Upon thumbing in the English dictionary while writing a paper, I thought I’d see what I could tease out of the word “life”.   Life, as of lately has been  about elasticity.   Much to my surprise, they got it right…though life could never be confined to one word or another. I am not ”right” nor are they, nonetheless,  alongside ‘elasticity’ I found ‘resilience’. Merely synonymous, I wondered what that meant for me and for those around me.  Am I living? Am I resilient? 

The Buddhists hold the belief that all life is suffering caused by desire, and this suffering can only ever end through enlightenment that allows one to  halt this incarnation one is otherwise subject to. I suppose in this context, one could only be resilient by enlightenment in overcoming these so-called desires. 

Some people believe that everyday we endure our heaven and our hell.  It is our ability to remain soulful and surrendered that allows us to  bathe in the luxury of our heaven, that is, heaven on earth.  If the afterlife is then described as being infinite, immortal, and eternal, we can then contrast the life we are given now as finite and thus “hell”.  Desire is then, inevitable. The desire to access life which dwells  in the most  secret of places.  This is perhaps why we all yearn to love and be loved in return and thus desire and dwell on the possibilities that puddle.

I suppose I felt an ever-increasing calm upon finding the word resilience. A word that has changed the most aggravating and emotionally chaotic morning into one of complete composure and quiet, merely to the point of stoicism; a repression of emotion  and indifference to pleasure and pain, but not quite as I am able to recognize my pangs and deal with them without indifference. 

It is this overwhelming yet tranquil realization that what is causing me pain relies heavily on a variable I cannot control entirely, and that is, quite simply, understanding.  It is being misunderstood that denies me the pleasures of my own life and that is not my fault, but rather a matter of faith… the faith people have in me. If they have none, then they perhaps don’t deserve to understand me, and can therefore misunderstand me to their content.

 Often times I hear people say, perhaps for self-reassurance, ” I don’t care what other people think of me” and I’ve said it before in the past, though, now, as I grow older, I truly do not spend time compensating who I am for gratitude or appreciation from others.  I spend time on those who do not want me to compensate any part of “me” but are still appreciative of the “me”.

 And perhaps this is yet another connotation of “life”, it is living the words you were destined to speak and being the person you challenged your destiny to be.  When I was much younger I would explicitly confirm who I was by saying “I don’t care what other people think of me” though secretly I always did.

It is perhaps inevitable to linger where the tidal is not as strong.  Naturally, for every ten people that appreciated me, there was one who did not and could not, and that one person would consume my every thought.  I always wanted to be liked and I always wanted to be well appreciated. I think this is something every being wants for themselves, that is, a little gratitude for just being, because as we all know, just being is a challenge, yet a gift on its own.

We all want to love and be loved in return. It is an inevitable desire rooted from within that could only ever flourish by the light and nurturing of others. From the moment we are born, we have changed a life without knowing it and by inverse, have been forever changed by the essential need to be loved. We are nurtured and we grow in love, and thus in moments where we feel it is absent, we cannot breathe. It was in fact, our very inspiration. We were inspired by love.

 Thus, being misunderstood can be virtually unbearable, un-breathable, and uninspiring.  Love is absent. And for a moment, we cannot breathe. You begin to interrogate absolutely everything that has happened, and for a moment, however brief, you question who you are and thus acknowledge your wrongs. Upon being misunderstood in terms of my intentions recently, I was so very offended and hurt that no amount of words could suffice. I just didn’t know where to begin, quite honestly. It consumed my entire morning until I received a call from an old friend. This completely altered by state of mind, as I realized that he and I had been given multiple opportunities to misunderstand one another. That is, in absence of trust and love, misunderstanding would have been relatively easy. Nonetheless, we were able to hold a conversation and make plans for next Friday evening as it will be his birthday.  I hung up the phone and I realized that it is the people that truly love you who are willing to work through these misunderstandings because they know that it is just that, a misunderstanding.  These people are irreplaceable and they bring you life, they allow you to be resilient. They help you to be resilient. They love you without compensation!

Sometimes in cities so vast, where every corner you turn there is something to entertain your mind, we can feel completely alone.  Someone in New York city is feeling alone at this very moment. Even in a city so vast, where the buildings so high scrape the sky and speak to us in beckoning tones, and drip from the sky in architectural resilience… we feel alone. The sky could never compensate for the resilience within. No sky-scraper could offer this ultimate release, rather the stars in our own Velvet sky. Those we love and are loved by. The irreplaceable. The shooting stars that color our sky.  And for these shooting stars, I am eternally grateful.

Can you imagine standing on the verge of a city, or perhaps the ruins of one, that you had only ever seen in a dream? And what if, for that brief moment of where you stood, you were convinced that it wasn’t just a dream all along, but the delicate dealings of destiny or what the Greeks had referred to as ‘fatum’?

 Perhaps this is why faith, inevitably, is hard to place, be it in a person or an actual place.  It is only after we think we have found what we were looking for, that we renegotiate how we came to find it.  We were led there…by the divine or the hand of another.  And so we spend our days searching and contemplating our Atlantis, in faith that we will stumble upon it, and in good time. Perhaps the problem is that you know what you are looking for, or rather, what you are looking for, has been decided- and not for you but by you. 

