Category: general

There is so much I want to do. My mind races from point to point, from end to end and it is not enough. There isn’t, as is for everyone, enough time. The pace at which things progress is not enough. The pace at which I progress is not enough.

There is no shortage of items on the list. There is no shortage of the incompleteness of things that I juggle. The list grows even as parts of it are completed. Though it does muddle up notions of completeness. There is no “done,” there is simply the next thing.

Solace lies in this very sequence of things. The drive lies in this juggling of things. My heart continues to beat along this race against time. My heart races against this race.

Watch me catch up to my racing heart.

so maybe i wouldn’t fall, not a thousand times.
maybe i would just trip, slip or slide just a little.
maybe i would sing out of tune your favourite song
or maybe mine, or jumble and mix the words around a little.

maybe i would bake a cake
and ice it with chocolate,
with a side of strawberries or mangoes
or whatever your mood wanted.
it could be vanilla icing or something else.
maybe we’d just scrap the cake
and bake cookies instead,
rolls of dough and chocolate chips.

maybe i would make you smile
by either shock or surprise,
a tap on your shoulder,
or a loud boo from the side.
or maybe simply by my predictability,
which would come as no surprise at all.
but still it would be something.
or maybe i would make a face
to see a smile on yours.

perhaps a smile through hours of silence,
or through the first words that break it.
maybe a smile that only comes after
a good thought-provoking argument.

and not just your smile,
i would settle for a chuckle
or even a smirk,
perhaps just a nod,
or even just a blink
would do just fine.
i’m not picky like that.

it’s not just about the smile that shows on your face,
or the teeth that you show, or the ones that you don’t,
it’s not about the shape that your cheeks take
or the way your eyes move when you smile.
it is, and yet it isn’t.
it’s about the process – the telepathic message which transfers
the smile in my mind to take shape through you.

it’s not about how wide it is, or how long it lasts.
though the wider, the better.
the longer, the better.
it’s about the state of your mind that you choose to express
through your smile.
it’s about the process of thought and change that takes place.
all the details in the background that i am not privy to.
it’s about the thousand things i want to know,
but never asked about
(mostly because i am a professional coward).

not to mention how your smile
is a gateway drug
to the sounds of your laughter.
which i should not get too much of,
as the withdrawal symptoms
kick in instantly.

but let’s not get all silly here,
i know that smiles aren’t a constant state,
that moods swing up and down, they fluctuate.
the amplitudes and frequencies change
like a sine or a cosine wave,
which if you look real close, or from afar,
happen to look like bridges between
frowns and, yes, smiles.

so i don’t mean at all
to romanticize the smiles and falls
in such a way that ignores
the pitfalls of our day to day.
it’s not so much your smile
as much as it is that you smile.
if it were just your smile
then a frozen or moving image would do,
but it doesn’t.
it doesn’t capture the life in the act
because there is life in your smiles.
so to be around you smiling
is simply a way of living.

on many days i will wonder about
you, because in my mind you are
in so many ways. so much so
that i may no longer have any understanding
of who you might be; of who you really are.
i want to break through that smile,
and feel through that frown.
i want to sit with that blink and
dine with your yawn.
i want every moment with you
to be as real as it can be.
i want every moment
to be as real as it can be.

these are not the thousand words
that your smile is worth.
no, i have not found nor written those yet.
these are the thoughts behind my smiles,
the thousand flashes in my mind
that when asked about
i can only describe as: nothing.

words are lazy creatures,
with many odd features,
they spill through your
fingers like sand.
you use to them express
and perhaps confess thoughts and feelings,
and yet find yourself making
quite a mess of them.
words are plenty abound
but never around when
you feel like you need them most.
some thoughts and feelings remain simply
wordless.

i’ve let these words sit here for years on end
with no end in sight for where they’d end.
so they lie here dormant and still,
unseen by the light, unmoved by the wind.
and i don’t even have a thousand.
life
is
too
short
to
wait
for
every
single
word.

so here are just a few scattered words
(instead of the thousand)
that i won’t recite everyday,
because that is a promise, that honestly,
i wouldn’t be able to keep.

I was watching Moneyball the other day. The movie is nothing spectacular. In fact, it’s downright cliched in many places. Still a sports film, slightly different slant.

What did strike me during the film was how swept up I was by this sports team that I have absolutely no connection with. They win 20 games in a row in the film and I can feel the changes in my body. I can feel myself rooting for them. It’s not active, in the sense that I’m not exactly jumping up and down. But I can feel quite the change in my feelings. And my feelings are rooting for the team.

There is absolutely no significance or consequence of this team and their 20 wins in a row to my life in any way. And yet, I feel.

Then I have to wonder what the difference is between this story, and the stories for which I don’t feel much. And if I may, extend this to a general us/we. What are those stories that we do not feel much for? And what is the difference?

If we root for this sports team, perhaps because they’ve been labeled the underdog in a certain situation. Why do we not care/cheer for so many non-sports situations?

What makes real life so real? Tell me, is there a false life you store somewhere? Somewhere between the spaces, perhaps. What is a false life anyway? What component can you add to life to make it false, or what function can you take away?

Do you have a different life that’s all a play. All pre-scripted. You get the script the day before, plenty of time to practice. Then morning comes and you act it out. Line by line, a pitch perfect delivery. How fake. Sounds so different from a real life.

