Day 1

I quit smoking. I don't know when, exactly... after so many attempts in so many years to quit for good I finally one day just... stopped. I didn't keep track of when my last one was, I just stopped smoking. I don't even remember if it was late spring or early summer. If you can actually stand to *drop* something like that-drop it so completely you don't even remember when it happened-you're gonna be just fine. You'll be in great shape. Counting days is kind of a weird coping mechanism. It gives each day a sense of accomplishment but also a huge sense of stress. I don't like being aware of how time passes. It kind of freaks me out. Still, when I made my mute commitment, I found myself keeping track because it was the hardest thing I'd ever done and I needed to know where I was in the murky stretch of speechless time. And it was needed. And it was good.

I'm about to start counting again. I'm counting the days until they get to be so easy breezy I don't need to mark them anymore. I'm starting with today as day 1 for no other reason than I'm ready to feel better and I want to motivate myself.

Day 1 feels like a prickly cactus. Like bleary eyes and not enough food or water and too much nausea and too many bowel movements and not enough comfort and a big city hall sized door knocker masquerading as a heart beating hard enough inside my chest to knock me over at any moment.

I'm going to make a point of locating the tricky little devil who figured out how to pour lead into the chests of unsuspecting civilians and I'm going to tan their hide.

nightmare juice

Sometimes nightmares come out of nowhere. They slip into any good dream and you have to sit with that sinking feeling of dismay as everything shifts slightly over from "ordinary" to "slightly off" and then "slightly off putting" and finally, "nazi in a giant rabbit suit chasing you around a burning warehouse". Or something.

THEN there are other times. Moments within the cacophonous flood of images our minds process day in and day out where something just... sticks. And it could be anything. A dead bird, a mascara ad, a scene in a film, a cockroach, a terrifying looking hooker. The point is that it's a lottery, and the lucky image-that finds you at a crucial time in whatever your brain is doing in any state of vulnerability at any point in the day-plants a seed. That seed becomes the crux of the worst kind of nightmare. The kind where you go, "fuck this! Why am I SO terrified? I saw this (insert blank) on the bus this afternoon and now it has me running scared in a dream?!" The type of dream where you feel like a tool because you've broken your own fourth wall and yet you still wake up in an ice cold puddle of fear piss, confused and alone.

While brushing my teeth just now I looked down at the porcelain sink and an image flashed through my mind that literally turned the tap that controls the nightmare juice. In writing this I hope very much to stave off the creepy crawlies that may visit tonight.

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

In a single instant everything can become inverted like a russian contortionist on her "A game". And money changes everything. Today something occurred that threw a minor wrench in some major plans. The kind of wrench that has a three bill price tag-easy. I'm not gonna say what that thing was because this spilled milk smells more sour with each retelling. However, having money for the first time, then losing it all in a second means that the plans made around that money are left hanging in the air. From the simple dinner to the outlandish pilot lesson, from the relief at being able to pay off debt to the exhuberance of splurging on oft yearned after but rarely obtained fancy retail duds, I was pissing cash and stocking up savings for a few months. Now, in the wake of the death of that fleeting dream I am back at square one once again. This time instead of losing my voice, my possessions, my apartment or my love, it's just my fucking cash that's taking off.

Of all the set backs this one sucks the least, so that's pretty rad. Go go gadget poverty once more.

...

I got nothing to say, I can only recommend you never listen to this song while feeling lonesome:

Neil Young- Harvest Moon

Seriously. Don't do it. It will remind you of every bittersweet memory you wish/rue having with someone.

on lost (tv)

TV is on its way out. The last leg it has to stand on is as the de facto entertainment of choice for lazy couples the world over looking to spend some qt together without actually *doing* anything.

In my most recent partnership we did like, five seasons of Lost as a couple and half of the last season in the torturous purgatory that follows most young relationships. Season six has yet to be watched to its completion.

Sometimes I (and perhaps everyone else on this planet) find myself honoring past moments in time in strange ways...

Last night I was approached my a drunk man in his late twenties, early thirties. He walked right up to me and started talking, gesticulating wildly with a lit cigarette as though the conversation had had a beginning, a middle and an end and I wasn't just being dunked into the incoherent stew of his mind for a few blocks on College street.

He ranted on and on about getting arrested at a Pickle Barrel in Markham last night while watching two of the eight kids his 45 year old biker friend Pork Chop had. Accused of public drunkenness, robbed of the $350 in his wallet, keys thrown in the gutter, and forgotten about in his overnight cell for a whopping 13 hours which were "incomprehensible to mankind" with a dying cell phone.

...To be fair, that does sound like a rotten night.

The odd thing was that this dude looked almost exactly like the character Desmond from Lost (a hands down favorite of my former), and I found myself walking along with him because he was keeping me company in memories.

another

Some events in life prompt us to reach into the vast ether in an attempt to forge a connection, be it superficial, one sided or genuine. Shitty break ups are one of those events.

Suffice to say this is not going to be a mournful account of should-have-beens and what-ifs. The aim here is to express at least a little melancholy while occupying a similar genre to the lovesick protagonist of High Fidelity, for example. This is going to be my getting dumped (and duped) with a grain of salt.

I'd like to start off by saying that doing anything in life ever with one part of you performing under par is not impossible. It does, however, make everything more difficult, tedious and shitty. It is possible to walk up stairs with crutches and a sprained ankle, but fuck does it ever suck! And it's possible to go to work, get dressed, have conversations, eat and sleep with a broken heart but for some reason shit is just plain harder.

I like to think it's similar to this video clip but with all things forever until you stop feeling like a flaming bag of poop. Best of luck to ya.