because i know you love her

and i love this one, too.

on closure

it's been a strange sort of week, or at least a strange sort of weekend. thought about posting this sooner, but wanted to sit with it for a couple of days, think on its significance. way back in october 05 i had tracked down someone from my past and written about it. linked to her blog. noted, i thought in passing, that we had nothing to say to each other, that the past was ancient history, questioned the wisdom of getting in touch. so i didn't get in touch. in fact, i didn't come back to this blog for over a year. and shortly after i had written, she found me (courtesy of the bits and pieces of ourselves we unknowingly shed over the internet - a scent trail? the forensic traces of cyberworld), left a comment. made an entry about it on her own corner of the universe. and i didn't see it until she had traveled the world and come back. until i had jumped my own ship and was making a go of swimming to shore. or out to sea. i'm afraid i'm a bit lacking in direction. but that's not the story.

the story is that i finally saw the comment and wasn't sure what to do with it. how to make amends, where that 19-year-old me, and that 19-year-old her, fit in the story of who i have become. and what would it mean to reach out? what would there be to say apart from hello how are you and i'm sorry and i'm different now i swear? what's the measure of across the ocean and 15 years in a friendship that lived for a few months in that time of so much becoming? as i wrote back when i first tracked her down, what, now after all these years, would there be to say to each other?

but on a whim, or in a fit of self-confidence, or maybe desire to connect, a couple of weeks after i had seen the comment, i sent her an email. wanted to say, at least, that i saw that she had been here. and she wrote back, with a lot of kindness and a lot of honesty. and i wrote back to that. and i don't know if we'll keep corresponding, but i think it kind of doesn't matter anymore, though if this chance collision strikes up a friendship with two people who used to know each other, so much the better. but what mattered, i realize, is not what there was to say to each other. it was that we said anything at all. there's some closure in that, and some small weight that comes off, and some sense that in this big opaque world, you never know what might happen. so if we never connect again, i wish you happiness. and i thank you for writing. it's been a good surprise.


Everything's Okay

And the sun with spin on it now, with hover. Lower over
the light industrial west end, shot back by windowed towers
of the Big Three, it blinds you coming

and going, something smart with your name on it. Spring
walks all over us on sharp heels. Spring chants its way
through the playoffs. Things, being things,

have never been better. Here on the grid, you have reason
to appreciate urban planning more than anything
your parents ever taught you, as Lake Ontario sleeps

with its freighted eye open under sky like a smoker's
bedclothes. Say Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus
until you mean it, say Roncesvalles until you buy that bit

about beauty in ugliness, under oath as you are to living
for the moment, uncut, blow by blow. A woman sings
karaoke in a third floor flat, while below, an engine grinds,

trying to turn over. Behind café glass, a man leans
to his companion as though he loves her. You believe one idea,
and then another. That is, in the instant, at the time.

-- Karen Solie


---------------------
box: gould - goldberg variations

you asked for it

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness
comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Rumi

You had wanted me to post something happy. Or happier. I don't know if this counts. But you have to admit, it has some hope in it...

would someone please

disabuse me of my jennifer aniston crush?

it's kinda embarassing. and the fact that this story makes me disproportionately happy is a little worrisome. maybe i'll just blame it on this low-grade depression and leave it at that. guess i shouldn't knock the fact that something is actually making me happy....

come to my window

so this is the colour of the sky in my world today. is this what they call the bleak midwinter? feels like it. and i'm annoyed with myself for letting it go so long, for being so dragged down. today on the subway i felt like crying only because the tracks seemed so damn close to the imagination. this is not the way i meant to become. thank god tomorrow is another day.

home renovations

the image of scaffolding has always appealed to me. skeletons on the outside to shore up skeletons on the inside. i used to think of scaffolding as support - but i'm wondering now if it's not a way of getting around the walls. a way of scaling when knocking them down just won't do.

yesterday i met with anna and we talked a lot about my neat and tidy compartments. the challenge of living a life within the confines of some very thick walls. and as she was talking, as she was telling back to me my stories of stoic restraint, i had this image of mike holmes swinging a sledgehammer, tearing down drywall, making open space. i need a way to access that space. i need my own sledgehammer. because this scaffolding i've constructed isn't doing the trick. or i've been misusing it. misunderstanding it. maybe it's all gotta come down. and then let's see what happens.

-----------
box: yo yo ma, bach's cello suites

monday morning, freezing rain

'nuff said.

okay i have a problem

i'm wondering if there's a term for this aimless internet wandering i get stuck in, to the detriment of ALL productivity and any profound thought... viz, my current, and seemingly lasting obsession with go fug yourself, wikipedia, cbc.ca, yahoo entertainment, the globeandmail.com, and - and this is truly embarassing - people.com. my mother did not give birth to me for this. i blame rss feeds and the easy way gmail fixes me with them.

it puts me in mind of buffalo - a stoner moment, for sure. jessica campbell had come to visit me. i had pot, which i smoked only occasionally, and, truth be told, never really enjoyed all that much. we sat on my futon in that creaky old apartment on richmond ave - the one with all the centipedes and the grey lo-pile carpet that got pockmarked with the remains of k's cigarettes, and which i later painstakingly repaired with crazy glue and carefully shorn carpet graft obtained from less visible corners of the apartment so as to get that precious damage deposit back in full - and watched kids in the hall reruns. i got ridiculously high. and ridiculously paranoid, convinced i was going to be stuck in stoner world for the rest of my life. and poor jess, who was being sweet and kind and who never really has been my friend, though we've both been earnest in our showing up for the label, didn't really know what to do. what's the parallel? being stuck in stoner world. only now i'm not stoned. i'm just stuck online in some ridiculously mundane mobius strip of non-entertainment and meaningless gathering of trivia that i will never ever use. it's a damn good thing i don't have a job at the moment, since i would have to get fired for getting nothing done.

okay back to the surf. surely someone must have posted something new in the last 5 minutes.

--------------
box: tom waits, orphans. all 3 discs, but in keeping with the truth of my moribund musical tastes, it's the bawlers that get me.

bedside table: the wars by timothy findley, two girls fat and thin by mary gaitskill. course reading in artificial intelligence.

just watched: shattered glass (hayden christensen, peter sarsgaard) about the downfall of steven glass; capturing the friedmans. liked 'em both. and i never thought i would say this - but i'm actually grateful to blockbuster. for some reason, they're stocking some damn good films in my neighbourhood outlet (sorry e. i know this drives you mental).

and i had thought they for sure would have disabled me

okay. so back to this blogging thing. i never have been very good at sustaining. see that last post. (am thankful for the comment, which i just saw today - over a year later. talk about not being with the program). i haven't written yet, just so you know (though i imagine after over a year, you'd hardly be sending a thought this way), not because i don't want to. there's something in me that wants to get it right. that wants to make it right. and until i can either figure that out, or let it lie, or just plain stop angsting over it, it's best for both of us if i keep myself small and quiet. but btw, i love that you use the word mawkish. it's a good one.

there's wind where i am. big gusting skylight shaking wind in the midst of a snowless winter. the dog oblivious at my feet, and me as lost as i ever was, googling in a half-hearted sort of way, and thinking of where you are today. and all the other you's in my life. the yous that left. the yous i ran off. the yous who just disappeared or changed into something else. those yous. and, for that matter, those mes.

procrastination is the worst kind of purgatory - self-inflicted. how to figure out which world to have a foot in?