Why? Because.

A very very close friend, so close to my heart that they might be my heart itself or I am their soul. Understood, as the understanding that comes with these sorts of relationships. Asked myself, why? Answered, because. Sent this my way so that I had all my incoherent words once again articulated. Or else, I saw that shining thread that bound all these thoughts and a resounding recognition that I could not ignore etched deep in these words. Believed once more, for a moment, in the Soul of the World.

Why Study the Arts & Humanities?

Because, that's why.

Because a man downtown with a voice like the sea against the rocks told me I should.

Because my mother told me not to. Because she said mathematics, female engineering - engineering female. Because she spends so many nights in paperwork, dreaming herself into fairytales.

Because of the bruises etched into a Grade 4 spelling partner's cheek each week by his father.

Because television sets are alive and sucking patience out of brains like electric leeches. And it could take hours to perfect this sentence.

Because the average Canuck consums 140 percent the caloric intake required in a day.

Because KKK.

Because Chagall's 'Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers', did not quite make it into the Saturday morning comics.

Becase Adolf Hitler and Staling are the only two I've learned about.

Because it's been scientifically proven that listening to Mozart sonatas improves bad hearing.

Because the Burmese government is carbonated in every can of Pepsi Cola.

Because East Timor is on channel 3 and my brother is watching The Simpsons.

Because painters did not build atomic bombs. Because poems dissect them.

Because advertisement agencies are calling themselves creative.

Becayse a beautiful woman is a dress and a breast size and no longer compared to a summer's day.

Because no one's homophobic but alot of people stared when a girl kissed a girl at the bus stop.

Because sometimes even starving artists like to eat dinner.

Because time spent with family is marked between 6 and 7 o'clock in the daily agenda.

Because Picasso would tell you that skyscrapers do not quite equal the beauty of all the daffodils they have swallowed.

Because two boys in a coffee shop carried out a complete conversation and say nothing.

Because I don't know whether I'll be clubbed for saying Black People if I should be saying African Americans.

Because the government runs on monotone thought.

Because a successfully cloned sheep.

Because.

Because sometimes you see yourself more clearly in the characters you are writing than when you look in the mirror.

Because ulcers are nibbling away on stomachs everywhere.

Because graffiti is getting a little bit repetitive.

Because I'd rather be short than vertically challenged.

And if that's not quite enough...

Then because I can write these things to you and go to math class tomorrow and pretend that they weren't written for myself.

Suddenly I See

It may not seem like a big thing to most people, actually, to anybody at all. One might think that the frenzy I create over the acquisition of something as a milestone in my small life is pretentious, ridiculous, dramatic and just bordering on sheer lunacy (case in point: Wacom Tablet). Trying to make something into what its not.

But I alone know what these small acquisitions mean and represent and though the time space continuum shifts are small (if changed at all) by these, the amount of history, inflection and heartache traversed to be able to reach this point is something only I can understand and few others can appreciate. Actually, only two.

I finally did it. July 23rd, 2008. I finally got off my lazy ass, defied all laws and rules (of this damn establishment) and went and became the independent version of the self cast in my mind. I got contacts.

That's right. What to some may seem so infitesimal a move so as to be laughable is actually to me a shift in the direction (whether right or wrong, who knows, that classifcation is partial and arbitrary). Sounding louder than the superficial or practical reasons for getting them are the consequences of getting them. I defied and turned a deaf ear to adversities (read, my ridiculous brown parents - yes that was necessary), harnessed the power of my financial selfworth (which is newfound and quite wonderful as aggravating as the job may be) and I got out of this state of self deprecation and hopeless frustrating loss.

I quit daydreaming, speculating, hoping, wishing, fearing, guilting, casting, and blindly feeling around for fucking once and actually took that paintbrush and not only painted that view of myself but filled it up. In colour.

I have waited for this turn for about 5 years now. I've waited for the image in my mind which is both physical and this freer spiritual concept of myself to match the short, kiddy, inadequate, slightly dumpy looking thing that I actually am. I feel more grand. No, I always feel grand in my head but now I feel grand about feeling grand. It is, without a doubt, most lovely.

Progression and progressive. World be damned. That was always my attitude. Then why do I fear? Why does it take me so long to act upon? Is it that I'm a paper tiger? Is it that I lack the energy or the sense of excitement and life that I'm always talking about achieving? Or do I just suffer from the same ailment as so many others: content to dream and hope but scared that fulfiling that image may lead me to idleness once that image has been filled up; scare, in short of the end being less impressive than the journey? I'm impulsive but only when it comes to emotions and taking action on those; what about reaching the better state of things, shouldn't I be more heady with those? Oh, and I plan to (hah, irony), once I have the luxury of jumping without looking. For now I'll cast a quick gleeful glance at my list and cross yet another wonderful thing off it.

Next stop: haircut with bright blond highlights (end of summer in time for uni) and some weight loss. Who the fuck needs New Year's resolutions? Full steam ahead!

Cheers.

Smells like New Technology

In stock, waiting to be posted or published are as snippets and pieces of writing that are masquerading as "fresh", "questioning" or explorative works penned. But everything has a time and a place and at this time, I want to say just this. Just two things.




This too shall pass. In its passing, I shall be naught but humbled and grateful of anything it teaches me and en generale.

and

Things aren't as big, grand, complicated or dramatic as your mind makes it.


The End.

P.S. I feel I must catalog this. After four years of wishing and wanting I finally had the balls and guts to get a tablet. Side effects may be increased anti-social behaviours but I'm feeling this feeling that's hard to describe. Disbelief may best capture it but not disbelief at holding the lovely sleek thing in my hands nor at having finally bought it or having the means to. No, that I expected would one day happen. That I invested in and paid attention to an acute part of my love for art, so acute you could name the hunger to create and inspire as longing.

Actually I'm surprised at now having one most important thing crossed of The Grand Maestro List. Slowly, I'm working upon what I sought, touching those areas. The action of completing it and crossing it out is what takes me by surprise. Pleasantly so. For maybe everything else isn't as impossible either. I'm not being bolstered by a mere piece of technology, no, it is not as juvenile or as simple as that. But rather, these years, all these years of longing and wishing and dreaing and hoping and working may, it seems, finally come to fruition on a grander scale if something this small that I poured so much longing and wishing into finally came to be.