Oh, by the way, what you do online (on the internet) is real life. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Mumblr – all real life. All the interactions that take place within those contexts are real.

Unless, you know, you’re the one faking them.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent.

– Don Draper from Mad Men

I took note of this when it was said during the show and was reminded of it recently when this Oatmeal comic surfaced upon the internet.

An indifferent universe – a comforting thought. But it isn’t quite true.

It is only in our hubris that we should say such a thing. It is not the prerogative of a rock to be indifferent. It is indifferent by default. However, the universe is diverse – as much as a rock is a part of the universe, so is all that is conscious. We are not simply in a foreign universe, we are a part of it. We are made of the same stuff. We are it.

I was also reminded of this by one of my favourite poets:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

– Stephen Crane

So yes, perhaps the universe is indifferent, but it is not always so. Ever cared for someone or something? Ever have someone care for you?

Hardly indifferent.

I don’t think you understand what the word hope means. It is not belief, it is not conviction, and it certainly is not a guarantee. I do not believe, I am not convinced, and I certainly do not make any guarantees. To hope is to wish, it is to dream. I wish and I dream, and so I am hopeful.

I am not a believer, I am a dreamer.

I dream therefore I desire – I desire, therefore I am.

I was waiting near a bus shelter for a street car to appear, on my way to a Good Evidence meeting, headphones in my ear listening to some Rafi song. This woman approaches me and starts to say something. My first assumption is that she’s going to ask for directions or something. I often have people ask me for directions (huge mistake on their part, but what do they know).

“Hi, how are you?” she says.

This startles me somewhat, I’m not used to having random people ask me how I am. I just say hello waiting for her to continue to the real matter of her appearance. But she waits for me to answer her question. “I’m doing fine, how are you?” I offer in return. I remove my headphones assuming that this conversation will actually happen.

“I’m doing well. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Do you like children?”

And at this point my mind is racing through different scenarios. Who is this person? Why is she asking me this question? Is she a cop? Is this an appropriate question to ask a lone man on the streets? Am I in trouble if I say yes? And am I an asshole if I say no?

“Yeah, I like children,” my final answer.

“If you had a chance to save a child’s life, would you do it?”

Aaaah, this is where this is going.

“Maybe,” I say.

This startles her. What seems like a morally straightforward question should lead itself to a positive answer. But not tonight.

“Maybe?” she repeats, half offended.

“Yeah, maybe. It depends.”

Now she starts her pitch, pulling out a folder from what seems like thin air. The World Vision logo on the cover. A few sentences in, I stop her.

“Listen, I’m going to save you some time,” I say, like I’m doing her a favour, “I’m getting on this next street car and you’re going to have better luck with someone else.”

In hindsight I should have asked her, “Do you like kittens? If you had a chance to save a kitten, would you do it?” and then pulled out a folder of my own.

I have been told on one occasion or another (and another) that I am impolite, rude or arrogant. I take some of these as compliments. On an overall scale I’d value arrogance over overly fetishized virtues such as humility. And so perhaps these labels are warranted and rightly so.

Yet I have to point out that these are based on what people have observed me saying or doing. As obvious as it may seem. But do they take into account all the times that I’ve not been an asshole? I don’t go to other people’s blogs and leave comments saying, “hey, your blog is full of trite shit,” even as much as I’d like to do it, I don’t. I don’t go up to preachers and say, “hey, your ministry is a crockashit,” though someday I certainly should.

One might say that my level of self control would even make me nice! This doesn’t even account for all the times I’ve lied just to avoid confrontation. “Those gloves look great!”

Though I must say this, it is rather awesome when someone does leave constructively critical or even non-constructive critical comments. So as nice as it is to receive praise, it’s pretty damn neat to be called out. Not just because I may be wrong, though that may well be so, but because someone’s gone out of their way to avoid the norm of being silent when they don’t have anything nice to say. If you don’t have anything nice to say, say it. Criticism seems more honest and visceral than praise.

Or maybe I just don’t know how to take a compliment.

I had conceptualized this post and done the ‘field work’ for it about a year ago. I kept seeing these advertisements around where I worked and they often intrigued me. This is my commentary on those ads.

I hear McDonalds fries can kill you. In this case, if one were to come loose and fall, it could literally kill you. “McDonald’s: We’ll find a way. Oh, we’ll find a way. A billion and one served. Muahahaha.”

Though I will give McDonalds this, it is rather clear what they’re selling. I can’t quite say the same for the next few ads.

Had they not had their domain name on the ad I would have no idea what they sell. “Oh, it’s aldoshoes.com” I can only assume they sell shoes, though this is still not clear from any of their ads. From this particular ad I would have thought they sell headaches.

Hello, Suzy. Still not sure what you’re selling though. No clues in the domain name this time. Maybe they sell shoes, maybe it’s jewelry or dresses. Who knows! It could be anything! Maybe it’s Suzy’s personal blog.

Believe it or not, this is an ad for condos. Although unlike the last two ads, this one has no clothes. I can just imagine the discussion in the creative room for this one.

Finally, something I’m familiar with. This is an ad for an anti-gravity machine.

This ad makes we want to stop drinking water all-together.