiving grind, because the weather is so foreboding you can literally hear the gears churning and screeching as you go through the motions of your day-to-day.
But enough of that…
My next topic, Tim Horton’s. I have to say I’m a bit embarrassed that I omitted Tim Horton’s when I originally did my list of Canadiana cultural artifacts. For anyone who doesn’t know or hasn’t already wikipedia-ed the article before reading on, Tim Horton’s is a large chain of coffee shops Canada-wide known for its coffee and light confectionaries. Tim Horton’s is a staple of Canadian life; where a foreigner might see just a bloated chain of coffee shops, a Canadian sees a gleaming warm welcoming beacon echoing a message of hospitality and friendly service. The Timbit, a simple ball of dough to the unindoctrinated is a symbol of stability to any Canuck wallowed in the mire of ennui and instability. The coffee, the coffee is… Well, warm, and during our winters warmth is the feeling we all connect back to, our recourse from relentless, whipping winter-winds.
But this is where the subtle importance of Tim Horton’s truly lies. It is the focal point of Canadian culture, the nexus in which all parts of our lifestyle seamlessly come together. Coffee, warm winters (In the sense that you feel fulfilled and nourished not actually warm in the sense of, y’know, heat), hockey are all prevalent in the atmosphere of Tim Horton’s. In many ways, Tim Horton’s has set the standard for the middle-class Canadian lifestyle. It’s a homely, unassuming establishment that seems to say in the thick ethnic accent of an over-bearing European mother “Come in, I make you some good coffee and warm you up, yes?” And thats exactly what draws us to it; it’s our rock after the long drudgery of a physically depleting day.
- – -
Just finished reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for english. Early romantic-era poetry with light christian over-tones is the best. I think this was the real point in english literature where we had an extreme pivot and broke away from traditional literary styles and created something wholly human, something that would give english its place in the epitome of the humanities. Not only that, I love the Dark Age aesthetic, with chivalry and honour ruling the hearts of people. This was the age of real heros, of uncompromising champions with a tender streak superimposed onto their acts of heroism.
They love, they kill, they steal, they thrill, but all together they are people trying to make the best out of their lot in life and that kind of character, the optimist, is really sacred to me. It’s because of their belief in optimism that I gain a great deal of inspiration from them. It’s that absurd subjugation to their own individual hapiness that makes them such immemorial characters. Though naive they may be, they are wisest because they are resolute in their life; comfortable in their skin. Thats true wisdom, the comfort of knowing you have some kind of cosmic worth (no, I did not steal that line from a fortune cookie).
- – -
Thats all I have at the moment… I’ll try harder in the future to be entertaining. I’ll also try to finish some more of my writing because we all love poetry, right?! Woo!
Edit: Holy wall of text, Batman! I forgot about paragraphs.
The Canadian Identity
(Listening to Tchiacovsky, that Russian had talent. Cannons + music = unequivocal epicness)
For a great deal of time in my life, longer then I can remember I have always struggled with that little piece of my identity that we delegate to our country of origin. Everyone defines himself or herself, to a degree, by where they were born. Some more then others. Some people are the zealous flag-wavers who will parade their nationalistic pride to the ends of the earth. I don’t look down on these people (we all need something to take pride in after all, who am I devalue what they believe in as along as it gives’em a sense of purpose, right?) but instead I always get a little perplexed by their actions.
I think my interest stems for my own personal struggle with my identity as a Canadian. When I visit a foreign country, I’m most often grouped in with the Americans and although I don’t object to their company or country I do object to being greeted with “Hey, Yank!” only to tell people I’m Canadian and get a cocked eyebrow as if the differences are indistinguishable, like we Canadians are just squatting on some territory that America never got around to colonizing.
I know from experience that people of different cultural backgrounds take a great amount of offence to being lumped together and the rule stands for Canadians, too. Sadly, I feel the idea of a unique Canadian identity is lost on the international stage and I can’t really blast people with accusations of ignorance when many people back home don’t even know how to go about describing what significance lies in the maple hearts of Canadians at home and abroad.
