A Farewell to Arms - The expansion of a new era.

This is most likely the fourth book for which I've cried. One I can remember distinctly - I'm giving myself an extra two for books I may have forgotten.

Hemingway that rat bastard. I waited 10 years to read this book and it's run over me completely.

I've glimpsed a different theory of life. I live between two worlds in truth - one is where there is a glossy sheen, regulation and simple regret-non-regret. The second world is one not so easily described. There is selfishness, constant evolution, and a denial for and simultaneous acceptance of propoganda: A double edged sword certain people use to fight.

This theory I glimpsed in my 19th year. It is a little invisible pocket, both cozy and alienating. Lonely but crowded. But mostly perfectly lonely.

And so this book, perfectly timed, as intuition dictates, gives me a glimps into the confusion of my second theory of life. And it makes such a simple and wonderous explanation of it.

As of late, I've attempted to seal this pocket because it is not mine, or perhaps I've been ostracized. In any case I had invaded it, assumed it as the perfect fit it was. But now off in the world to shed the untruths that people throw onto me. I am one now caught between two warring modes of life.

And so this book blows open the entire case in point. It reminds me, very pointedly, of the blind and accepting ignorance one must have of death. And then you must just make decisions to live. Survival - this does not entail making a multi vitamine and sun tanning for 15 minutes a day.

But there is no such thing as survival right now. This world, at least the view from where I sit, is so placid and lifeless.
There is no doubt why people are disastisfied with one companion, with one occupation, with the seeming 'slow' pace of progress. There is no challenge to maintain them. This creates a lack of value - easiness is so very destructive.

What really have we got to fight for - what really is the worth of anything? I honestly can't tell you that I know that anything has a 'worth.'
I am happy for peace and this unending tide of calm - but it does suffocate everything.

So. Frederic Henry. Though you seemed lazy and selfish, you have something no one else of our time has yet to have. I'm frightened for you and my own time, jealous, and so very silent about it all.

10 paces wiser, and the experience of so much meaning at one time is disoncerting. That not the right word exactly, but this is no time for semantics.

(I'm not even done the book yet - 10 chapters to go and my skin was crawling)

A Brief Explanation

What I have been doing is writing and saving at home. But I have no internet. And then my good friend gave me a USB key instead of pens. What a lovely fellow.

So there are several new posts. Do forgive me for my lapses. I’m in hate with school as of late – which leaves me bitter, and with little time to do much.

Music Lesson

Music lessons make a person very attentive to absolutely everything but the music they are playing – and most attentive approximately ten minutes after leaving the lesson.
An out of brain experience is often a sign that you are either playing so well that you don’t notice your outstanding ability, or that your mind has wandered so atrociously you haven’t noticed the errors.

After lessons your walk is different, the precision and the interpretation of your gait becomes a sensitive point. And because you are now allowed to look left and right not straight ahead or back in at your own brain you now notice other things, other people. And the way the affect meaning for you becomes so much more acute.

Three boys dressed as lackadaisically as they most obviously are scholastically inclined are throwing switchblade knives into the lawn of a small business. This does not lead to the stereotypical worry of my wellbeing and safety – but the wonder at entertainment and imagination for young people in a suburb area with not even a grocery store at which they could ogle chocolate and pop. The world at any place is never an adequate space for an adolescent to call home. We are all lacking and searching for better things – and so where we once were is not where we will end up unless some great light has been shed on its multi dimensional spectrums. And this is how the world shifts and is balanced – for the most part.

Further down the road – not something worth much observation but that a young child’s legs are so severely deformed they were bunched beneath his body, leaving but two inches between his crotch and the floor. He walked like a penguin. It is not with pity that I notice him, but the unique and permanent human shape he creates. He is a square.
He would pose marvelously for a painting, and I think he’d probably make a fabulous back catcher for baseball. Let us hope he does not settle for the limitations normalcy declares his body to have. Normalcy is often a horrid liar.

And finally – the simplest and least extreme – the most exhilarating observation of them all. Sitting on the bus, a violin between my legs a back pack underneath my arm and an elitest book in my hands. I have no recollection of the person sitting beside me. I have no idea what he looks like apart from the fact that he wears jeans. And I was very grateful they weren’t the kind of jeans I’m used to seeing – they were baggy, not tight. He sat at first to the side but then turned, facing frontwards like me. And our elbows were grazing each other. And it was most interesting – for that moment – because I was very excited that I had touched this person’s elbow and would never ever see him again in that same context with that same understanding.
I considered the fact that he was a separate entity from myself, that he lived, and breathed – had done so forever and would continue being until the day he died – that I wouldn’t know the date of his death. But that I knew for that one small moment he was alive. And I was very happy to know that he had existed, and that I was so fortunate as to feel him live.

