in case it wasn't immediately apparent, this whole surgery thing is ramping up the anxiety; I commented to someone on MSN that I'm looking forward to the end but not the means, since the means keep getting uglier.
[sigh]
November 24, 2009
September 26, 2009
glowing young ruffian(s)
I guess it would have been that funny in the not-irony irony way if it wasn't heartbreaking; standing on a 99, half-drunk, admitting that things were far from ideal, and they'd gotten harder, but that somehow both of us were more worried about the other. Surrounded by strangers who were undoubtedly catching the wrong end of this conversation,1 and letting the brave faces slip because the effort was painful and we were safe with each other. Hushed tones and averted gazes from us as the sadness we'd been revealing obliquely and in parts came together, were focussed on and then defocussed2; the whole too much to behold. Remembering the discussions we had before I started the effexor about the nature and value of sadness, and the necessity of valleys to make the peaks meaningful. His references to a dark period before we'd met, of thoughts and actions that he didn't regret3 and the ways and means of our shared states.
Off the bus and inside for a pit stop, an offer of bourbon deferred4, and then to the bar. Quiet reassurances exchanged, unilateral apologies for multilateral failures, the soft familiar patters of our respective strides. Before stepping in, a half-second to file these thoughts away and to put brave faces back on, blinking at their unfortunate familiarity before diving into the sea of distractions provided by a table full of friends.
It's the dwelling that gets you; in one spot for too long and it's the other kind of head lock, trapped in worst-case scenario planning5 and the creeping horror of an impending loss6.
What came before: a cancelled concert, a shuffling of plans, a realization that it had been too long, two phone calls, a meeting point and then a meeting. From there, a long and public hug7, a walk down to 2nd and then a Canada Line trip up Cambie to 25th; both of us too lost in conversation to steer towards dinner until we decided on a place that was about a block from our starting point. Noodles, dumplings, additions to the party, a trip to Firefly. Large beers in a kitchen, waiting for confirmations, cherries and soba and hobgoblins in said beers, and then a walk to pick up a bicycle, the promise that we'd see you soon, a walk to the bus stop, a saddening of eyes and a slow fade to the airing of our woes.
What came after: suspension, revelry, disbelief that a bar closed at midnight, the houndstooth couch and bourbon manhattans. Three hours of chatter, and my hitting of a wall. I crashed in the den8 at 3 and failed to let him sleep while I snuck out at 10 to head back to the job I had been successful in not thinking or talking about. A barrage of text message apologies trailed into ephemera, and then I was back on the clock.
The point, I guess, is that I'm still fairly angry that one of the best people I know and love dearly has to deal with a whole stack of painful nonsense but that being able to at least be there was something I can and will be doing more often. You should join us.
Notes:
1. As if there was a right end.
2. Defocus like a lens; take the edges away and let it fade slowly into nothing. The size obscured, the edges dulled. It's easier to avoid, this way.
3. With effort and as part of a greater no-regrets paradigm.
4. Not refused. Merely deferred.
5. Both of us.
6. Again, both of us.
7. Good hugs are hard to find.
8. During my first tour of the place: "This will be the den. Also, your room when you need it."
September 08, 2009
September 02, 2009
snippets
stored for future reference:
spencer: Reasonably well
gerald: aw
gerald: I can't say I mind watching the baby
gerald: we get along
gerald: there are mild adventures
gerald: it's not like I'm having any
gerald: children, I mean
spencer: Currently or ever?
gerald: short-term, certainly
gerald: ever isn't planned
gerald: not opposed, to be honest, but you know... mechanics.
spencer: fair enough. There was just a tone of finality. But there's always surrogates or adoption
gerald: both of which fall under "mechanics" as requiring planning, accomplices, etc
gerald: a hint of madness (and not my regular sort)
gerald: one day, maybe
spencer: Ah, I thought you meant mechanics in the bits and parts sense
gerald: that was the joke
gerald: but there was some truth in there to, unwittingly
spencer: Aha
August 14, 2009
racing like a pro
after what can only be described as a series of poor-verging-on-surreal choices, I have survived what I feel to have been my first freelance/photojourno trial by fire.
an approximate schedule:
- Thursday, August 13
- 2130 - leave to meet Culture kids at the Lamplighter
- 2215 - get to Lamp, do the rounds, see Kaitlin and Aleks in addition to Culture kids + Lougheed. Shoot the Raccoons and a singer-songwriter that Kaitlin knows.