I recall reading about the man who is said to have found Troy, or what once was the city of Troy.  It was said that he was obsessed with Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey, to the degree of being completely convinced that these places and these people were once a reality.  He was so taken by the notion that the fabric of his dreams, only ever in words, were more than just words woven, at one time or another. He travelled endlessly until he felt that he was where he needed to be, and until his soul agreed with him, that he was no longer lost but found. As he travelled through Turkey, he met a man who posessed land that he felt, reserved the promise of his dreams. On intuition, he paid this man for his land, and began to excavate.  He knew nothing of excavation, in fact, he was rather horrible with the dealings of it, and had paid for crews of people to dig in search of this ‘once upon a time’ city.

And so they dug, thoughtless in the process,  eventually piling away the remnants of the lost city.  They dug until they reached “the bottom” and it was made clear, time later, that the bottom was apart of the top, and they had foolishly disregarded it as dirt.

This was, however, the lost city of Troy, and though it held no evidence or promise that the city had indeed endured an infamous war, the city itself, had been found.

The man who had found it, Heinrich Schliemann,  was said to have been a driven man, a daring man who, legend has it, once dressed or disguised himself as a Bedouin tribesman to gain access to Mecca, in his ventures of discovery. 

To me, this is remarkable, in that someone had faith in something. Something that they could not prove entirely in its intangible elements. And I believe, entirely, that this is what faith is. It’s having nothing to show for what makes your existence viable…  I recall  a passage from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (yet, another one)

“You don’t understand the humiliation of it- to be tricked out of the single assumption which makes our existence viable- that somebody is watching…”

 And so I say, it is only after we have found what our lost hearts had desired so, that we renegotiate, with ourselves, in how we came to find what was to be found.  It is hoping that this “finding” is a moment of complete reassurance that something or someone is watching, that is, belief confirmed.  And I suppose this is why, when we cannot find love or moments of bliss to depend upon when its all a lot of oysters and no pearls,  that we are humiliated in the digression of our souls, as our belief runs thin like the sand in an hour glass… the belief in our existence, love being its largest tangent, and the lost cities it awakens in us all.

The city lights come up in us all, fused by faith and love; the two that make our existence completely viable. Perhaps you need to search a while, dig a while, and find a while, to prove, maybe to yourself, that this reserve of faith and love of which your dreams rest, is what could only ever make this dream, to you, awake. This life a dream, and this dream, your life.

And so, you are always alive, running on faith and what will always sustain it. Always alive.

When was the last your heart gave out on you?

It would be foolish to assume your heart has never been overwhelmed. Surely, it has.

This very day, mine gave out on me. I went to the movie theater today. The movie was ‘P.S- I Love You’, adapted from the novel by Cecelia Ahern. Yes, the theater was full of women, but that is beside the point. I was there to understand a story, one, I might add, that was not stereotypical nor cliche.  The story revolves around Holly, a young Irish woman, who loses her husband only after a few years of marriage. Married at the age of 19, the two shared a life that was perfect by imperfection. Sounds cliche, right? Well, I promise you it wasn’t. Prior to his death, Gerry, Holly’s husband, writes his wife letters that she receives after his death. Enclosed in each letter, Gerry challenges Holly to do something lively. In one, he dares her to sing karaoke, in another he encourages her to go clubbing “with the girls”, and a few months after his passing, she receives a letter directing her to a travel agency where he had planned an entire trip for her in Ireland. By the last letter, a year after his death, Holly is still living in anticipation for these letters, and for him. However unlikely the story was, or hyper-real, Holly’s inability to fall out of love with her husband, now dead, was not superficial. In words, the film sounds very bland and surreal in itself, however the charm and thought in every scene was overwhelming in presence. I found the most difficult scene was the one in which Holly goes for a walk with her mother, a year after Gerry’s death. Before this walk, in which Holly’s mom gives her Gerry’s last letter to her, Holly says she “can’t breathe”. However expected or unexpected, it stuck with me.

To be in love, truly, would be an honor. I don’t think people realize that or respect that. That is to say, people don’t give love a chance and they really don’t appreciate it. I can say this, because I’ve witnessed such a  circumstance where love has been neglected, underestimated, deemed foolish, and unappreciated.  Do people not realize it is an honor? Do they not see? Is that what it is, is that why people refrain from letting love happen? So often I hear of “plans” and I hear people speak of love as if it were an inconvenience. That is to say, love is an inconvenience to their so called “plans”.

To me, plans can ve bery irrelevant to life as we know it. Let me ask you why it was given to you, that is life, in the first place? It was given to you, as every honor is given, so that you may come to appreciate and respect its everyday earnings. Life, is an honor, and to pursue an element of it that is very one dimensional and unemotional is a waste.

I don’t understand why love is so undesired. As if you have the rest of your life, when you are young, to fall in love.  Apparently there are other things. True, however, love seems to fall second best in competing in the minds of others for substance in life. Other than those that I know that are married, and a select few, I don’t know anyone who can outright say “I want to fall in love”. Most of the time it’s ” if it happens, it happens” which I agree with (completely) as you find love or you do not. Though, I know few who would let love consume them, and I wonder about this. Why? I suppose it comes down to priority, and as said before, it’s not a top one, for most, especially in youth.

