Interesting Scenes

I avoid my duties, often, while they rest on my mind, often. So here, a while later, I’m here. I’ve been spending the last few months of my 20’s trying to do the (superficial) things I said at 20 I would do in my 20s. I’m reading Rimbaud, I’m reading Infinite Jest, I’m reading those books I said I would read, because at 32 I can look back and say, “oh yeah, I read Gravity’s Rainbow in my 20s,” and it won’t be a lie. It’s unimportant, right? I honestly have more important things happening, but I think these last couple of months have also been training for a way in which I can balance all of my interests. I keep up with new music (obsessively–a decent review from any number of critics I respect and it’s getting a spin). I keep up with films that are pushing forward, and films that once pushed forward in the past–another way in which I can claim to have “done that in my 20s.” I’m creating a meditation routine for myself. I’m going to the gym (more) frequently, I’m eating healthier and adhering to the veganism I promised over a year ago (won’t ever look back). I’m trying to shed the person I became that I promised I never would become. The one who is lazy while pretending he isn’t. The one who is afraid of his own opinion. The one who is quietly waiting for the social niceties to run their course. There is nothing wrong with these traits, but at 20 I promised myself I wouldn’t be that person anymore in my 20s, but at 29.7 I look back ashamed because I didn’t even give it a try. The pain of looking back and being disappointed is worse than the pain of stretching my social anxiety or my tendency to waste time doing something unimportant. I can’t look back at 39.7 and think, “wow what a waste.” I just can not.

So ok then, I’m reading important books (and reading more frequently), I’m absorbing important film and the artists of today who are pushing it all forward. These are my people. These are the people I am choosing to be associated with because I know deep down that I can connect with them. I often avoid these people in real-life situations because of self-doubt, (well I’m certainly not good enough to hangout with these musicians, they’ll know I’m not as good… I can’t hang out with these writers, they spend portions of their days writing and I spend portions of my day wishing I was writing… I can’t hangout with these poets, they see the world too clearly and they’ll see-through me). A toxic trait, to be sure. Books, film, i’ve gotten into football (soccer) and have grown to really love it (it has taken over basketball as my one and only sport love–in fact I don’t even think I like basketball that much). This has also created this rebound effect where I’m so deeply invested in European culture (I’m going to Paris this Summer… and between us, even though it’s near impossible, I wish I could just move to Paris and live there), which has created another interest in me: language. I’m deeply invested in learning French right now (I’ve spent at least an hour a day learning it since the beginning of January and haven’t missed a day, and will not again). I’ve also decided that I want to be 39.7, able to speak French and Spanish fluently… well, fluently enough to have a real conversation. I’d also like to add Italian to that list, and eventually Portuguese (I know, big ambitions).

I’m trying to become this well-rounded person I thought I would become in my 20s. Well-read, film buff, interest in art, photography, languages, football, writing, meditation, veganism and health. This imaginary version of myself… no, wait, that’s me again putting myself down, not giving myself enough credit. Because that IS me, not imaginary, right now. I am interested in all of that, even if I don’t really consider myself an expert at any of them. Is that honestly ok to say? Am I allowed to just consider myself this person?

I’m also fully aware this makes me sound pretentious. It’s not about that. It’s about being this ideal person I always wished I was–the person that my parents could never allow me to be with their own faults and I couldn’t bloom to be under their roof with the low ceilings.

So how do I do all of this? The obstacle in my way of happiness isn’t juggling all of these things, because I know I can find time for all of them, the obstacle is more what I wrote about last time… my job, my career, the rest of my life. I wish I wasn’t ingrained with money = happiness, but that’s what happens when you live in North America. So really, what do I do? I’m just not made to work these shitty jobs. Nobody is, truthfully, but they’re so oppressive that they alter my entire being. It’s these days, my days off, that I can figure out who I am. But then the week starts again. I don’t want to sit in an office, even though that would be an upgrade from what I’m doing now. I need to be with my people. My people. I need to be with them because it’s killing me to be so separated. What would I do? Who would I have to know? Where would I have to go? What would I have to give up? Canadian comfort is the killer of a good life. Come home, snack, dinner, tv, bed, repeat. My parents.

