I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still opened behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.

I want to go up to them and say, Stop,
don't do it -- she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

- Sharon Olds (from The Gold Cell)

One of These Things First

My days have been filled with an overwhelming desire to sink into a burgeoning abyss and stay there for a few years. Lethargic and depressed, I find myself at odds with my environment, which is otherwise happy and lively. I have sunk into bed and not been able to pick myself up for quite a while now. Mostly, I'm scared that if I don't stop the hermitage I might fall headlong, with no energy to climb back up again. It's a horrid little cycle. It sometimes comes to a halt and its progress is stopped when I go out or meet friends. But the battle is aceeding to meet these people. I put it off and withdraw when I should venture out. I really haven't a clue what is wrong with me.

I spent all of yesterday sloshing wearily around the house, completely numb but brain abuzz. Finally, as I was putting away a few DVDs I found Garden State and realize I hadn't watched it since last year. I don't think I have ever cried during Garden State; it was always too poignant and perfect for me. It's one of my epic movies...those that will always stay close to my heart, no matter what. It is one that, every time I watch, I find and realize and synthesize something new. And, sure enough, I completely broke down from the moment the answering machine turns on in Large's house and he's in a sterile white room, till the time Sam kisses the lights out of him at the airport. I don't think I've ever cried that long for a movie but I just couldn't stop.

It has all been downhill for the better part of two years and now, on the brink of the next year, I feel like it's finally time for change, if only I could somehow drudge up my lost will, my lost motivation and moxy to do so. To change and change my circumstances.

Then, this morning, amidst the disturbed dreams and dark rain, I awoke for a glass of water and ended up having a two hour long conversation with the person I'd least imagined myself having this sort of conversation with - my mother. Everything. - or mostly everything - wound it's way out. I'm very wary of talking to her because she tends to oversimplify things and doesn't want to realize or take the time to understand the depth of which I speak about (though I know she has the capacity to) and so I end up being frustrated to add to the depression.

I went to sleep after the long talk, though, and when I woke up again...it wasn't so much that a weight had been lifted off my shoulders as it was that the pain had spread more evenly. At first, it was a sharp pierce in my heart. Post conversation, however, it had spread more evenly, rather like sleeping on a bed of nails rather than just one nail. It spread to a buzz rather than a jab.

At this point I am no less listless or lost than before. Nothing is solved. But...I have never spoken my mind like that, least of all to my mother. I think, for once, she actually understood. Even if she pulls out the carpet from undearneath my legs again as I'm scared that she may turn around and do eventually, I'll have known that, even if for two hours, she actually knew what I was talking about.

Despite the haze of depression and the lack of solution, I have decided to do a little more purging, in lieu of this morning. Popping music on my iPod, I found some old conversations between me and one of the major things plaguing me right now. I don't mind the redundancy - I'm using this to perhaps purge myself of the feelings before I move to take any action on them. I'm going to try something different: an on-the-spot-entry. A reaction recording, if you will.

I don't think I'll get through very many of the conversations before I completely break down or just can't take it anymore. Goodness knows I'm a masochist but the pain is too fresh. I imagine this like a gauge, full with...emotions about this. The more I think, the more I internalize and keep it within. But the more connections I form with an outside source....the more the gauge empties and I cleanse my mind of the cobwebs.

In any case, to spur the emotional intensity of the situation, I'm sitting with a clear head, warm tea in one hand and Such Great Heights on loop. Here I go. I'll see you on the other side.

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- I'm smiling at the sweetness
- I'm trying to find the bitterness or understand inflection with the luxury that hindsight gives me.
- Oh man...there is Western talk. This is so strange...it's almost as if I'm there...I'm watching all this unfold with a sinking feeling in my stomach because I know how it's all going to end. Dramatic irony sure is a bitch sometimes.
- ...it is all so perfect. and i'm not even halfway yet.
- these are key words: "I am whitewashed/Ireject my culture/I don't want to be next to brown brown people" So it's not my fucking imagination. I hate sell-outs. gawd...it's happening already.
- this is epic. epic in its depth, i tell you.
- futhermuck...this is painful...so fucking painful...
- we watched dil chahta hai together. i completely forgot about that.