I think love should be a priority. And I think you are a fool for thinking you can find “something” some other time, or that “something” will come back around when the time is right. Now is the time, there is no other time. You don’t know how much time you have, in fact, I can tell you that you’re not promised tomorrow. So why are you so smug? I’d like to know.

I had a visit with my grandmother today. As we drank espresso she didn’t recall stories or moments of achievement in terms of intellect or moments where she felt superior or “won” something… rather, she told me what she missed, and that was love. This love epitomized in one being, one no longer alive, that is, my grandfather. He has been gone for nearly nineteen years, as long as I have been alive. She said she misses the jingle of the back door, the one he’d always walk through after work. She said he’d whistle, and she knew he was home. I asked her what else she missed and she took a deep breath and said “everything”.  She told me every night before she goes to bed, she kisses his photograph by her bedside, and every morning, that photograph is the first thing she sees. To think of love- one that grows old, to me, is spectacular and at times,  beyond my scope. That is an honor. You are honored to have someone love you and to feel that they need you, they must have you. They just must. It is an honor.

To think that people brush it off as a phase, one to be pursued when the years of youth have been exhausted, is frustrating for me. How do you not want to share youth? Love is not constraining. It is the complete opposite, and thus I don’t understand why it is perceived as this inconvenience. Foolish.

My heart just gave out as I watched my grandmother weep for herself, the part of her that cannot be found- him. And I began to cry, too. And I continued to on my way home ’til I reached Bragg Creek and decided to turn back and head for home. I couldn’t help but feel that love was an honor, one I wasn’t sure I’d ever bow graciously to in acceptance.  I felt as though something or someone were missing, and I knew exactly who it was, and there was not one thing I could do about it. I cried because she missed him so. Holly and my grandmother. This pain actually happens. It’s there and it doesn’t leave ’til you’re allieved from pain altogether. Pain isn’t just a thought in the movies, it’s real and my heart just broke. For her love, lost, and for the one I cannot seem to find.

My writing is just rubbish right about now. I’ll give you a song, though not my own:

“Apologies” by Grace Potter & The Nocturnals.

“Oh he said it’s crazy
How love stays with me
You know it hurts me
Cause I don’t wanna fight this war
It’s amazing to see me reading through this scene
Of love and fear and apologies

My love is like a blanket
That gets a little bit too warm sometimes
I wanna wrap somebody in it
Who can hold me in his arms
Cause when it got a little too hot in there
He was always stepping out for air and he froze
Oh he froze”
 

I think now and then we all just want something to believe in, moreover someone to give us something to believe in. Belief, safe to say, is no trivial matter. After all, it’s what makes our existence viable. Lately, despite it being Christmas, I feel, more than ever, that so much is built upon assumption, masked by the refuge sought in the term ”belief”. What I thought was, and what is, have evolved and emerged to reveal that what I had always thought, assumed, and believed, is in fact, false. I am having to rearrange my mind and my ways, and for me, I am finding it so very hard to redesign. Though I want to pursue the truth, however bitter-sweet it may be. I recall a passage from Christopher Fry…

“all your life you live your life so close to the truth it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it’s like being ambushed by a grotesque”

It is often said that we may “never know”, and it is suggested that the “truth” is blinding in its sublime essence, perhaps like love. (Thus true love… is simply disastrous.)

Though, love is not blind, as it has a very specific face. Being in love with this face, however, is blinding. For one, you perceive this love to be true, and you rationalize time later that it never was when forever has come and gone rather quickly and the butterflies, with their wings exhausted, no longer fly. Something is merely as true as you perceive it to be. The truth is what you are willing to believe. And that’s why Hollywood is dangerous. It fools around with what is and what should be and you draw expectations from what is, in allusion to what should be.

I didn’t expect my eyes to go misty upon seeing a homeless-man picking bottles out of a dumpster, cold and alone, days before Christmas. In Hollywood, there is no man crawling from a dumpster… or if there is, he’s on his way to sweep chimney’s, where he’s likely to chirp about it, while bathing in the essence of being hard done by, with a smile. There’s just no such thing.

I didn’t expect to feel completely forgotten by the one I couldn’t let escape me if I possibly tried (though I should really give it a try).  I figured he was my Tom Hanks, my NY52, the one who can’t wait 24 hours, after arriving in the same town, to say how about some coffee, or some drinks, or dinner, or a movie. Nothing. And I never assumed “nothing” would emerge. I never expected to be forgotten or a weak effort with a “catch up soon”. Soon? Who can afford to say things like that? And who can afford to accept that?

Cherish this: don’t make someone a priority if you’re only an option.

It’s just Hollywood in my mind, and the reality, however, harsh, is so very obvious. It is reality after all, it ought to be obvious.