Every morning on the drive to work I pass this woman standing at the bus stop, she’s smoking a cigarette, she’s wrapped up to to escape the weather, she’s got a coffee in her hand, she looks tired and doesn’t look particularly happy (to her credit, I know absolutely nothing about her, I just know what her image represents to me). And here I am, uniform on, not particularly happy, driving the same road, passing her in the same spot every morning, and each time, Joy Division comes to my mind. Every single time. “Day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out.” That song also has the lyrics, “I feel it closing in, as patterns seem to form.” I don’t think Ian Curtis was thinking about his 20s or his career when he wrote this song, but as it pertains to me, I think about it. I think about how each day fades in, fades out, the same, no change, and life continues, and you’re 24, then 25, then 27, and now you’re 29.

Then, 30. Then, 40, Then, 45. Is there no stopping it? Is the trap of comfort what keeps you stagnant (yes), is discomfort and uncertainty the only way through? (Also, yes). So why is it so hard to do when I already have the answer?

**posted with no editing because I wanted it to be as raw as possible**

Since approaching 30 (seven months away) I’ve created a few superficial things to do before that milestone, for no other reason than saying “I did that in my 20’s” and it seems my list is actually quite… boring. I had to keep it realistic, so the idea of travelling was out the window (listen, I work a 9-5 and my holidays have already been used for this year). Realistic, for me, is reading books, watching films, learning something at a basic level. I wish I could say I wrote a book in my 20’s, but I don’t think that will happen. I wish I could say I wrote a screenplay in my 20’s, but that might not happen either. Being published, in any capacity would be brilliant, but it’s not really looking like something on the horizon at this moment–though that won’t stop me from writing my poetry. I wish I would have written/released some music I was proud of as well (I guess I did technically record and release an album with my high school band. Hey! cool!)

Infinite Jest, Gravity’s Rainbow, White Teeth, Giovanni’s Room… and more. There’s a strange list of books I’m promising myself to have read “in my 20’s” but none of it really matters, does it? And the internet lists don’t help at all. They’re so extreme in their scope, forgetting that I’m just a mid-sized-city boy working a full time job. And I’m married! I don’t have time for a one night stand in Peru after investing in my retirement fund.

So what should I honestly do before turning 30 in 202 days? Is there anything that will ascribe worth to my 20’s? Or at least, more worth? (I’m a bit of a worrier but I don’t think my entire 20’s were for nothing). It’s comforting to know I won’t have kids in my 20’s though.

I look back in anger; at 24 I could have just started writing, seriously, and considered myself firmly a writer. Here, 5 years later, I still spend the days wishing I did it, still not able to call myself a writer, or a musician, or any of the extreme things I wished to do in avoidance of working a 9-5 and feeling unfulfilled.

Ok, so here’s another issue in my life. Is it normal to feel like kids and a steady job is being unfulfilled in life? Because for me, that’s complete and utter failure. Not to sound extreme. I equate success with happiness, at the end of the day, and those things don’t provide happiness for me. If I want to spend my 30’s happy I have to write. Every day. But I have to find a way to focus that writing into something specific, don’t I? This is a nice outlet, but it’s not the way out of my situation. I have to write that screenplay I always dreamed I wrote. Or the collection of short stories I feel proud of; so proud I can take them to real publishers with a note attached that just says, “please.” I know nobody gets wha they want just because they tried and there’s more to it than that, but I need a hopeful start. I see myself ultimately unfulfilled, but at least truthful if at 39 I’m un-published, but have a stack of work I’m proud of. Today, at 29, there isn’t a stack. There’s loose pages, scattered across many mediums, many notebooks, of thoughts, scribblings, poems that I care for more than I care to admit in person. There’s me, in fragments, but you don’t have the entire person.

Should I countdown to 30? Should I just fuck it all up and go extreme in my pursuits? Forego any rationale I’ve agreed upon up ’til now and just blow it all up? Leave work. Struggle with money. Worry every moment about what I’m doing. Will that push me? Or is it a suicide? There’s no way to know. 202 days. I’m already the oldest failure amongst the crowd, but I’m also the youngest I will ever be again and time is linear.

Insert here a sentiment re: my golden years.