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Well, I only got through one archive. It was the lovliest thing I have been through in a long time. Its sheer length meant that I couldn't go through any of the other ones but i suspect that the rest of them are marginally less wonderful. It was all downhill from there; I reckon I shall tackle those on another day...when I'm feeling more up to feeling sad.

It was a good purging because, though the process is not complete, it has made me more ready to face tomorrow. I don't know what I'm going to do or say or how it is all going to go down. What I have read and observed so far...it is a real insight on what once was. It's so strange....but possibly the biggest lesson I can take from this is the following: This person once was. This person is physically and mentally no more. They are two completely different people and the easiest thing for now is to consider them as such. This way, I have no expectations...because how can I have the same expectations from two completely and utterly polar opposite people. They are so different, in fact, that I could not even place them on the same level for comparison. That person is absolutely no more. And now there is this. And it is what it is. I'll remember the movies, the plans and look on them fondly and...stop the comparison, kill the regret (or one aspect of it) because it is incomparable.

I think I was under the vague impression that it was all just horrible; that it was all pain, pain and pain. But, no, I was wrong. There was lovely happiness too, the kind I wish that I could now share. These notions that occur to me now, occured to me back then too. So I didn't lose time...I just wasn't smart about retaining it. But it was there...and that gives me utmost solace.

For now.

Come Undone

This is how the scene plays out.

She stepped off the bus with such a jump in her step, she might have been cuing the music. Her palms felt slippery on the handles as she descended. The churning pump of hydraulics got lost in the traffic and by the time she regained her bearings, the bus was gone.

This was one of the few places in Toronto that looked like suburbia had been kidnapped and forced to assimilate into a midtown setting. The strange thing was that suburbia seemed to be developing Stockholm Syndrome. It adjusted in sympathy. It looked...almost right, nestled where it was. A ravine overlooking the Don Valley Parkway. Woods and hills beside York Mills.

She turned right, into a neatly trimmed street, signalling the start of a planned neighbourhood. The front yards was sprawling and immaculate. Even walls of snow flanking the driveways couldn't hide the neatly trimmed winter shrubbery. She shivered and screwed her eyes against the wind. The sun mocked her plight, refusing to warm her, despite the black material of her oversized coat. Well screw you too, she thought, reading the numbers on the houses.

34. 34...34? Damn...20.

She walked along, silence mercifully pervading her head. There was no annoying tune nor perplexed thought process or random commentary running. Her stomach rumbled smugly. Oh, yes. She had forgotten about that. That strange sense of foreboding that was pooling relentlessly in the pit of her stomach since she got off the bus.

Ahh. 30...32..34!

So there she stood. In front of a two storey double lot, with no idea how she got those specs and a stomach full of liquid. She rang the doorbell.

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Reunions were messy affairs, usually. One met people they liked, missed, loved, disliked, were apathetic toward or whom they had completely forgotten. The gathering was small, as she liked her christmas parties to be. The grander the party, the greater room to fall, she thought. She was, of course, referring to the amount of booze peoplw tended to consume at larger parties and then proceeded to make a fool of themselves.

But she might as well have been talking about herself. She took a sip of Merlot and then - well, she not so much fell as completely plummeted from grace.

There he was.

It was like someone had turned up the volume in her mind; suddenly voices snapped and jabbered throughout her head. She couldn't make head nor tail of them but some sort of instinctual, emergency response told her that she should bolt. Now.

True to literary fashion, however, she stood frozen to the spot. She could neither turn this way nor that. It was a small mercy that she still retained control of occular muscles; she dropped her eyes into her glass. The bubbles were fast melting in the rich, red liquid. She counted them. If she had casually flickered her eyes upward, she would've seen that he was completely engaged in conversation.

As it was, the roots that left her feet planted to the parquet floors decided they had had their wicked way enough. She quickly moved to another part of the house: the basement. The pre-emptive tactic was perhaps uneccessary and a calmer person might have ventured so far as to say she was being utterly dramatic. But she was taking no chances.