So like any responsible citizen I decided to do some research and the idea to reveal my findings in a blog were typified when a friend of mine (Hey Pat, look! You’re on the Internet!) Suggested the idea that I begin blogging about Poutine (see below). So here is a comprehensive review of my findings, in list form about some of the staples of Canadian life:
1) Poutine: The classic Canadian quick snack/light meal. Cheese curds, gravy and fries; It’s a relatively simple combination and you’ll come to notice that simplicity is an overarching theme in Canadian life. Were not the most sophisticated bunch, but were practical to a fault and our food reflects that. Poutine is possibly such a staple because of its widespread adoration as a warm snack on a cold day and because of its history. It was originally invented in Quebec when French colonists came to Canada and had very little foodstuffs to work with. I encourage any foreign visitor to give it a try. What it lacks in complexity and sophistication it makes up for in flavour and fulfillment.
2) Manners and Modesty: This is the part of Canadian life that I think is best in terms of our international image. Whenever you hear about an American stereotype concerning Canadians, it usually revolves around either A) our long-standing love affair with the word “Eh?” or our usual compulsion to conduct ourselves politely. I know it’s an easy and generic thing to use (I’m not sure how many people wouldn’t consider their native culture to be polite, but I imagine its few and far between) when describing your country but I really feel that in Canada there is a code of conduct and politeness that forces itself upon people.
3) Hockey: This one is a given, I doubt I even need to elaborate on it. Hockey and poutine is to Canada what baseball and apple pie are to Americans and that in itself is sufficient explanation I’d say.
I’ll think up more as I go along. I want this list to be something of a running article. Feel free to leave comments with other ideas/suggestions.
Nearing completion…
Update!: Try reading the poem while listening to this song. It’s the one I was listening to while writing it. The link is as right over here:
So the poem that I was working on, Reading In The Rain is about finished. I’ve been working on it for a few weeks and I finally feel its up to snuff. Please be as critical and candid as you feel about it. I’ll have a real update tommorow; for now, just try to enjoy my newest little creation:
Here I sit, reading in the rain,
With my belief that the sanguine sun will sustain,
My life, my love, my unaltered aim.
- – -
All around me, the lifeless grey,
The unfettered unsullied sterile day,
Greeting me with contempt,
Because, I, the reader,
Am without my own words
I’m lost in a shadow of dismay.
- – -
Quietly I endure the drops,
That sink into the page,
Reading about bronzed ledges hung high;
Waiting by meticulous props,
And beasts of rage,
Before traced glass castles glittering in the sky.
- – -
Here I sit, my thoughts not worried,
Tired or fleeting,
But restless, running without meaning.
And Patiently I am hurried,
To water with reason, hungry seeds teeming,
With congestion, growing, but misleading.
- – -
All around me is at end
With presence, signalling suddenly
That by my nature I am not subtle,
A pragmatic beam, made to bend.
Here I shall wait,
‘Till the morose sincerity,
Of my character’s death
Stretches taut, my truth to send.
Over the mountains, it will come,
And tops of trees,
Over salt sprays,
Gliding along the tallest ambitions and dreams.
Meeting your youth,
Across treacherous seas of sand,
My eyes connect with yours,
For a peripheral moment,
My thoughts are at leisure in your lease;
My spirit, in your hand.
- – -
And just as a new dawn will make any melancholy wane,
You can be sure that I, with phantasmal fervour,
Will be Serenading discreetly, sweetly
With you, the muted sane,
Recreating my unaltered aim,
While I sit, smiling brightly, next to,
The new reader in the rain.
And if ever, you should weather,
The future without tether,
Let my words be your mast.
For I know the feeling,
Of the chill, the scraping, abrupt pain,
When tears come,
And blanket the pages,
While reading in the rain.
- – -
Just remember, when the rain soaks through,
I’m just a page away,
I’m the evanescent ember,
That will keep you warm forever,
Long past this cold unforgiving day…
- – -
Sorry about using the “- – -” to break up the stanzas. I know I usually use them to separate my thoughts, but it wouldn’t allow me to seperate them any other way.