Is there anything more heart-dragging and suffocating than looking for a new job? You start to notice all the mistakes you’ve made career-wise up to this point which begins a cycle of self-hatred wherein you become hyper-aware of time passing, your age, and somehow even your weight. There’s the family members who play down how many bad decisions you’ve made, how well equipped you are for the jobs that require 6+ years experience in a field of work you’ve never even heard of. There’s two-days off a week you get from the job you already work that is dragging you down, two days where you should be rested and energized to begin the job scrolling all over. But you’re not rested–you’re exhausted, and you want to spend you measly two days doing something that benefits your personal human experience. You don’t, of course, and instead spend three quarters of the first day trying to figure out what that exact thing is only to abandon your hopes and eat junk food or lie around on your cellphone. For me, it isn’t until the peak brightness of the sun begins to dip that I’m reminded of how fleeting daylight is, I jump up, usually clean my apartment really quickly for no explicable reason and then throw a hail mary on what I could do to benefit my life. That benefit is usually a walk around a path and maybe a stop at a cafe… if you want to call Starbucks a cafe to make yourself feel better about the all out consumerism you’re subscribed to each waking moment.

The day ends, day two begins–it’s time to find a new job. Make a coffee, read a bit, enjoy some news (usually of stuff that has no affect on me whatsoever and I will forget about in 2 hours time). Then, clean, again, for some other inexplicable reason–but I think that’s something exclusive to me–and now it’s lunch time. Just something quick, like a sandwich, but maybe I should go get fresh ingredients, because that’s exercise and that’s fresh air and that’s another way to spend an hour avoiding this other real life where I have to find a career and get serious and do all of the things I wish I actually did.

I imagine my life as someone who has enough time and energy in a day to wake up, have a really meaningful run, a single coffee, an artisanal ready for the big-screen breakfast, followed by my own writing, but not just any writing, a full undeniable selection of prose that someone somewhere will have interest in reading. Of course once this ends I’ll have enough time to hit the gym where I’ll work on my A+ physique that makes me feel like I’m more noticeable or something and will of course make me feel more adult. Then an exquisite dinner, followed by that thing (whatever it is) that will benefit my life–maybe in this case it’s hanging out with friends around a beautiful backyard setup with lights and really good wine (I hate wine). Then of course, I’ll have time to watch a great film, read a good chunk of a great novel, listen and dissect a great new record. Maybe all of this followed by a quick reassurance that i’m living my best life and there are zero flaws and i’m quite frankly, a perfect human.

Mostly I spend my time thinking of all of those things and doing none of them. Least of all searching for the “perfect” career. Or, at the very least, the “perfect” job until lightning strikes and something happens completely out of nowhere, as it so often does for people who don’t work at it…

But I can feel the beauty in a great record, shining through my chest. The perfect film frame that invigorates my sense of self. The piece of writing that seems to align every word I couldn’t find myself, but opens up my lungs. How do I harness this beauty? I want to create, myself–I want to create myself. I find it difficult when I work a 7-4 physical job that cleans out my will to be that better version of myself. That italicized version who will never exist exactly as imagined. But how do I get close enough to that creation to feel even the slightest bit content or interest in myself as a human. It’s apparent I attribute success and social standing to career. I don’t want to be this person, but I also know I can’t stay stagnant where I am now wasting it all. Truly wasting it all.

I paused my writing, predictably, to take a drive (it’s the last day of my holidays: does this explain the above?) and felt it all; the wind, the warmth, the traffic, the relative ability to just drive, forever, and escape outside of a radius that my job exists in. It’s not entirely sustainable, but I imagine driving for hours leaving the directions to a sort of improvisation akin to the great jazzer’s, invoking truth and melancholy and something guttural in an instinct: it’s all about the feeling of the road. Night falls and I pull into a very midwestern looking motel. There’s far less shady-looking characters that I probably built up in my head and I stare at the few there as if they’re the lost ones, they return the sentiment. In this fantasy, the realization never sets in, instead I immediately begin a new life. I feel like a fugitive, a runaway, laying low while nobody whatsoever looks for me. In this allusion I’m also the type of person I always wanted to be. The italicized version from above. The money never runs out, my body suddenly morphs into a two-inch taller, much fitter, gruff version of this specimen behind a laptop. I’m mysterious now and I think there’s some truth to that at this non-existent midwestern motel where some people have real lives and struggles and I do my best to blend among them. A telephone pole standing amongst a forrest. But in the fantasy I can enjoy the things I used to dislike–I frequent a bar, where nobody knows me, and I play it cool every time an imaginary woman walks up to me and sparks a conversation. I speak in cliches, but dark cliches that make me deep. She’s been in this town her whole life, 26 years old, never meant to go much further. It could become a mutual beneficial situation, but it doesn’t, because the character of me remains untainted by resisting the urge for meaningless sex. I’ll be off next week, too, of course. There’s something happening in the East and I have to be a part of that moment. I got wind of it through the electricity in the air (because in the fantasy I’m not on my phone for three quarters of the day and don’t waste my precious time scrolling).