The great difference is that this man on the bus was a real human being. And everyone else had just been an image running across my brain, and reflected upon – if that. Musings
It is so rare these moments when you fully understand that a person, or groups of people are actually alive. That there is skin and air and then more skin. The space between the two is electric and alive and sensitive – not static, automatic or expected.

Walking home and thinking after some gin.

A Disclaimer:
The following was written while highly intoxicated. I’m just going to leave it as is because it’s precious. (in a funny funny way. I wish I could spend one day with myself while drunk to laugh with myself.) So do take this lightheartedly. And I’ll give you TWO guesses at exactly who it is I’m talking to at the end of the ….discussion.



Winston is pissed and dissatisfied. I fed him two cups. Not the usual half in the morning. But four times the usual at night. He knows I’m gone.

As I walked home. There were shoes and they were blue and they sparkled with no light. As if they made up for the difference. I wondered about that. I would wear them now like magic shoes but I’m completely drunk and so they wouldn’t be really magical. If they were mine now and I woke up in the morning I think I would be sorely disappointed.
The shoes would also be disappointed because I would only sleep and love them and they would never know the adventure they should have had.

It’s amazing. The shorter your skirt is as a woman, the less you want to be with anyone and the more excessive the compliments you get. But even with the current level of intoxication you know it’s horrifyingly fake from those who comment on your lack of self confidence – even though the skirt gives you a bum.

Dissatisfaction starts with repetitions Many many of them.
Isn’t that sad?


?

?

I know many people who are sad because everything is so predictable. Only the really self controlled give themselves the appropriate amount of sleep. And here I am trying to teach myself the depravity of that matter – and loathing it at the same time.


Fight. Fight. Fight. That’s what they say, but they have a luxury and that is time, and space and acceptance. They are allowed to drink on the job. And I think that is a means to an end I do not desire. But I do desire self confidence. And I do desire an understanding of my own philosophy.
And my own limits.

Pretty much an understanding of self – that is key.
It would have been nice if someone had the balls to own up to that. But I’m not an altruist – and that person will just have to accept this fact. I’m not nice.

A discussion of momentum had while drunk.

There are differences in the kinds of sadness people experience.

There are shallow experiences, where things have been made purposefully difficult – the problem experienced for no gain but other peoples’ condolences

Some people create sadness for challenge, a personal experience that doesn’t exploit people’s empathy, but rather disregards their contact. It’s a matter of spite.

There is very little difference. Both are selfish and for personal gain. But what else is this time for than the personal gain of experience – even those small moments of satisfaction where you have given the very end.

I am the person who creates sadness through challenge.
And most unfortunately, my challenge is seen and experienced by others as difficulty. And I face the adversity of their immediate engagement in other’s unassuming and naïve giving.
I am so very sad that those who seek adversity through mere meaningless difficulty are echoes of aloneness, and that they are ignorant of the challenge and personal sacrifice that is needed to be great.

Of course: the greatness through challenge and personal learning. But to what influence – that too is a selfish end.

I want someone else’s happiness. But at the expense of himself. And I am the weaker and sadder person for conciliation – but damn it would be great to be a little less sad, and a little more challenged. '

*Skewed remembrances of conversations with Ryan and Alysha

This is a story about the present.

Margaret, a rather wonderful person, (an adjective that will remain unqualified) is walking towards a fruit stand in a dowdy market. It smells like the incense they typically burn in order to create the mystic mood, or to designate the store as ‘of the earth’. Giant balls of sweat form at Margaret’s hairline that matt her bangs in stringy clumps on her forehead. Simultaneously balls of sweat roll down the line of her back where her spine is surrounded by muscles. Likewise sweat beads against her thighs and runs down her calves in long, thin lines.
It is hot outside, and Margaret is not wearing sunscreen, nor is she wearing a hat. She is acutely aware of this fact and thus her travels become anxious and hastened, creating even more sweat.

Her foot steps are calculated and precise, her navigation between the peoples in the market space is immaculate. She misses no beat, not an empty advantageous gap. Upon arriving at the fruit stand she grabs a green broken basket and begins collecting her usual items and two surprises. Bean sprouts, grapefruit, 4 perfect apples, cauliflower, broccoli and one purple onion. The surprises this week: Pineapple and asparagus. This is done over a ten minute period, slowly.