Oh Lawdy, is dat sum poetry right thar?
So I’m working on a few new poems. This might sound a little arrogant of me, but I think in my years of writing I have created a pretty disciplined approach to writing and before I post what I’m working on, I’d like to elaborate a bit on my creative process so you, dear reader, can have a bit more of an introspective perception of how my work comes to be. Who knows, maybe there is even a small iota of altruism left in this withered embittered old husk of emotions I call my personality that compels me with genuine sincerity to help a struggling writer, lol.
I like to think when I make poems – or any kind of work for that matter – I go through three creative phases that I stick to very adamantly. By sticking to these stages, I feel my writing as of present day has benefited from a great deal more refinement than anything I produced in the past (in terms of work and thought put in).I now truly consider my writing to be a discipline of the utmost importance, to be taken seriously or not be done at all.
The first step is what I call my ‘raw chunk’ stage. This is perhaps the most difficult to really describe or to give any direct meaning to in terms of how to evoke or actively make use of your own ‘raw chunk’ stage (if thats how you choose to define it). The best I can do is describe it for you and hope that in the future you will be able to conceptualize this stage better as it happens.
During this stage, I’m usually drawn into inspiration from some audio/visual que; usually music helps. For example, one of the following poems I’ll post I originally went into writing at 2:30 A.M. after hearing the sound of a drop hitting the sink in my residence. I immediately sprang from my bed and wrote down – scribbled might be a more appropriate term – my thoughts until I felt the idea had exhausted itself and there was nothing more to immediately write about. Once this process is done, I consider the framework, the inert dormant concept of what I’m trying to evoke and convey to be down. From there I leave the piece of writing for a day or two (I like to think I’m letting it age and ferment, like a fine wine 
) before moving onto the next stage.
The next stage, I have dubbed the sandpaper stage. This is where I sit down, review what I have written for a while (usually I skim over the same lines for about a good ten minutes each) and I try my best to pick up on what it is I write, what wierd intangible thing from the past gripped my mind and possessed me to write with such a fervor only days ago. Once I realise what it was I was going for, I refine it (See, like sandpaper. My namings are nothing if not practical and self-referential 
) I scrape off the bits of the original writing that I find superfluous or just demeaning to the original idea and concept. I whittle away like a woodblock artist until I have turned a frumpy old log into something wholly more sophisticated, more human relatable to the frosted, tired soul and warm, beating heart… *Sigh*….
…
Where was I? Oh yes, this stage also involves a great deal of expansion. I try and prologue the idea, stretch it out to a point of taut transparency wherein there is no question that this poem is meant to evoke a happy, sad, angry or desperate feel; you can leap seamlessly through the small window into my soul (one does not walk through a door into my soul, they must leap through the window as my soul is one crafted to be the playground of the most august absurdity, not of putrescent pragmatism) for a brief departure and indulge yourself in who I am at my primordial basest level.
So thats the sandpaper stage, one of repetitive convulsions and expansions (like an orgasm! I don’t mean for that to sound juvenile, but I know it will).
Lastly comes the ‘ornate’ or ‘flowery’ stage. This is where I like to superimpose more articulate language and revise small key sections. The poem remains the same in concept, but it becomes slightly altered in terms of how it is expressed to the end reader. This is of course the easiest stage for me to describe, and I consider it an absolute godsend when I think about it because it means that this world isn’t solely the domain of abstract meta-physicalities (yes thats a real word despite what … Crap, did that sound at all condescending?)
*Phew* Well that is a little view into how my writing takes form. Although, I think the point I got across more is more why I write, the benefit I gain from expressing myself; it’s certainly open to interpretation. At the very least, these blog posts are a good example of the ‘raw chunk’ stage in and of itself a good example of stream-of-consciousness prose, maybe?