I didn’t expect to feel out of place “at home”, either. In the black and white films, home is definite. It has a color. It’s this place where everything is sentimental and unchanging- this stead of comfort, a place where you can come undone. Though, for myself, I feel that this home as it is now, only contrasts what has changed  and what hasn’t. And what has changed, is me. The people in this home have changed, too, though my love for them has not, and never will. Strange, the passing time, and written all over my face and theirs. This feeling of slight displacement, is strange, consuming and uncomfortable. It is knowing I am irrelevant to time, that I am temporary, and I am meant to be detached and displaced time and time again. The world is black and white- there are no shades of grey, and thus this feeling, however inevitable, is grey and that much more antagonizing- I need to decide if it’s black or white, for surely it can’t be both. Though, everything in cinema is black and white- even feelings. You’re in love or you’re not. You’re happy or you’re not. 

Quite frankly, I’ve come to believe, that there will be moments, more significant than others, where you may be lost and found all at the same time, happy but knowingly forgotten, independent and childish, composed and spontaneous…and there are no cameras ever rolling to catch the blend. Sometimes it stings and you’re more of one than the other but I suppose this is life…the way… the “stuff” that occupies our every day. And I suppose that’s all you can really count on. Change.

He’s sifting through garbage, you walk the avenue alone, and boxes occupy the spare room for moving day. It happens. Change happens- even at Christmas time. What is there to say?

 The same black line that was drawn on you
Was drawn on me
And now its drawn me in
6th avenue heartache

Sometimes I just miss the way things used to be. I can accept that things change, that people change, and that places change. But letting these things, these people and these places go, is just something I don’t want to do. I dont think I can. The tide’s eternal tune

I packed my bags and grabbed my keys Friday morning  to drive the miles in between so that I could pick up my brother and sister from school.  They didn’t know I was to pick them up. I decided to pick up my sister first at the junior high I used to attend.  I parked by the front doors and waited for the Friday bell to ring.

  As I waited I looked at what I used to know. I forgot how the mountains looked from the playground, how the fields extended towards the highway… the long grass full of snow, and the sky painted colors of the cowboy cliché. How I’d watch all the pretty horses from my classroom window. The warm feeling of being inside while a storm was raging or the wind blew tumble weeds across the pavement and basketball courts. I recall how the raindrops on the bus windows would race one another as we drove through canopies, past farms, fields, and wire fences.   Dark sky and grey highway lined with yellows and greens. If you drove fast enough you’d see a pallet of colors that made you feel like you were spinning ‘round in the fall leaves. It was like somethin’ sacred, you know?   We live “in the country”. From the lines on the highway to the ripples in the fields, the pebbles we’d kick up on our way home to the wild flowers that lined dirt roads. You just wanted to breathe it all in. You knew the sun was still shining when you closed your eyes.I loved everything about where I lived and where I was. I had friends I could sit on fences with and talk to for hours. I had friends I’d walk dirt roads with and pick wild flowers with. Rivers we could sit by. Highways we could photograph. Trails we could walk.   We could part the long grass and stain our jeans and white t-shirts with dirt. Or walk home with sand on the cuff of our jeans and sandals from the lake.

 I always slept with the windows open in my bedroom during the summertime when it would be too cold to sleep on the patio. In the morning I could see the curtains blowing. I could smell the lilacs and the thick perfume of pink on the flowers. Blue Rodeo or The Wallflowers would usually be playing downstairs in the kitchen or I’d tune in for the top 40 on the Kix Brooks show while waiting for the water to run warm in the shower.  Just to be there, in a place I called home muddled me, like wine or a breath of freedom. And this was my reality.  I never knew how long it would last. How many more mornings I’d wake up with no worries.  When I would wake up those mornings (and even now) there’d always be a wonderful face that would ask me what I was going to do for the day and I’d always give my usual “ I dunno”. This never bothered me. There was comfort in what I did know, the same things that I probably took for granted at times.

  It all came back to me Friday as I waited for my sister. Where had the time gone? I asked myself that and again it was a “ I dunno”. I watched the front doors of the school. I remember I felt as though I had so much to prove when I first walked through them. It was a new beginning. A new school. I was scared to death but it was a choice that I had made and entirely on my own.  In retrospect, I don’t know how I picked up the nerve to move schools. I did it without having any intention of looking back. And I never did. I met beautiful people and shared beautiful things with them. It changed my everything. It was a very good year. I recall algebra being a challenge, and one I overcame. It was another obstacle, one that terrified me. I remember being sneered at upon showing my concern for my math mark at my previous junior high- the one I chose to depart from. “You’re never going to get it”. And my math teacher just laughed at me. I remember a close friend marked one of my math quizzes and told everyone what mark I had earned after I had asked her not to. “ How do you fail that?”. And it became a joke. One of many. I became a joke. I just didn’t find it funny and I felt as though there wasn’t one person who got me or someone who would at least ease the “humor” and make me laugh for a change. So I moved. And algebra didn’t change… but the people and my feelings, because of these people, did. That year I was offered a spot in the advanced mathematics program in the high school I was to attend in the fall. Highest mark in algebra. It meant a lot to me. I’m sure you’ve had an experience similar. One of those experiences that you look back on and you’re completely satisfied. You’d go through it all again if you could, even the jokes. In a heartbeat. 