To be truthful, at first entry she wipes her forehead and bangs with the back of her hand, enjoying the immediate relief shade provides from the sun. She then savours every moment of picking the perfect fruit, or gazing at the prices, of tasting the choice of surprise, of imagining its incorporation into delicious recipes or perfect moments during the day. After about 20 minutes of reflection, and nostalgic bliss, Margaret takes her items to the line up to be weighed, costed and paid for. She extracts the coins from her woven change purse, places her purchases into a canvas bag and begins her return home, on streets ignited by the sunlight, where any moisture yet left in the pavement is extracted, appearing in the distance like clear flames rising. Upon walking she becomes a pool of humidity. Her clothes stick to places on her body in awkward uncomfortable folds and angles. Her hands being occupied, the folds stay that way. Her skirt bunches higher and higher into her thighs. She does mind this, it bothers her and the fact occupies her thoughts as she walks. She feels ridiculous. But that’s what everyone looks like, those especially who’ve purchased handfuls at the fruit stand.

In every Person's Heart

There lies in every person’s heart a dream of comfort. It is a little spark that is something a bit more than hope, but not quite an active aspiration. Sometimes, when a person is very lucky and still, it seeps into existence for very quick unequivocally delightful moments. That little dream embedded in the caves of a soul is something like a utopia, not universal by any means, but a fragment or shimmer - the passive reminder of why every day we get out of bed. This is what drags us out of deep perils of sadness.
It glimmers like a shard of glass catching an unsuspecting eye, grabbing attentions, redirecting thoughts.

Beyond its iridescent qualities, however, this tiny dream is not altogether a reality. This is what is most sad about the human construction. Within out imagination, this little dream that is our comfort is composed with the greatest and most honest of intentions. Its perfect creation in our deepest recesses is infused with the hope of life and happiness. With its secretiveness and its imagination, without infusion or exposure, it becomes nought but perfectly formatted cardboard blocks, painted in solid-coloured, matt paint.

In its truth, within our selves, it collects no dust; it processes no daily necessity but admiration. It is a construction with the power and strength of human conviction, but when introduced to our cemented sidewalks, our masses of people all carrying our separate hopes, building big buildings and organizing information into recognizable patterns, it becomes selfish and shallow.

What breeds deflation of our perfect perception is that of sitting and staring in awe. We may sit in appreciation of life, but without discerning its moveable parts exactly nothing happens. Without winds, mountains are neither built nor dispersed.

When there is no motion, like what is presently happening, the dream of comfort lacks luster. The point loses direction. And I continually think life will happen tomorrow.

Several confessions to note:

I am beyond all measures pretentious – a direct consequence of an acute ability not to listen and discern, and a horrific lack of exposure to the daylight of other countries.

There is an extreme lack of humanity in my sphere. And in conclusion (not to be misinterpreted with a lack of romance or passion) I am a terribly lonely person.

I hate my classmates.

The time is 7:56 pm.
The classroom is composed of wooden chairs with their individual wooden writing slates.
The chairs turn and when they turn they creek loudly enough to drown out the soft spoken.
The professor is mumbling over his stumbling bits of sentences that more or less come to no real definitive point, as mumbling often denotes grey area.

It strikes. It struck more quickly then unchecked mildew growth in bathtubs but not so quickly as electrical currents finding a complete circuit. …

The words, the disgusting elitist words, the unexciting uninspiring ideas they’re knocking each other in the air in front of my face. Watching them is all I do, it’s so dispassionate so off putting. It’s frankly boring as shit – and this was an exciting novel.
People are saying things and talking, simply rearranging presented facts and wondering aloud “Well – how did Heathcliff earn all that money?”
WHOFUCKINGCARESTHATSWHYITSNOTINTHENOVEL

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(That’s what it feels like when my heart clinches with irritation.)
Paint a picture of inferences you morons. Write a song.
There’s a reason it was never made into words.

Conclusion:
I am a terrible judgmental classmate and an unfeeling person.
But don’t waste my learning time by being snooty, repetitive, redundant and uncreative.

Something uplifting.

There is: change.
(What else could take so damn fucking long?)

This is what happens when a person can’t drop everything, pack their cat into a carrier and hop on a plane and lose the stigma of “growing up” and settling into their bones. This is also what happens when one’s innards are angry that one is young and rotting.