- 2300 - leave lamp, head to Bourbon
- 2310 - arrive at Bourbon, am blown away by The Heard.
- 2330 - say hi to Abra, wish her a broken leg
- 2335 - say hi to Piper, apparently engender envy of Piper's vocal lesbian fan club.
- 2345 - shoot Piper's set.
- 0005 - see chad, say hello.
- 0025 - leave for red room
- 0045 - party in the red room; it turns out I know four groups of people there (ex-Ubyssey, CiTR, Aleks, and Lougheed).
- 0110 - it's Steve Louie! I like him.
- 0120 - The Clips throw down an amazing farewell set.
- 0210 - we leave the bar.
- 0240 - me and Lougheed catch an N17
- 0310 - back at Ubyssey Haus
- 0320 - bed
- 0715 - up again (!)
- 0747 - miss the 4, get on an 84.
- 0804 - miss a 7, get on a 4.
- 0816 - on the 253 to Park Roral
- 0840 - at LDB at Park Royal
- 0845 - meet James from Had a Glass (v. cute, well-built but so friendly that it's not at all imposing)
- 0900 - start shooting wine bottles
- 0945 - finish shooting wine bottles
- 0955 - London Drugs pit stop.
- 1005 - on a 253 to downtown
- 1030 - coffee #1; venti Pike Place
- 1035 - 44 to Ubyssey Haus
- 1040 - so many emo kids
- 1100 - walk to Ubyssey Haus, check email, tidy up.
- 1110 - half of Haus wakes up; are bewildered to hear about 0715-1100 period of my day.
- 1115 - convalesce, a little.
- 1145 - head to office with Justin
- 1230 - after a little light internet, leave office
- 1300 - Justin picks up a cheque, I say hi to Marielle
- 1315 - Coffee #2 (Jeremy's Blenz: "give me an enormous drip coffee, please.")
- 1330 - part ways with Justin, eat lunch.
- 1400 - make way to site
- 1430 - I'm in and tweeting.
- 1550 - Brokencyde
- 1615 - Bad Religion
- 1645 - Streetlight Manifesto
- 1715 - NOFX
- 1730 - loaf in sun
- 1815 - Alexisonfire
- 1840 - leave site
- 1900 - Ubyssey office
- 2040 - parent pickup
- 2130 - home
inside 24 hours I shot eight bands from two festivals in four venues (and on three stages in one venue) in addition to a trip out to West Vancouver to shoot wine bottles, for a total of three shoots and 1200 frames with a short break for a little under 4 hours of sleep, fuelled only by grim determination, obscene amounts of caffeine, and a sub-par noodle dish from the VIllage.
I feel spectacularly worn out in some ways; my shoulders ache from the weight of my gear, my shins from walking and my elbow will undoubtedly be next. I'm occasionally incoherent from sleep-lack, and I admit to a shorter fuse than usual. Sitting here typing this, showered and full of ice cream, I realize that this is the blissful kind of tired, and that I honestly haven't felt this way since I worked on shows.
It's a good feeling, and I'm glad to have it back.
August 08, 2009
welcome, ghosts
given that long-form thoughts stay here, short ones go to twitter, photos go on either on flickr or to facebook, is it any surprise that my impending photoblogs will also go somewhere else entirely?
the recent works blog is coming along, and the portfolio side requires some tweaking to bring the look and feel into alignment, but I think they'll hit the prime time soon.
feel free to comment on the unfinished forms, though.
August 05, 2009
sea change
I gave notice today, and my last day will be almost exactly six months to the day I started. This has been the last in a long string of jobs I've held since 2006 that can all safely be described as settling.
I think I'm ready, but there's really only one way to find out.
...here goes.