 My new friends-  they were like me. They didn’t care what I had or what I didn’t. They didn’t know why I was new and I didn’t know what was old.  And that was okay, too. It was a matter of time, a short time, I might add, when people started asking me if I remember what happened  in grade five during “that field trip…”or  “this one pep rally…” and of course, I was never there to say “I remember”.    Graduation came last June and we toasted to the end. And “I remember.”

“Here’s to the nights we felt alive.”

It was bitter sweet, like just about everythin’.

 It’s just kinda hard to be logical about life… rumor has it that there’s a sequence to it. I can understand this sequence but it can be generic. Not all of us find the love of our lives in high school or leave home at eighteen or marry at twenty five and vacation to the gulf of Mexico in the summertime.    There can be a sequence but for me I’d rather not pursue one consciously. Let it happen. I think of what has happened and it’s  like I’m on this train, or I’m driving my car, but it won’t decelerate even when I’m pressin’ on the brake. I’m driving through these moments. They’re all there in their moving clips, and still frames. I just want to unroll my window, or stop the car, walk out and just admire one of them by stepping back into it. But I can’t. My window’s stuck. The brakes don’t work. I’d even jump out but my door’s busted, too. My train’s just moving way too damn fast. And it hurts ‘cause I love it all so much. All the photographs and all the faces and places. I love them all with all my heart and it hurts to just wave it goodbye. It’s like loving someone and having them say “well, it’s been nice meeting you”. That’s it? Wait. Why?  Was it something I said?It’s like that lover that left you. Change can be like that.

You stand like a fool in the middle of the road, tumble weeds around you, your hair’s  blowin, too, the mountains by your side. And they see you in their rearview mirror. It starts to rain on you, and you’re soaked to the bone. You’re “praying for the glow of a break light.” So you can run. So you can catch up. Fleeting hope. They see you in their rearview. But they don’t stop, they just keep on driving and you’re still standin’ there. Classic fool. The wheels just turn and there’s no sign that they’re goin’ back for you. Like a lover that drove off without you… you can run after that car down that dirt road but you’ll run out of breath and you’ll fade like the tail lights of a cottage you’d pass in the middle of the night. So you kick up the dust and it gets in your eyes. Nobody’s lookin’ so you don’t have to lie. It’s not jus the dust in your eyes. It’s time and dust in a bottle. The sand just keeps runnin’ on you, and though you’d like to try, you can’t flip the hour glass over.  It’s not asking much. Just more time in the fields with the sun in your hair, more times to enjoy the love you share.  The thrill of living.

But our thrills change, change happens, moments escape you and you see them leave you down the road. What do you do? Chase them down? Try to keep up? Follow the tracks? Or just keep walking in the opposite direction, occasionally looking behind your shoulder- not for that car- but to admire the road?I think the latter would be best. I think you’d get farther. And you wouldn’t end up where you started. What do you think? You’d be somewhere else altogether. 

We can ask ourselves why things have to change and we can ask ourselves where the time has gone, all on the behalf of this change and time we speak of- and it’s not a bad thing. It’s a soul thing.  I think these so called emotions that I’ve recently tried to put into words is my way of  soothing my fears of what is to come. I never knew then and I don’t know now. I never will.  But I do know that I’d do it all over again.  I can miss the way it used to be and I can cherish the past, and I can let it move me, and I can strum about it, but I can also use it to push me forward- and it does, inevitably. I’m just not sure if I want to be swept up at such a pace.  I don’t mind moving at all, it’s just the pace.  The seasons roll by and youth slips away. It’s the pace. 

—-

  “Had a talk with my old man, said ‘help me understand’. He said ‘turn sixty-eight, you’ll renegotiate. Don’t stop this train, don’t for a minute change the place you’re in and don’t think I couldn’t ever understand. I tried my hand, John, honestly, we’ll never stop this train’”“Once, in a while, when it’s good, it’ll feel like it should. And they’re all still around, and you’re still safe and sound. And you don’t miss a thing ‘til you cry when you’re driving away in the dark singing ‘stop this train, I want to get off, And go home again, I can’t take the speed its moving in, I know I can’t. ‘Cause now I see I’ll never stop this train’”.

Do you ever have those moments where you think to yourself that things couldn’t get any worse? Or maybe you’ll be completely enjoying yourself and then you’ll remember why you needed to enjoy yourself in the first place… and then the guilt of enjoying yourself is just far too much so you pick up the guitar and don’t put it down for five hours? More guilt.

 You have a paper to write,  six final exams, you lost your apartment keys (and now have to pay for an entire new lock…), the air pressure in your tires are off and need to be looked at before you drive for two hours next Friday, you have a Christmas list full of people to buy for, you haven’t looked into flight tickets for New York… essays to edit, clothes to fold, peppers to fry… ah, bliss.

    And you’re thinking about all this while you try to figure out your next move. You don’t exactly know how to deal so you write about ridiculous things or play a song ’til your fingers are worn right out or run ’til you can’t breathe. It saves your sanity. And then of course, you’re still dealing with the horrible aftertaste of having to chew on your own words- words that were spoken and completely misunderstood.  Another social casualty. Score one more for me. B-E-A-U-TIFUL.