But, see, here it is, an entire narrative, and entire process, just to avoid the inevitable. What do I mean? Oh, just that I wrote this extravagant fantasy to avoid… looking for a new job. And I know why–it’s because I don’t feel like there is a job for me out there. I know everyone feels this way, in some respect, but I really feel it. There just isn’t a single thing out there I am meant to do. I truly believe the only way I’d be happy is if I spent my time watching the sunset, walking in the sunshine, or already living a fantasy life that took no work to get to. It’s absurd, it’s me.

What is it about writing that makes me feel completely weightless—on a correct path—at peace—and true? Here I am, right now, sitting on my sofa as the sunshine blankets my apartment; Un Verano Sin Ti playing, and an uninterrupted YouTube video of someone driving through the streets of Los Angeles playing on my television screen. I have a book of Terrance Hayes’s poetry beside me and my notebook in front of me. And it’s perfect.

This all adds up to a perfect feeling. It’s not entirely real, of course, because a real perfect would be writing for a living in Los Angeles, not a video of someone else driving along the streets I wish to drive down. And there’s not much merit in this kind of writing… not so introspective or inquisitive, but deeply personal, to me. Something probably so unbelievably lame to others brings me a joy that has me on the verge of tears. Yes, really.

This intense joy probably stems from the intense sense of a weighty existence, however. One where I am deeply and existentially aware of my 20’s slipping by without having anything to show for it (in a way that my future self would be proud of).

So that’s it, really, a completely unvarnished attempt to express the joy in the mundane but how that exists on a level of “maybe one day.” Because that is the truth of me. I want to live in Los Angeles, writing, creating, and deepening myself. Not through a screen, but through the air, the sun, the grass, the paved roads, the petrol, the facade so transparent that it actually has come back to authenticity.

…all the children are insane waiting for the Summer rain…
There’s an insanity in waiting. If things are going to be, they must be forced in a direction. I’m not sure what I believe waiting actually accomplishes. Staving off the inevitable disappointment, I guess. Or somewhere between the notion of understanding and the actual understanding. If I want a glass of water, I go to where there will be water. There’s no confirmation that the water will be there, despite always being there. An empty jug, and unexpected piping issue. The problems, unexpected, but always near–use your personal understandings of the world to figure out solutions. And I believe I am a pretty good solution-creator. So am I the insane children waiting for the Summer rain?

To keep this entry brief: I don’t think that’s necessarily the full truth. But here is: I hoard the stresses of an imperfect life and use them to ignore the time passing rapidly, unimaginatively. There’s a lesson to be had, or a gift to obtain, in the act of dissolving that stress. The waiting game; it’s necessary for some things, but it’s just an excuse for the others.

It comes to me out a window, pink lilacs breezed air.
There’s moss crawling beneath my toenails–
leaving me fresh, a kind of sermon hymned in a low rumble.

It comes to me out a window–side–where the moon lines up
with a second cloud passing between my throat,
like the ones grazing behind my ears.

It comes out of that same window that was similar a year ago.
Similar, or the same, even entirely different, it doesn’t change–
I’ve seen the shifting silences break glass, shatter thoughts.

It comes to me out a window where I can watch myself in a nother life.
The life that probably doesn’t exist in your world.
This life here, strangling itself, confused with comfort; egotistical:
also afraid.

I desire the beach—crushing sands beneath bare feet, listening in on the endless conversation of wave vs shore. I’ve been there many times but retreat each night. It is with the changing seasons that I fall far back into the cold warmth of my home. And when time sheds its skin snake-like, I return once more, closer to the ocean, closer than the sun returning to heat the Heavens, and I lay angel faced toward the blunt white clouds. 

This is has been my life for the better part of 15 years. The beach is where I feel like i’m with everyone else. It connects the vast network of personal touch. On a screen I’ll find myself reflected on the sun kissed young men. I’m away, boxed–they are too, but it’s not the same.

That is the one problem with real life: you cannot stop time, nor can you project yourself in slow motion like the films. Ideal happiness? That would be standing in the sunset on a warm day, but in slow-motion. Not to stop time, but to experience the moment in a dramatized way. I supposed the wind would have to stop as well, and the waters natural progression. Thus, my ideal moment is stopping nature. Because it feels impossible to exist in nature simultaneously while nature exists within the Earth. There are moments, flashes really, where it feels like we accomplish it. Maybe it’s a great song playing at an exact moment (I should state these moments are often unplanned, in fact i don’t believe they can be planned at all), or perhaps its a burst of creativity that propels the writer, subject: I, into the work, nee, into the idea of work. Because the idea of something is often better than the idea itself.