I should say at this point as well that I didn’t develope these structures entirely independently (there; maybe this post doesn’t reek entirely of arrogance anymore) and that they are the culmination of years of taking writing classes, showing of my work and getting some very critical input and like any other discipline practice! I should also say that these skills certainly aren’t finite, I fully realize that they will not work for anyone and that they won’t always work for me. What I will say IS finite however is the importance of adapting skills like these into your writing regime, it always helps to develop your skills as much as possible.
So without any further adieu, the ‘raw chunks’ I have been working on laboriously today:
The first is a short work of prose which is kind of an extension of a previous work, it’s a recurring concept thats really dear to me that I call The Little Grey Girl.
- – -
The girl of my dreams, the little grey girl formed out of insipid teasing thoughts of unrequited desire playfully parades throughout the annulled halls of my mind. She is the combined indiscriminate company of smiles and tears. Dancing with a transient glee, wafting daintily from one flight of fancy to the next neglecting her will to linger to long lest she be swallowed up by the jaws of satiety.
For you see,
She is never to be satisfied while she wanders within me, too much of her enviroment lies upon the precipice of oblivion so she has in kind given into lyrical whimsy and begun dancing with fire in the doomed days of forever. Dancing ever more gracefully she spreads more and more flame about, igniting long dormant halls in an immaculate light. Desperation, fear, loathing, happiness, serenity.
All these emotions are given a new light in the all-consuming flames of love and within these flames they will amalgamate into something more, something richer then I can possibly hope to understand a flurry, a great daunting fiery hurricane of sensuality and perception that demands no understanding, only the reverence accompanied with nostalgic, loving reflection. With these you can rest within the middle of the firestorm, unable to move pinned by the thought of being singed while gradually accepting the idea that life is better left to be burnt then to be a pristine unsullied thing.
The embers, climbing high and resolute are reverberations of my desire. Ashes and smoke billow within my head, seeking a route of escape and, finding none have given into circulating within my skull. My mind is full of stinging vacuous embers and smoke with thoughts of the dancing arsonist below; all I am is forfeit to the fire being roused from below in dark places now made light by the whiles of the little grey girl. The smoke, for all its intoxicating effect is so lovingly endured by me. After a while, I see the point, the misleading machination behind her tall, pyre fires.
For you see,
The little grey girl is likewise affected by the flames she lit against the walls of oblivion. She is roused, lovingly into a dancing stupor. Oxygen has ceased to fill her lungs and now she dances, like all suffocating people do, so that they might go out with a smile. They set fire to memory to give themselves one last meal of vividness in their private, tenderly constricting thoughts.
And now out of the generosity and kindness of her heart, she has let the fire grow irrevocably higher so that the smoke can intoxicate me too, so that despite her trappings in the meta realm of my thoughts, she can prove to me that she is real. Despite her grey skin and featureless limbs, she can be something more real, colorful and vivid to me then anyone within my the range of my senses. She tells me to defy what I see, to encapsulate it in thought so that she might set more kindling on the fire and create even larger puffs of smoke to make the world all the more transient, so that I might even possibly be, in my thoughtless revery, make her real and appear for me. Nevermore a prisoner to a lonely warden’s sharp steel cage, but a free dancing little grey girl, riddling my minds eye upon the stage.
- – -
Secondly, there is a smaller poem I’m working on called Reading in the Rain, which is in a bit more refined state but still long from being finished:
Here I sit, reading in the rain
With my belief that the sanguine sun will sustain
My life, my love, my unaltered aim
Quietly I endure the drops
That sink into the page
Reading about bronzed ledges hung high
Waiting by meticulous props
And beasts of rage
Before traced glass castles in the sky
Here I sit, my thoughts not worried,
Tired or fleeting,
But restless, running without meaning
And Patiently I am hurried,
To water with reason, hungry seeds teeming,
With congestion, growing, but misleading
Serenading wordlessly with the sane
Recreating my unaltered aim
Here I sit, reading in the rain
- – -
As you can see, I still need to expand it a lot more!