It’s become so unreal.  You pick locks with a bobby pin to get into your own living space, you steal someones signal so you can check your grades on-line, you look out a dirty bus window ’cause it’s a window.You’ve started to drink coffee. An extra-large French Vanilla coffee from Tim Horton’s. You can’t function without it at 9:42 am before every history class.  You never even drank coffee before! Hot showers have become a source of enjoyment.  Watching Jerry Maguire on a Friday night and quoting “you complete me” with a generous tub of ice-cream by your side, spoon in hand, is what your Friday nights have evolved to.  Grocery shopping gives you an excuse to leave the library or the apartment. Climb 17 stairs and pick two locks to get to your apartment door. Dont drop the eggs. Don’t poke your eye out with the French bread. Just don’t drop the bags. 

You make it through the door and it’s no Dido moment. He’s not there to take your coat and you can’t say “… I want to thank you for giving me the best day of my life. Just to be with you is having the best day of my life…”. Yeah. There’s no Dido, mkay?

Instead, you trip over your own feet and into the shoe rack. The phone rings and you’ve apparently won a trip to the Caribbean. Press 9.  I’m ready to tell the overly enthusiastic Caribbean lady voice that she’s gonna need to press that one and two other digits if she calls me one more flippin’ time.

Put on the kettle. Do the laundry. Put on CNN. More bad news. They always give it to you first. Why do they do this?

No, really, thank you, Bob- I’m not sure how I could have managed my day without your overly sincere delivery of “more breaking news”. You might want to bleach your teeth one more time, give that good ‘ol toupee a nice swipe over the forehead. No, thank you, Bob, for tuning in this evening.

So I think ‘forget it’. I need Aretha. “Since You’ve Been Gone” and “Rescue Me”. It works every time.  I’m sure if I had a bottle of wine at my disposal, I’d  be singing into an empty one. With a blouse and shades. It’s risky business.

And just when I think I need the shades, I get a call. ” I just called to say I love you”. And no, it’s not Stevie Wonder calling for his shades back or to say ‘I love you’.  It’s someone who sends me.  And then it somehow all disappears…all of it. I can lay in my bed that I never made this morning and it doesnt’ bother me. How this happens is somethin’ else. 

It’s the “P.S- I love you” and you know you’re gonna be alright. It may not be the kind of ‘I love you’ that is said at paramount moments in movies and in Broadway when the music swells and lovers collapse in eachothers “undying” arms but it’s even better… it’s my paramount and it’s real and it’s true. It’s…

“I was listening to “one by one” by Wilco and Billy Bragg and then I saw in the snow someone had written in giant snow letters the word
LOVE with a heart next to it and it was insane because all evening we had been with stressed out delayed people cause flights got eaten by snow and then I saw that and it was so beautiful
one of those moments where you wish that your best friends could see through your eyes all at once hey?”- Noah

Or the polka-dotted bag your roommates bought for you ’cause “It had Cass all over it” or dad’s “hey kid, we’ll have a couple before the concert Friday”.

Makes a difference, you know?  You’re not just barely surviving a night in your mind… you can accept that talk is cheap, not everything is going to be “deep”, and that not everything has rhyme or reason or both… or that things could be better…because you will pull through. The “I called to say I love you’s” are your rhyme and reason, and they give you somethin’ deep. More than. You make it through ’cause ”P.S- I love you”

I walked the streets tonight. I can’t quite describe just how it was.  Snow on the ground and up above, on my boots and in my lashes. It was the kind of night full of subway steam and silhouettes.  There was no wind and no moon to be seen. 

The Christmas lights have been strung.  The pond now frozen and the wood dusted white. ”Blue lights on a black night”.  They were remarkable. 

I walked the snow covered path concealed by bush, yonder from it, a bridge yearning for modest rapids below it. Walking the bridge, I noticed a couple.

 They were aged and walked with more patience than I could ever hold, scarcely moving, though they left their footprints in the snow. He was slightly taller than she. I imagine they graced and measured perfect on a wedding cake, once upon a time. Her hair must have been as dark as mine, bouffant hair once pinned with a pearl comb and tinseled with snow when it fell ever so graciously on nights like these. Now, you’d find no pearl, as the flakes from above melted into her hair and rested there upon her shoulders.  His arm around her, he walked a funny pace so as to satisfy the song of their walk.  She beamed towards that face, concealed by the hat he fashioned. How many days that hat had seen, how many times he had tipped it, and hung it beside the door.  He walked like the jive, even now. He must have had gumption. Walking in his integrity, finding her, knowing her and telling her she was his destiny. From kitchen waltz’s to sittin’ in on cinema to sharing the lingering taste of cranberry. This, surely, was not their first snowfall, or “walk in the park”. I imagine falling in love, on rare occasion, was a walk in the park for the two that crossed the bridge ahead of me. Their figure merged into one as they made their way towards the main street, where the streetlight shone down on them. I squinted to find he gave her his hand so that she may step in front, the other hand, shadowing the small of her back, maybe like he once had when they arrived at parties together or before they would merge onto the dance floor for a shuffle or two. Somewhere inside of me I heard Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”.  Sure it had to do with my surroundings and Christmas practically here, but something else chimed and it wasn’t the sound of bells. “From now on our troubles will be miles away”. For people in love, troubles would be miles away. It was made so clear to me this evening. Not a worry did I see or trace in their steps. Trouble eased. So very completely. I thought about my own love- not the love I have for a particular person, though I could possibly find myself in love with a particular person some day, but rather the love I share with many of those “faithful friends” among those dear to me. Sure I walked alone but the very thought of a particular person among the faithful, ignited something I never expected it to. It took me miles away and eased my sea of a mind, channeling the rough waves of doubt, drawing sails and guiding me home. I think that is all anybody could really wish for or truly hope for, that is, to be certain of something, even a feeling, however fleeting or engraved.  The feeling that you will be okay, ’cause you’ve got somethin’. Like a ‘Merry Christmas’ it’s been said many times, many ways…