Think back to your favorite memories. Think now to the times you re-create then, or attempt to. You remember glimpses of pure ecstasy, but when the recreation happens you’re suddenly noticing the black headache you’ve had since waking up. Your mind, occupied by the real-work; bills and work. Stresses ruin the real moment. Stresses will disperse though; time and memory, and for that you end up with those perfect moments. In fact, I can think of my own re-creations that have actually been bumped into an important moment in my life. I know that in the moment they were marked by fears and anxieties, but now, looking back into my past, I see them as great moments of Kingdom. And I wonder if it is because my stresses from when I was 23 were minuscule, unimportant burdens of the age—and now at 28 my stresses are real-worldly. But how will I feel at 30? Will I remember the stress of working a dead-end job with no end in sight or will I remember this job as a freedom. 

I envy those that can age gracefully, truly believing their best years are ahead of them. For my cynical side, i believe our best years are in the moment. But it all goes back to not being able to procure them—to capture them or truly live inside them. Again, nature is to blame.

Take nature’s cough; the wind that blows the curtains. How can you harness it? Feeling it slip between your thighs as you stand defiant. Slipping though, always. Never firm. The sunshine is the same. This morning I was warm as the sun spotlighted my apartment, now, 4 hours later, I feel the chill of Winter, the cold wind presses into my shoulder blades as I turn 180 from the windows into my work. But it’s not work, is it?

I wonder about the George Orwell’s often. I guess I should clarify… I wonder about Zadie Smith too and Danez Smith and sometimes a figure like Jesse Armstrong.

How do they exist in a real plain with the rest of us? Truly. How did they obtain their groceries? Did they ever indulge in some personal sins? I think of Zadie often. Ms. Smith. I’m a huge fan, having never read her fiction, only her thoughts. Maybe it’s because i’m too afraid, or maybe i want to save it for when I feel “older.” — I wonder about what she’s doing right now. This exact moment. Is she perhaps feeling ill from a bad oyster? Is she writing at her laptop, silent, eyes wide? Maybe she’s doing laundry, though it feels unlikely. Not that she’s above doing laundry, more like she doesn’t actually exist to do it herself. That’s not to say she’s not real or should be less validated, on the contrary, I think her status as writer/public figure is God-like. We cannot see, but we believe.

I wonder too of the lonely walkers I drive past on my morning commute. They aren’t untouchable like Zadie Smith. They are right there. I could hit them if I wanted to, or I could pull over and talk to them. Two extreme options that I hope exist for me.

Maybe I don’t agree entirely with the way it was handled, but with a knife in your side you tend to agree with the one controlling the handle. That’s not even the worst part—Jacob was unconscious on the ground, breathing still, but lifeless in his own way. I thought he’d die from the blood loss. It’s kind of funny, I used to grow up with my older brother Jack telling me with naivety: “if you fight back, you’ll be stabbed,” I guess i’ll have to tell him how this one went if I get the chance. 

It was an accident at first—it only became serious when we saw how much she was bleeding. Something about the puddle seemed off. Even the shade of red didn’t seem right. Jacob got this idea in his head about how she would always tease him in high school and how surely that meant she was the one for him. Never mind that she was two years older and the teases weren’t so much flirtatious as they were in a way your parents’ childless friends tease you because they don’t know what else to say. But Jacob couldn’t tell, it was actually kind of sweet in a way. 

I felt you staring, took it to mean something about you caring

but nothing compares to the hollow look you parried on me

the evening of my first show—bearing child, soft, nurtured, free.

maybe if I look out this window long enough i’ll disappear into the streets

i’ll be lost, i’ll be away, i’ll be me. 

Mitski said something about working for the knife, but the knife works me.

Twisted in my sides, holding me up, marrienette shivering without consent.

We restarted the calendars after the first stillborn. It wasn’t the year of our lord if there wasn’t anyone watching over us. Arthur was born a year before the end and I guess we got lucky. No warning, no foreshadowing, one day; no more children. The pregnancies didn’t end, that was still possible, despite the heartbreak of birthing a child with no soul, we kept trying in hopes that one day their hearts would beat again.