July 27, 2009
spare thoughts
rereading Julie+Julia, it's weird how much of this whole blogging thing is about externalizing one's interiorities, and taking one's voice (issues of occupancy aside), wrapping it in CSS+(X)HTML and simply shouting it into a void. I guess it's not that surprising that someone else's exposed insides might attract comparison and identification and occasional connections, but it doesn't make it any less wondrous.
twitter's been even stranger, that way. I don't hold back about anything which seems foolhardy given that it's #3 hit for my name but I think it's just that I'm tired of lying about it, maybe. Either way, it is what it is, and as inconvenient as it would be to get disowned ahead of schedule, it's slowly become something I am less petrified by and approaching some level of readiness for, which is all sorts of fucked.
shymalan-esque twist on above: the baby. I could probably get by without the adults, but I can already tell that bowing out of babytron's life is going to wreck me. We get along, and I like being an uncle, to some extent. Better get quality time in while I can, then.
July 07, 2009
highly concise desert island albums
thor is applying for the red bull music academy, and says
they ask questions like "list your favorite 10 albums and tell us why" and give maybe 15 lines for that
this works out to 1.5 lines per album so I thought I would give it a shot. Thirty words, including album names. Here goes:
- Radiohead — OK Computer: first album I received, and one that sparked a lifelong love of music.
- Okkervil River — Black Sheep Boy: inherently nerdy (named after a Russian short story), nobody else has been quite so able to gutpunch me in the emotions.
- Wrens — The Meadowlands: I moved to the suburbs at 18, and despaired in the manner of teens believing they were inimitable. I was wrong, because they'd been there, too, and made an album that saw me into my 20s.
- The National — Boxer: is it weird that they make me nostalgic for a life I never led?
- Joanna Newsom — Ys: behind the endlessly divisive voice lies inventive compositions rooted in the music of ages paired with lyrics depicting tales more vibrant than any Disney joint.
- ...and you will know us by the trail of dead — Source Tags and Codes: one verse sealed it: what is forgiveness / just a dream / what is forgiveness / everything"
- Bjork — Homogenic Live: Joga was made for orchestras.
- Mogwai — Government Commissions 1996-2003: cheating, sort of, but this is the only way to get Like Herod and Helicon I on one album.
- Autechre — tri repetae: I found this years ago at the local library, and it was my gateway drug into IDM.
- Sigur Ros — Agaetis Byrjun: a man plays guitar with a bow, and another sings with the voice of a whale. 900 pairs of cheeks in the Chan Centre find themselves moistened.
anyway, there's that: poorly thrown together, but mostly remarkable as a piece of writing not rooted in AUGH I HATE EVERYONE, nor one excessively dissected before being put up for the world.
July 03, 2009
home and in a daze forever
Recent advice, summarized: Write your way out of a thinking block—because you'll never *think* your way out of a writing block.Merlin Mann
with the above in mind, here goes:
It's hard to move between two contradictory ideas of normal, and as much as the commute between works out as the overlap between both circles in this Venn Diagram (leave it at two, for now), it too becomes its own grind, and the days when I don't have to deal with the transition (either way) are few and far between.
Wednesday morning I woke up on a couch at the Ubyssey house, saw nobody awake (but remembered our breakfast plans) and so read Infinite Jest until things picked up. Someone else saw me doing so, and grabbed Anathem and we sat on the couch occasionally touching but worlds away, buried in words and shrouded in silence.
Later that day, I spent a solid hour doing it again, but in a room full of people who'd seen me reading before breakfast and thought, "I haven't done that for a while. Why not?"
[cont.'d, some days later]
I got through 150-odd pages of Infinite Jest (which is manages to satisfy and tantalize simultaneously; get wrapped up in the joys of constructions and realize that the plot beckons farther down the rabbit hole.) which I haven't been able to replicate, either in state of mind or in circumstance— it feels, most days, like my time in the house is regarded as pretty much up for grabs, and so any time spent in relative stillness is due for usage.
A couple weeks ago, I got pulled away from rather a lengthy and difficuly round of photo editing (cloning a shirt down to cover an expanse of belly unbecoming of grad photos is a huge pain in the ass.) to stand around in the back lawn and hold pieces of lumber. As "it'll only take ten minutes" turned to forty with no end in sight, I pointed out that I had work to do, and that it was paid, and I needed to get it done.