It’s amazing what music can do to you, for you. It’s the “Speed of Sound” by Coldplay.

It sounds exactly like what waves look like underneath your ferry ride. It’s almost mechanical, churning over and over again. Almost like it has a mind, one that will never rest, exhausted by its inevitable ability to do just that.  You’re watching the waves churn over and over, inside out, at the speed of sound. It’s mesmerizing, and the shadows of the rail flash upon your face, the sun in your eyes, brows filled with furry, it’s as though you’re watching your own mind turn inside out- that’s what the waves can do for you, to you. The ocean sprays you upon a rough wave, and there is your reality. You fall out of the rhythm, and back to your own, which is just as persistent.

The speed of sound.

You’re  walking the city streets. Maybe New York. Maybe Chicago. San Francisco. It’s night and all you see is light. Spaces that have been found.  Things would move just as fast if they were on mute. The cars and colors fly by you, you can never catch them. You’re oblivious to them, though you know they’re there. You’re in a stand still and you’re just trying to catch a moment. A moment where you can stop thinking. You can stop feeling. You can segregate yourself from the city lights and just watch them. Like you’re in a tunnel in London, suspended in color, you just look straight ahead. The only thing that’s moving is your hair, just as electric as your background. Maybe your hands are in the pocket of your blue jeans. You’re just “passing through”.

The speed of sound.

The river. It never stops, not even at night. You can watch it at night when the moon gives you just enough light to find it.  You can sit by it. You can watch it. It doesn’t stop for nothing or no one. You can feel like the purple that surrounds it, nobody’s there to see you disappear. The purple emerges and washes over and swathes you. It’s okay. Sometimes you envy it, the river, that is. You could never be just as languid and legato. Reality gets in the way. For a river, reality never sinks in. To be the middle of that river. To flow without friction.

The speed of sound.

Maybe it’s the way of the Amalfi coast. The roads weaves above the ocean. You can feel your body sway to inertia. It’s the way the rear-view mirror reflects into your eyes. Ice blue. Sublime. You’re blinded. The windows down, you’re apart of the aesthetic of losteness. You still can’t see. You weave and make the corner, the sun out of your eyes,  and there’s the blue. The ocean. Like you walked into a white room with one window. Throw off the covers, open the window… the breeze hits you, and hard. There’s your inspiration. The ocean. You followed the white lines. You did it right. There it is.

The speed of sound

Lanterns in Thailand. The candles on the lilies. They spin ‘round like they’re to dissolve into an abyss. Slowly and surely.  I heard of this affair in Thailand. A festival if you will. Loy Krathong.You can light a candle on a lily, let it go, and wish on love. You’re not alone, either. You can watch fire glide on water. Yours gets lost on the Chao Phraya river. Watch it drift away. It’s watching you at the shore, too. It knows something you don’t. It has a secret, and it just whirls in it. It’s politely smiling back at you.  You’re still busy taking chances that you see. Lily lingers with serenity.

The speed of sound.

You’re walking the hallways. College. A new face, everyday. How many of them will you come to memorize?  Sometimes it’s hard. You wake up, and it starts with putting one foot in front of the other. You know where your feet will take you today. Sometimes you wish you didn’t. You want to see something different. Something that makes you wonder, stop, and contemplate everything. Everything.  You just want to photograph the ocean from a rock on the edge of it. Walk through a house with windows. Anything. But here you are. In a class full of 200 other people, breathing the same air you are, heavy with thought and worry. It bogs you down. You’re wearing a heavy coat drenched in rain. You want to take it off. Just run. Forget it all- the worry, expectations. The only thing you want to hear is your own breath, exhausted and pounding out of your chest from running in the forest. You just want to be wet from it. You want to run for miles. The only thing you can think about is catching your breath. To glisten like the rain drops off the trees in that forest. You hold yourself up, and you catch your breath. And you do it again. You run.

The speed of sound.

Contemplate.

Take in the moment. Stop looking for excuses.

Find something that steals your breath, even if that means putting your life on the line or on hold.  What takes your breath away? Find it and drink it in. Maybe you don’t know. I will tell you, you can find it in unlikely places. Look into someone’s eyes, someone you care about immensely. It will suspend you. Blind you. A beautiful oblivion. And you know you’ve come home. You can be lost and found. All at once. What do they call that?