Oh, and as a brief tidbit, I’d like to add a wierd… Thing, that my friend Josh and I came up with. It’s juvenile, silly, absurd immature and impractical and its my best attempt at some kind of humor. I’d say more about what it is but it’s a good example of the ‘raw chunk’ stage so I’ll just let is speak for itself (it’s taken nearly verbatim from a Facebook post, so please forgive any spelling mistakes):
Ok, so heres this ridiculously stupid idea Chris and I had one day. It’s a reality TV show/drama called Bear High School.
Synopsis: OK, so it’s a high school, where all the students are bears (Josh and I believe simplicity is a virtue when it comes to humor). The bears are dressed to represent their respective stereotypes (i.e. Jock bear, emo bear, prep bear) and they interact and stuff. Only the teachers are still actual people, to keep it interesting. There’s a guaranteed mauling in every episode, and half the series revolves around the three way relationship between Jock Bear A, Prep Bear C, and Emo bear F. everyone’s gonna cheer for the emo bear, just because hes so fucking awesome. In the second episode, theres some sort of football game, where the bear high football team (all bears, of course) scores the game winning touchdown with 2 seconds left!… and is then immediately disqualified for eating a referee as bears often do when they disagree with a penalty call.
Characters: Jock Bear A: Some kind of jock bear, always wears football pads. Has a preference for eating referees. Is currently dating Prep Bear B (can bears date? tune in to find out!) Teaser: No, bears cannot date. Because they are bears…
Prep Bear B: The Preppy girl bear, who’s somehow dating Jock Bear A. Wears some sort of short skirt, and a HUGE American eagle sweater although according to bear standards, she is considered quite slimming (see bimbo). Shes incredibly jealous, and mauls anyone who goes near Jock Bear.
Emo Bear F: The true star of the series and a very layered personality, Emo Bear has a tough outer shell, beneath which dwells a gentle giant. And beneath that is a godless killing machine. Wears Tight bear pants, and eye liner.
Loner Bear: Some sort of loner bear. Doesn’t fit in to any category. Is really wise, for a bear anyways. Although most of Loner Bear’s wisdom is somehow related to hunting salmon… Regardless of this, the bears often consider his advice free to interpretation and derive a lot of sage wisdom from him at times, even it is based on eating salmon that he previously hunted.
Mr. Jonesbury: The weak math teacher. Is constantly mauled, but is always back in the next episode, only to be mauled again… Has an acute deficiency for sensing an impending bear mauling. Our ratings pump (who doesnt love bear mauling?!?)…. Maul (just because we haven’t used the word enough).
- – -
So thats my big update. Feel free to fall asleep and make base camp halfway through (although, I guess in retrospect it would make more sense to put this message the start). Hopefully this will tide me over for a few days so I can focus on studying. Please forgive any spelling and grammar errors, I’m finishing this at 2 AM and my mind isn’t so coherent. I’ll edit tomorrow.
Bye all and be well!
-Your friendly neighborhood canuck
- Chris 
Oh Lawdy!
The title is completely unrelated to the post, I’m just hoping that my habit of saying “Oh Lawdy” will eventually catch on…
…
…
…
… Anyway!
I had a great day today for the most part! It was one of those days when the sun is shining a nice ethereal warmth that hits your soul. One of those days where even the most embittered individual can’t shy away from the enamoring urge to dawn the most ludicrous grin and walk with an exaggerated swagger for all eyes to see. Yep, today everything just seemed to click, it was a divine message from above that today I was impervious to ill will. So much so that I think I even revised my definition of happiness a bit. Here goes…
Happiness is ordering a medium iced coffee and getting a large at no extra cost.
It’s receiving a smile from that cute asian girl on the other end of the lecture hall after incidentally locking stares then trying to psyche yourself up into talking to her, Playing out the scenario in your head and getting a little boon of confidence when you subconsciously feel you have a shot!
It’s making no attempt to find your way back home to campus after getting lost in the Byward market, finding an all you can eat sushi buffet and gorging yourself for no particular reason.
Happiness is dancing in the street because there is music only you can hear. An invisible band made of your genuine need to dance an absurd, awkward dance.