There was an eventual point to this, rooted in displeasure and the awkward relationships of parents and adult children (rendered stranger through living together, cultural assimilation differences, and my constant and low-level dread about being outed/disowned ahead of schedule) but it seems needless to hash it out when all it's going to do is infuriate and then sadden (in that order.)
Instead I'm going to hit the button and walk away, deep breathing before thinking is buried in body-tasking; practice for all the things I'm going to leave one day.
July 01, 2009
unfortunate observation
I wasn't home for 38 hours, and then I was, and then everything either of my parents said to me was an imperative.
I was wondering why the time away felt so much like a vacation, and now I have my answer.
April 27, 2009
put the sounds of your house in a song
last week marked the last party in Kerrisdale Alpha, and also the last party wherein Al and Jordie have been roommates, an arrangement which had existed for most of what I think of as my adult life.
It's weird to realize how much that space, and the access thereto, changed things for me. It's been pretty much the textbook definition of safe space (esp. after Gavin's party, wherein I made out with Gary and lost my glasses, leaving me metaphorically and literally stumbling into awkward new territories.) I've slept it off, chatted over breakfast, came in to hang out, stored, lost, found, and made myself at home in every definition of the word. I worked my first show off that couch, fleeing V-Fest at T-Bird to return, shower, sleep, and leave again. I've spent at least four New Years in the last five years with Al, Jordie, Rob or some combination thereof. There's been shelter from snow and adventures in baking, post-bad-date moping, laughter and sadness and drinking and some of the best people I know.
We gave it a grand Viking funeral, with a room filled with balloons and a house filled with joy, and as I closed the door behind me for the last time, I felt a weird pang of sadness for the times we wouldn't be spending there any longer.
So: on to better things. I didn't leave my identity in one place again, which was nice, and I've lined up another couple places to crash, which is sensible. Time moves quicker than it used to, it seems, so I should go do things and not write about them.
It's been a wild ride, party house. Thanks for the memories.
April 12, 2009
band-aids
I ended up at karaoke last night for the fifth time in three weeks (seriously: a birthday, the post-AGM celebrations, ducking into the Gallery, ending up at not-Hoko's again, and then the Biltmore), but only last night was there any actual talking, and it was most definitely uncomfortable truth hour.
in the midst of an excited exchange about everyone's new homes, I let out a defeated sigh about my continued existence in suburbia and suddenly all eyes were on me, with the usual litany of why can't/won't/don't you move out? and as much as I want to say fuck, yes, let's go, I know that I can't just yet, that part of it is that I'd like to leave on good terms and part of it is that I still don't feel whole, and that were anything to go wrong again I'd much rather be here than out on my own, to some extent.
Part of it is cliché "first generation children operate in two sets of social realms" but then you add in the whole queer thing and suddenly I am a Venn diagram of identity sets and operational expectations. It seems silly to want to align them a little better before another round of turmoil, but I do, and will try.
There was substantial support for just going whole hog and pulling the band-aid off all at once, so to speak-- operating on the assumption that reconciliation was inevitable and that time and knowledge was all that was needed for my parents and their peers to adjust and accept. The problem is that the one test case doesn't bear that out, and it's difficult to explain to people just how weirdly insular the family-cluster is, as odd as it seems.
I could just work in the extra ten hours a week I wouldn't be travelling, reconnect with friends and make an actual go at a relationship and just leave this life behind. It's a tempting thought and one that doesn't stand up to scrutiny; as much as it frustrates me, I know that it's not a tie I'm willing to sever and I'm not alone in it, (as my sister and el babytron are here basically every day and that's pretty unorthodox, to be honest.) so that remains an idle fantasy.
I realize that at the end of the day I want this to happen on my terms and not for reasons of convenience. I also don't want to come out as a means/attempt of hurting them, and part of that is knowing when and how to bring it up (myself out? no idea) as well as having the logistical side ready. Being about to put myself into a sizable debt hole which I regard as all sorts of necessary evil, I can't proceed thoughtlessly here.