I don’t like politics. I don’t like playing games where real humans are the chess pieces. I also don’t like criticizing politicians because they don’t exist for me. Politics wastes my time because no one says anything riveting or inspirational. We are caught in horrid democracy negotiating boundaries like trenches in WWI. Inches…merely inches.
So I’m not challenged by theory.
I’m not challenged by philosophy although last week I got very drunk and cried that my “theory” of a post-death Utopian existence wasn’t real – that I’d merely be reingested through decomposition and my dreams of dancing with Fred Astair would never come true. So I don’t dig the philosophy too much these days. (I cried about that sober too)

So then, am I only good to discuss books that I don’t have enough time to read? I couldn’t do what I wanted, but things also couldn’t stay the same. Unhappiness rots. I can’t say it enough and it’s not yet the moment for “time out”. (I like them, but it’s not the right time). And sometimes you have to fight for what you want. And what that means right now is battling the STUPID slow time machine, and creating an acceptable level of patience within.

So in tune with turning a year older, I decided to apply for a new job (which I got), I finished one crap ass school term in time to begin a better one, and I moved. So that I can paint my own house, be my own person, and be influenced as much by my own choice as possible. Being influenced by another person’s choice, whether you live with them or not makes you feel less like a human as the day goes by. And soon you are open to the suggestion of Everyman. So into the quiet I go where I can sit and listen because I’m not very good at listening – to myself most of all. (I was also not ready to listen because I wasn’t being told the things I needed to hear….. so I guess that means I’m decisively selective)

The couple who lives above me – the red headed male is in a band. Dangerous living memoir I know, but I don’t live in hate with my past and he knows the postal code. I also have inkling he helped me with my garbage pail. His girlfriend is also cute and I’ve not yet had time to say hello. The couple who lives in the house next door has a chocolate lab. They were having a gathering one night in our mutual back yard and invited me for a “beer and eats” and had I not been utterly exhausted I am sure I would have made new interesting friends. They said “next time for sure”.

Bring on the warm summer days. Bring on the “sparkler” coloured paint because my kitchen is already Robin Egg blue with stained red kitchen chairs. Bring on peace, bring on challenge, bring on books, books, books, bring on an airplane destined for somewhere because I earned it dammit. And bring on the movie man. We’ll have a dance off!

And most of all, bring on my violin. I miss it terribly.

When lemons taste good I suppose life is a lime.

It is Friday.

Tumultuous days make for numbness and so what glides by is ignored. It is day sleep or ambiguity.

Have filled the void with: toaster price comparisons (I really want a red one)

Furthered by: The imaginative winning of 5000 dollars at Canadian Tire encouraging the creation of online wish lists including:

500 dollars for useless air conditioner

Bicycle Pump

Gift of: Cement Drill for the sister.

However I would really enjoy; a toaster with scenic murals on its walls so that when I create toast I can dream of it in visual comfort.

Oh consumerism. You kill me!

A painter once suggested that: Procrastination is the avoidance not of the project at hand but of those that will occur afterwards. He didn’t believe the statement he merely read it.

As always – everything is merely circumstantial.

So what evidence? can be used to create: The Big Picture.

I have just spent 2 minutes rocking my hands together and flipping the knuckles so they touch each other in a fluid motion. It felt neat and made a neat noise.

I wonder if I should be concerned that 2 minutes of my afternoon was spent making neat noises for no real gain?

But I suppose the real question is: When does life begin, if it doesn’t today? The big problem is the constancy of looking forward without really doing anything ever.

Goal Number 1.

So the learning process begins.

You. Are. Out.

Having BIG debates:

Overhaul is imminent. Not scared of: direction.

Over talked compromising in head post shouts to encourage empathy but otherwise complete lowering of ability to be right in an argument that it not perfect logic or mathematical in nature.

The General Rule:
Two consonants following a vowel invariably make said vowel short.
Tilling. Milling. Swimming. Twitter.

Am feeling angular. And specifically expanded beyond the usual three dimensional quadrants.

Equations in reality, combined with uncanny complimentary notions, an astute ability to suck at essays and the highest expectations to be the novel you’ll never write equates a debate in the head that is symbiotic like invisible best friends in your head at five.

Practical Betty. Has spilled some milk.
And something now means nothing and those things pushed far back are now asking “What for” with no proper answer and Betty doubts common sense (but never intuition, and as such floodgates of the spurned illogical notion of stature and longevity are now everywhere like zebra mussels but less menacing and less overpowering.)

BLAST IT.

There is no going where there are too many directions with out reasonable elimination and I adamantly refuse to:

Two cigarettes sir let me hear you cough sir you sound very bad sir go to the doctor.