But I (as with all things) must digress. It was almost exhausting to be so maintain such a mood, so I got home and immediately fell asleep. I feel as though I wasted a really unique opportunity but at the same time I think it was best not to abuse the experience. It was almost like a passive high; maybe I’ll get a blood test tomorrow (wow, according to the spell check I have been misspelling tomorrow for years!) and find out my Special K was spiked.
Lets see what tomorrow (crap, did it again!) brings. *yawn*
- – -
Oh, before I go. Check out the show Little Mosque on the Prairie. It’s a Canadian sitcom about a small muslim community in Saskatchewan (a province (state) in Canada). I never knew muslims could be so quirky!
The episodes are available on Youtube, just search the name.
Shawarma Girl, Chasing Away my Mid-Afternoon Blues
I love Shawarmas! Shortly after moving to Ottawa I developed a really good taste for them. They are a really the perfect blending of flavours in my opinion. Pickles, wierd yet delicious middle-eastern onions and some really zesty sauces combined with citrus marinated chicken is a marvel of an idea and the greatest cultural export from the middle-east as far as I’m concerned.
Why do I bring this up? Well because my love of Shawarmas has a bit of an ulterior motive behind them (this is a common thing for me; I’m very cerebral in my affections). You see, the Shawarma place I frequent (one of the hundreds in Ottawa, I swear we have a larger Lebanese population here then Lebanon itself! Not that I mind though, I interpret this as more Shawarmas for me ) has a particularly cute Lebanese girl (I wonder how many people misread that as lesbian? don’t worry, the freudian slip proves that you’re human) behind the counter. She is either a very accommodating worker or she likes me to some degree because whenever I go there she always blasts with the most brilliant smile before I’m even in the restaurant. I like to consider it my afternoon pick-me-up, whenever I feel depressed or even the slightest tinge of morose, I just go get a Shawarma and warming smile to accompany it.
Is it possible to love a girl simply for her smile? Or am I just associating her with delicious sandwiches too much? She seems to be related to the owner, so I think she has always lived Ottawa working in the family business because she has that humble ‘always-been-a-naive-yet-charming-and-engaging-city-girl-with-little-worldy-experience’ look to her. Again, I’m probably over analyzing but you’ll come to find I’m very prone to it. A small disadvantage to a healthy imagination I suppose.
Oh Shawarma Girl, the places we would go together the sites we would see.
All of it a fleeting residues of an epiphany that you fire, with a smile, at me…
*sigh*
- – -
On a side note, for anyone looking for some interesting Canadian domestic music I’d love to recommend Bruce Cockburn. A lot of his music has a really worldly context to it, like you could supplant one of his songs into any piece of history or part of the world and it would carry just as much meaning. Oddly enough, as a Canadian artist, my favorite song by him is called Tokyo. I enjoy it the most because it reminds of my recent visit to Japan (but thats a story for another post, I must remember to pace myself lest I run out of things to talk about).
Anyway, just wanted to post the lyrics to illustrate my point:
They’re getting prepared to haul a car out of the river
Noise and smoke and concrete seem to be going on forever
Grinding gears and drivers getting high on exhaust
I’m thinking about the water down below and what got lost
Pachinko jingle and space torpedo beams
Comic book violence and escaping steam
Grey suited business men pissing against the wall –
Cut to crumbling guard rail, slow motions car fall
Oh Tokyo — I never can sleep in your arms
Mind keeps on ringing like a fire alarm
Me and all these other dice bouncing around in the cup
Did you have to show me that accident scene
Didn’t I get enough shaking up?
Still I’m gonna miss you…
Dragon of good fortune struggles with trickster fox
Energy and patience and the power of the buck
Tonight I’m flying headlong
To meet the dark red edge of dawn
I know somebody will be crying
And somebody will be gone
Oh Tokyo — I never can sleep in your arms
Mind keeps on ringing like a fire alarm
Me and all these other dice bouncing around in the cup
Did you have to show me that accident scene
Didn’t I get enough shaking up?
Still I’m gonna miss you…
Be sure to let those lyrics sink in. As for me, I need to get to my next lecture.
Keep on keepin’ on!
- Chris