A voice behind her made her jump.

"Refill?"

She turned around and poorly hid a sigh of relief at the sight. It was the host - er, hostess - Mish. Mish poured a new glass for her. She smiled in thanks and took a sip. "So...Kenneth is here."

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"No, its fine" she protested.

"Don't be silly, it's so late. You can't be taking public transit so late!" Mish snapped.

"It's okay. You're on the way," he replied quietly. He busied himself with his jacket. She stood there dumbfounded, desparately clutching the handle of her gift. She realized what a giant idiot she must look like, with her mouth opening and closing.

"I'm not on the way," she said, finally. "In fact, I'm out of the way. I'm one exit above." Were they actually speaking to each other? She felt slightly giddy. She felt like clutching something more steadying than the gift bag. Like maybe his arms in that leather jacket- No, no, stop. No thoughts like that.

Her protest, however, fell on deaf ears: Mish was grabbing coats for other people. And he was busy looking for his keys in his jacket pockets.

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The negative spaces between two figures can speak volumes. The air between the passenger seat and the driver's seat seemed close and still. Within this hollow, there was a storm brewing. And they could both sense it.

There was so much to be said and yet everything wanting to burst out into the open after a year of being opressed and covered, seemed better left unsaid. The illusion that blanketed these negative spaces, poorly covered the moments past, was not coming undone. So why tug at those threads?

Her head was turned away, looking out of the window longingly. His eyes focused upon the road. His features knitted in concentration as he merged for a right turn. A choral ode retold of what had past and what was to come, born in the space between them. It sang about the sheer intensity of the moments, and the quiet days, the arguments, the misunderstandings. And it thrummed out an aching tune of loss.

The tall buildings gave way to open air and soon the highway swallowed them up. He accelerated and she instinctively tightened her grip on the armrest.

"Music?" he asked, finally. He still cast her no look and neither did she grace him with one of her own. On her part, she didn't think she could cranially stand to see what rested in his face. Or what didn't rest, more like.

"Always," she said automatically, barely above a whisper. Then, she realized the question. "Erm, yeah, sure." Her hand upon her chin, she stared out the window in silence. He looked over at her. Her small frame edged as far away from him as possible and, in many ways, she seemed the same, small, lost girl.

He flicked on the radio. Her intial response was not lost on him, but he said nothing. Mostly, he didn't know what to say. Neither of them knew where to start. They each had mentally lodged their complaints against each other in spare moments of the evening.

Along with her complaints, besides the hurting, there was much longing. She knew that this was not the case with him: he had only complaints. No longing. That was long gone. She deserved it, she thought without remorse. Still...it stung. There had been so many moments in which she had wanted some way out: some way to rectify it all or quietly apologize or...or...something! But nothing seemed alright; everything seemed too dramatic or laughable. She had been driven mad trying to figure out what to do.

And now here was the opportunity.

He decided that there really was no point in tugging at those strings. He would try to be affable. "So, how's your year been?" he asked.

She looked at him, then out onto the road ahead. It was just like the DVP to be jammed at 1 in the night. How was she? She contemplated a response that didn't involve how he pervaded her senses when she least expected. She couldn't come up with anything. Wine killed her creativity.

"Oh, you know. Fine. Yours?"

"Great. It's been a good first semester. Hard...but good".

"Good. Good..."

She bit down on her tongue and her eyes started to water. She wouldn't say it. She couldn't! She shouldn't. She wanted to wear him down, smoke him out of the fox hole. Guilt trip him. Granted, the last time she had done that, they had completely stopped speaking.

"Yeah...I basically just hang out at the library now."

"Lucky you," she commented.

"I play squash."

"Oh, I know."

"Right..."

Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it!

"Tell me something I don't know," she said.

"Um...well, I'm applying for med school this year. Early admission."

"Anything else?" She looked over this time, trying to see the cogs turning in his brain, see him getting shifty. Instead, he was quite unshifty. She looked away.

