what a bizarre weekend.

with not much more than a couple of miraculous and unexpected months of respite, i’ve been in sort of a constant state of punch-drunkedness for almost the past six months.  it’s seemed that this whole time has been a period of getting through one thing or another and except for that brief hiatus, never getting to just “be” anything.  being told by this person or that person that this or that had to happen before i could expect this or that consequence… all the while stubbornly insisting to myself that i knew how to handle these changes and that i would do so in my own way and in my own time.  grief is obviously a complicated and difficult process, and it’s highly personal and specialized as well.  (the grief that i’ve known is of such a shallow and miniscule proportion to the grief that so very very many have suffered in this world, but still, it is my own and should greater tragedy befall me, then i will deal with it as those others do then.)

but now, it’s gone.  well, obviously not gone entirely, but sublimated. i can pick it up and hold it and turn it over, like a coal that’s burned out, without fear that it can hurt or burn me.  remembering far back, all the other challenges that i’ve overcome, all of the other disappointments that i’ve caused or that have come upon me.  all the victories!  all the great things that i’ve done and that i’m still doing!  my head’s above water again and i can see where i’m heading and maybe even catch a whole breath of air. with a hair's breath of altitude, i've gained a little of the perspective that i'd lacked, like the sliver of sun over the horizon that changes night into day.

i’m hoping that i’ve finally learned a very valuable lesson for myself – that happiness comes from inside you.  no one can give it to you, and you can’t buy it or even earn it.  it’s something that you manufacture like blood and sweat – it just comes out of the function of life and living – but it’s still something that you need to exercise and nurture.  and that was my plan for the weekend starting friday night – to nurture my happiness and exercise and grow strong again.

and then i immediately succumbed to an impossibly swift flu.  friday night i was critically exhausted.  all day saturday, i was writhing and sweating in bed (and certainly not in any kind of enjoyable manner), and even sunday, i was weak and numb.  even so… looking after myself by consuming a strict ration of tea, chicken soup and neo-citrin, i was happy.

funny days.

- g

trance song of the day:  surrender, above & beyond pres. tranquility base (anjunabeats)

stop reading if you’ve seen this all before.  a man walks into a pinball machine.  he’s been inside it many times already and knows what to expect.  he looks around at the lights on the floor and on the walls, at the clear sky overhead and at the two-storey counter above his head garishly and embarassingly keeping score.  he’s now only dimly aware of the enormous silver boulder that rockets past him at mach three, corkscrewing vapour trails flashing around him as visible as beams of light in a cloudy room.  the harrowing din of bells and klaxons deafen and distract his every thought, pulling focus and shifting awareness, never letting him pay attention to where he is, but never actually impacting his train of thought.  an alarm goes off in the distance and he’s no longer there.

lions are in the distance.  they are noble and aloof, powerful and impossibly beautiful – perfect forms of life – but any second, they could become a terror beyond imagining.  there’s a crevasse, hidden beneath the snow, gaping and deep as the world.  an amino acid joins with the others to form the enzyme that will construct the maliciously faulty DNA that will cause the cancer that will not stop until it has consumed every available resource in its body and crush the life out its host.  there’s a golden idol on a pressure plate and a bag of sand in his hand; he’s trying to calculate the differential in density between quartz and gold, how much more sand than idol he needs to put in the bag, before all hell breaks loose, his hat still sitting squarely on his head.  just underfoot, two miles under the ground, the pressure builds in a seam of magma that has not seen the light of day in 500,000 years.  a chunk of ferric rock hurtles a billion miles away towards the earth, locked in a mathematically determined path towards our home to decimate all life on our planet a million years from now.  the lucky lottery number will come up against any hope or expectation that will completely destroy someone’s life.  the volume in the club goes up three levels and suddenly – suddenly – space at the bar opens and the dance floor is flooded with writhing, sweating, undulating bodies.  all the while, the lions continue their rest, waiting for their prey to become complacent.

the man is ambivalent.  the man is ignorant.  the man is discordant with the world around him.  he’s just ever so slightly out of phase.  the man is eloquent, to be sure.  the man is exuberant, if you take the time to speak to him.  the man is impossible to console or to placate or to distract if you were to try.  he annoys the lines of confluence around him and he pushes the bath water around him like a foetus thrashing unthinkingly in the womb.  the man is terrified, but he knows that he will prevail.  he’s been told the future, but he returns to thebes anyway, the loser.  the man is defiant.  the man is diffident.  he’s different than he was three months ago.  he’s undeniably unique, but he’s so comically predictable.

he’s hemingway in africa – unaffectedly carrying out an essential, archetypal function that is necessary and primeval, but which will never be again.  he’s a quantum particle, simultaneously occupying all points in an infinite dimensional hilbert space with indeterminate momentum or location.  he’s patrick, returning home to his family after his abduction and escape. he's camus on the beach.  he’s operating a tin-press in a siberian factory, wondering if his wife remembered to bring him vodka for when he returns home. he’s shakespeare in his study, racing towards his next deadline.  he’s the stock broker who’s just sunk $10 million into stock that has just tanked.  he’s einstein in his basement, washing his sweaters.  he’s mozart in his bedchamber, coughing blood into a handkerchief.  he’s leaving his lawyer’s office after reluctantly but determinedly signing the divorce papers.  he’s the fourteen year-old crack whore in the warehouse district, staring into the dark from within the shadows.  he’s the rockstar with the guitar solo, flashing and gleaming in the light and through the smoke and miasma  – 60,000 fans screaming for him to fuck his guitar harder.  he’s the new father, bathing his smiling, shining daughter.  he’s the man of steel, irrepressible cowlick dropping into his pleading eye, staring at the glowing green rock in front of him just before he passes into unconsciousness.  he’s just about to cum.

he walks down the corridor formed between the massive bumpers and into the darkness.  he’ll emerge once it’s his turn again.  once he finds that quarter or loonie in his pocket and decides that it’s time to try to play the game again.

i’m going to take some time off.  i’ve got things i need to do and figure out.  i’ve got to learn to love myself a little better, and a little less.  thanks, everyone, for everything.

- g

sometimes, you just have to trust that others say it better than you can.

<song title="you're beautiful" artist="blunt, james" / >

today was the thirteenth. i ’m really not superstitious (in spite of the recent infatuation with horoscopes, tarot and now, numerology), but it’s been too crazy a day to deny. this morning, i emerged from union station with an irrepressible smile, looking up at the sky, looking forward to the future.

in the span of this single day, i had my work bitterly criticized. i hit walls at every single angle in my current project. i realized that there’s not nearly enough time left in the week to deliver everything that i need to. my cat peed on my bed for the first time since i’ve lived here. i had to forego my workout so that i could launder my bedding. i found two gorgeous black hairs on my mattress. and i made things so much worse with the only person i’m concerned about because i’m such a fucking stupid stubborn idiot.

i need time and space. time and space is all that there is. why isn’t there enough of it to cheer me up? what kind of fool would write that last sentence?

ps. this message is revived with edits because sometimes, you need to let it all hang out in order to get on with it. - g