recent happenings

Today there was a fantastic reading by Chuck Palahniuk at Indeego with the mouse. Our first encounter since I got back from Europe two weeks ago. There are many stories and images to reflect about the backpacking experience, but I am taking my sweet ass time. Chuckniuk relayed some gruesome but hilarious vulgar stories about failed masturbation attempts with foreign objects. He held everyone's ears locked and guts churning. The funny thing is, he looks so preppy - a cheeky geek with the heart and humour of a fourteen year old. He confirmed that we grow old and rehash the same stories over and over. We cling to our experiences, and the indecent dialogue is always the most entertaining. The best stories to hear about are the most shameful and embarassing. Maybe I will tell one sometime.

On the way home, I was aware of a scattering of things. A young woman sitting in the back of the bus had normal clothes topped off with a pink beret. We accelerated towards a red light. The bus driver was drumming sounds to avoid the silence. Looking around at a haze of clouded faces, trying to exist somewhere between awake and asleep, I opened the window and swallowed the air in hungry gulps. We rolled down a hill and the world flew by, a dark pink sea of sky. A magic bus ride for my tired eyes. Walking home along Leslie I noticed grass where there was once a wild hedge of sprawling bushes. They used to own that stretch of sidewalk, but now there is nothing left. There was also a big tree missing. A handful of stumps and limbs, severed and stuck in between the chain link fence in so many places. The suburbs take precious care of immaculate grass. Nothing growing outside of its prescribed boundaries. I felt as much as I could and then walked away.

identity

who am i?
sometimes i think of myself as an absent-minded professor.
and when i say my mind is absent, i really mean it's absent. there are times when altogether it's not there.
people i love have called me a terrible communicator. i agree with them.
if i am perfectly comfortable, i can slip into another stream, and i submit to my senses. i see through the tiniest lens sometimes.. i can think so carefully and feel the vibrations of a single moment, trying to isolate the active parts of life around me.
all this is telling me nothing of my identity.
another few seconds pass, and nothing moves.

you feel torn between realising the person you've become, and becoming the person you believe to be. holding fast, grabbing on to the fraying seams, you can't even stand still. there is nothing pushing you around. you look around yourself, desperate and hungry for advice from the unknown.. but as soon as you see something, you know what it is in all its lonely history. you crawl around upstairs, but you've been there before. so you go outside into the wind, and let your bones sway away the time.