Catching the movement, he looked at her instead. Should he go there? Should he unravel those threads?

"How about you tell me?" he replied. "Why didn't you want to talk to me?"

She turned sharply. Her expression betrayed none of the turmoil she felt inside. "Why didn't you tell me about your girlfriend?" she ventured instead.

He braked abruptly and harshly. She steadied herself with the armrest and he swore under his breath. He turned to look at her sqaurely in the face. He refused to be riled.

"Why did you tell Lindsay you didn't want to talk to me?"

"Why did I have to hear about this from some random girl in the summer?"

He growled in frustration. The small sound did not go unnoticed by her. "Why," he tried again, "Did you not want to come tonight?"

"Why did everyone else but me know?"

"So suddenly...you hate me," he finished.

"I thought we were friends!"

"Answer me," he said. He was thoroughly annoyed at her audacity.

"You first," she countered. Little red spots danced in front of her eyes.

He took a deep breath. "I thought you'd find out eventually."

She glared at him. Was he serious? "Of course I found out! It's how I found out that is the problem."

"Oh?" he asked, frost nipping his words. It took alot to get him angry and have it be displayed. For now, he couldn't recall a more aggravating moment in his life. "And how was that?"

She swallowed. "From someone else," she said slowly. Her anger slowed down. It was getting ahead of her. Better keep that in check. She opened the floodgates of sadness and it washed over her as the memory flooded back.

"I asked about you. I hadn't heard from you since the concert. Two months. You didn't call. You didn't even return my call. I had to ask some random girl I work with about you. And somehow she not only knew how you were but that you were seeing someone since February."

The silence that followed this was deafening. A combination of what she said and how she said it stopped him cold in his verbal tracks.

"I thought we were friends. But suddenly, Mish knew. This girl knew - this random person who had no prior or deep knowledge about you. Didn't you think I would be happy for you? Didn't you - what did you think? Did you think at all? You don't owe me anything...we weren't freshly broken up or anything. But...I would've thought on the basis of being friends...you would've told me."

As they finally passed Sheppard, the DVP merged into the 404. He kept a steady eye on the speedometer, then put the car into cruise.

What could he say? What did he honestly think? He hadn't considered it so in depth but he should've considered that she would. He mentally kicked himself.

"I...I didn't think," he finally said.

She looked at him mournfully. He finally caught her eye. Guilt shook its chains, menacingly. "Exactly."

He sighed in frustration. "Fine, I didn't tell you! I'm sorry. I should've told you. I don't know why I didn't tell you, eventually. I guess I didn't think it would be such a big deal."

"It wasn't. It's not. But when you didn't tell me...it became a deal."

"Whatever. Look, I didn't do it intentionally. I just - you know me. I don't announce these things. People just...know or they don't."

"Yes. I am people. Clearly."

"That's not what I meant and you know it," he said, defensively.

"Who can say for sure?" she intoned, maddeningly. "I don't really know you at all anymore."

"Okay, make up your mind. What exactly do you have an issue with?" he asked, anrgily.

"Shall I make a list?" she replied, scathingly.

His knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. "A list would be nice, yes! Maybe then I could keep track of your erratic-ness!"

"You don't even know what that means!" she yelled.

"It means you're crazy!"

"I knew it! I knew all that buddhism, sagely bullshit you keep up is not true! You're human! You get angry! So let it all fucking out!"

"What the fuck are you talking about?!"

"I'd rather be erratic than a sell out, Mr. I'm-too-good-for-everyone-else."

"When did I ever say that?!"

"Actions speak louder than words," she said, infuriatingly smug.

That was it! He merged into the right lanes and finally pulled to a stop at the side of the highway. He put the emergency blinkers on and shut off the car. He turned to her, one hand on the steering wheel.

"What is wrong with you? Why do we always argue?"

"Because you're always wrong," she replied curtly.

"So why the hell are you here?!" he yelled, furious at the situation.

"I didn't have much of a choice, did I?" she whipped back.