Maybe this isn’t so much my words to you, as they are to me. It’s finding bona fide truths, suant, despite my  inability to recognize they are so. Maybe I’m just missing their eyes. I’ve seen it there many times. Truth and no lies.

They call it love.

Noah recently did one of these. Could be cliche, but who’s lookin’? I think this would be something difficult to do, especially if you’re being true. So here it goes?

Ten Random Things About Me

10.  I think dancing Salsa and  Merengue is the best thing you could do for yourself.

9.  I’d rather have an experience than a gift. Birthday gifts are nice but bouquets fade and get thrown away. Forever sounds nice.

8.  I stuck my tongue to a freezing pole when I was in grade one. I wanted to test it out. It got stuck. Obviously.

7.  The Hansons was the first cd I ever bought. I paid for it in loonies.

6.  I sleep outside during the summertime

5. I used to catch frogs when I was a kid. All of them were named either Bevis or Butthead

4.  I love sundresses and driving with the windows down.

3.  I love when someone tells me I can’t do something

2. I’ve been a flower girl over a dozen times. Literally.

1. I’d love to have and hold three baby boys and a girl

Nine Ways To Win My Heart

9.  Be grateful.

8. Make me think and contemplate.

7.  Give more than you take.  Open doors. Pull out chairs. Do it without expectation

6. Make me laugh. It’s not that hard, trust me.

5. Have passion and ambition. Let it show.

4. Be comfortable with yourself. There’s no finding yourself, there’s only creating yourself.

3.  Pay attention & embrace detail. I love when people are sentimental, nostalgic and notice things others would generally overlook.

2. Challenge me with your spontaneity. “Baby girl, we’re goin’ out”

1. Be happy and love what and who you’ve got. I love people who hold you tight for a photograph.

Eight Things I Want To Do Before I Die

8. Plan a party for my parents 25th anniversary

7.  Marry “the one”.

5.  Photograph my children

4.  Have my writing published. Maybe a book. If Paris can do it? Hell, anything is possible

3. Sail the Mediterranean with him

2.  Run a marathon

1. Have a place to live in another country

Seven Ways To Annoy Me

7.  Be selfish

6. Consume yourself with image and possessions

5. Ignorance. Don’t listen to me when I talk, or when others talk

4.  Being ambiguous and objective

3. Deprive me of my music

2.  Talk really loudly for no apparent reason

1.  Not wash your hands… c’mon! that’s gross!

Six Things I Need

6. My family

5. My friends. The real ones.

4. Music. I don’t know how to live without it

3. A passport

2.  Sure things. Like Spring time.

1. Hugs. Not gimpy ones. Real hugs.

Five Things I’m Scared Of

5.  Death. Not my own.

4. Missing out on time with people

3. Never finding genuine, true, mutual love.

2. Being stuck inside a water-slide

1.  Losing motivation

 Four People I Admire

4. My father

3. Ronnie Knowles

2.  Wendy Urbani

1. My mother

Three Things I Do Everyday

3.  Check my e-mail

2. Sing in the shower

1.  Run late

 Two Things I’ll Always Cherish

2. My childhood

1. Music

One Confession I Must Make

1.   I think. Too much.

If you’re anything like me, I’d like to know, why is it we can never say the things we mean to say and when we mean to say them?

Words are never sufficient, that much is certain.  I find myself having a tough time getting by with them, let alone without them.  How do you tell someone what you feel or how you feel it.  How do you string the words together and how do you strum them? 

 I can only imagine the inevitable disaster I am partially oblivious to when I don’t say the things I’ve been meaning to say. 

What if everything, and I mean everything, depended upon that moment where you couldn’t catch a breath to find the words to say. 

The other day I found myself waiting in line at the Market beside my Psychology professor. She hasn’t been teaching for the longest time on account of a death in her family. Though, she’s made an appearance the last couple of weeks, she is obviously unwell. That day at the market, she waited just looking at her shoes.  She had been hurt and she had been unwell.  She always signs her notes to the class with “Yours”. The least I could have done was asked her how she was doing. Rather, I anticipated to meet her eye and then to ask her. The entire time I thought of how I could ask her when really, all I had to do, was do it. Why? I fumbled for my keys, picked up my the brown bags and walked away. How I wish I wouldn’t have.

 It was just nights ago when he was there to talk to.  And I just couldn’t find the right words to say… the things I had been meaning to say. Which would make it all so ridiculous. How do you not know how to say what you’ve been meaning to say? Maybe it’s ’cause of what you’ve been meaning to say.  How do you tell someone that when you play  G   then   D/F#   then  Em   they’re all you can think about. If they can’t hear it, they wouldn’t know. You can’t wait on someone to catch your melody, you’re just catchin’ rain.

I’d like to say words got in the way. And maybe they did. But maybe I’d be searching for different ones now if I could have caught my breath lookin’ at him, or if she had looked up at me.

I found this on my coffee cup:

“I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outisde. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stumped by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say “hi”. They may ignore you, or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word”

One word.