I'm going to keep thinking, then.
March 29, 2009
grace and chemicals
it's weird how much these three words have resonated with me since I first heard them in an M83 song. I think I will write more on this when I'm not in the middle of Ubyssey production.
Yes.
March 21, 2009
on a good mixture
there's a lot to be said about the Battlestar series finale that aired last night, and I won't be saying it here. Looking back (to yesterday, admittedly) it was less about the show and more about the showing. I watched it at Goh's place, with a couple of other guys from the paper, and absolutely demolishing beers.
Demolishing.
I cried a little, we laughed a lot, we got drunker and cast awkward toasts to absent friends and idle notions, discussed the people we work with and who'd do whom and where things would go next year and moved conversation from inside couches to outside balcony (along with the vices.) and realized I'd blindly lucked into yet another fantastic group of people.
went to karaoke (high), ran into but did not speak to richard (I was very singularly focused on getting cash from the machine. I swear.) and spent the rest of the night drinking beer and singing badly.
Back to Jordie's to sleep, and now I am home, post-hangover and wondering what it was I was thinking of in the first place. I think I just wanted to memorialize this, one of the first days I went through without the usual litany of anxieties-- I am dealing with serious future-planning stuff (photo editor! raising freelance rates! more clientele!) and doing pretty alright, given that earlier versions of me would have self-handicapped and nothing would have happened.
Maybe growing up isn't so bad, after all.
February 06, 2009
things I didn't put in a facebook meme:
7. I spent half of 2006 and most of 2007 on antidepressants.
8. I came off said antidepressants the hard way, when I decided that this wasn't a good idea and then spent three weeks tapering down my dosage and another three days in withdrawal.
10. I am a terrific liar. The reasons for this are many, and it pains me to do it, but it's easier in the short-to-mid term and I'm getting disowned in the long run so whatever.
February 02, 2009
rael-izations
Autechre: opera for robots?
I put it on when I want to do something else; it ends up soundtracking a commute more often than any circumstance wherein I put it on just to listen to it, but now that I am giving it a fair shot, I'm liking how it feels; how it seems to skirt the edge of something and then careen away wildly to bury traces of emotion between a pile and a driver. It doesn't make conventional sense, and doesn't map in any way I'm used to, and I think I like that.
January 28, 2009
like a little drop of ink in a glass of water
reviewing the archives, I notice that this has been the third time I have announced a resurrection.
maybe it'll stick. here's hoping.
thinking out loud, you said, I'm overwhelmed
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for some cataclysm to rear its ugly head and send me back into prior paralyzed depths of my ridiculous anxieties, to return to the space I took so long to get away from.
I watch myself more astutely, now. Sometimes it's to keep a lie alive; nouns are edited and verbs omitted, timestamps skewed and intoxication temporarily ignored. More often, though, it's to spot the signs in case of disaster; am I sleeping enough? what's my diet like? why am I worried about what I'm worried about? Sometimes I feel like a miner who too focused on the canary, runs the risk of falling down the mineshaft.
I brush against them, sometimes, as I root for missing socks, the lone rigid object in a drawer full of fabric tubes; the childproof lid and orange bottle reminding me of a simpler time when all I had to do was take with meal and do not operate heavy machinery. I don't have a record of those days; they passed in a vague haze of office work and utter apathy punctuated with occasional bus treks from Langley to somewhere that didn't suck and periodic episodes of catastrophic doubt. I don't miss them.
I wonder, sometimes, if the easiest thing would be to start up again, to let the days wash over and by me in some obscene parody of a time-lapse montage as I sublimate my own desires and let my life be lived for me again, because today was a bad day and school is hard and work blows and I can't keep this up and and and everything is no good.
Then I remember the bottle, and I remember how I stopped feeling like things were so bad, and then I stopped feeling like myself, and then I stopped feeling altogether.
The bottle stays in the sock drawer. I will only throw it out when it is an empty gesture, not because I might need it and can't be trusted not to cave, but when I don't need it and have no use whatsoever for it.
That day is getting closer.
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