He gazed at her furiously, while she returned the death glare. Neither one turned away.

His breathing finally slowed and he looked away. "So you didn't want to talk to me because I didn't tell you?" he asked, incredulous.

"I never said I didn't want to talk to you," she replied, her voice only slightly shaking.

"You did! Lindsay said you didn't want to talk about me or something," he accused.

She scoffed. "The conversation was as follows: Lindsay asked me about you. I said, can we please not talk about him. She asked why, I said, I just don't feel like going there. Maybe some other time."

"So you didn't feel like going where? You said it as if there have been events in the past or things I've done plauging you other than this!"

She gave him a long, piercing look. "You haven't done anything. And perhaps that's the biggest thing." Her voice turned soft and shaky. "You've changed." She looked down in sadness. "You're not you anymore. You're this...other person. This...grander, better person. You've fashioned this strange shell for yourself. And I don't know who you are on the outside." She looked up at him, in earnest, almost as though she was desperate for him to understand her. "You think you've found yourself, right? But who have you lost in the bargain?"

He faltered. He felt his anger melt away at the look in her eyes. It always surprised him that such a biting creature could be so earnest in her stance. "That person was weak. I'm stronger now. He didn't understand anything."

She shook her head and looked down. Tears silently filled her eyes. How to tell him how much she hated him like this?

He cocked his head to one side. Was she crying?

"That person was human. He hurt. He could fall. He was sincere and he was just....he was perfect." Her voice shook and she looked up at him. A shimmer in her eyes translated her deep-vested feelings into drops. "You took that person away from me."

"I...I didn't tell you because maybe I just needed a break from thinking about you. About you. Always you. It's always about you."

"It's not about me this time. It's about you. Where have you gone?"

"I'm right here!" Then, more quietly, "I'm right here. I'm always here for you."

She shook her head. "No. Someone else is here. This person is callous and strange and shallow. I don't know how to explain it! I just...I miss you."

He was silent as he contemplated those words. "I'm with someone else now."

"What? No! That's not what I'm saying!" she yelled in frustration. "Never mind."

"Why didn't you want to talk to me? Or about me?" he tried instead.

She leaned her head back on the head of the seat in exhaustion. Her tears were slowly drying. "Because," she said, in a tired voice, "I was sick of not knowing. You're horrible at keeping in touch. Everyone kept asking me about you, how you were doing et cetera and I just kept getting more and more annoyed at the fact that not only did I not know and why the hell was everyone asking me as if I'm an authority on the subject of you but you didn't even bother to update me."

"I'm sorry." His voice was soft, reflective. "I should have told you. I should have kept in touch."
There was a pause. "If you were hurting so much about this...why didn't you tell me? Earlier?"

She sighed. "Subtelty is not your thing."

"I'm a guy," he said.

She stared at the roof of the car, only vaguely aware that her toes were starting to go numb. "No," she said to herself. Then she turned to him.

"No. You are a guy. You were the one."

Siesta

Perhaps the most perfect thing about my time here is that in one moment I can absolutely love life and totally curse my existence for different and overlapping reasons.

That, in one moment, I am utterly thankful for all the stupid small things and completely unhappy with the state of things at large.

That everything - music, colours, life, love - is, beyond a shade of doubt, tumultuous and yet alive in every notion and aspect.

That I am who I am and though I totally hate who I am, I wouldn't change anything. That I can look forward to silly feel-good movies, and dream and talk and retain a shine and twinkle. Possibly, I am describing some sort of bipolar attitude here but hey! What is the point of all of this - all of THIS - if one cannot feel every single expression and emotion that may come their way?

I'm completely lost and I dont know what the fuck I'm doing with my life. I know I'm meant for great things but that definition is relative. All I know for sure right now is that everything is imperfect and perfect and beautiful but destroyed.

And you wouldn't want it any other way, no, because then neither could you appreciate the beauty without pain nor pain without beauty.

May the beautiful destruction never end. And if it must, may every last drop of love and emotion and thought be expressed before everything finally shuts down for the turn of the era.

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.