right now.

The sound of Jazz fest outside and the smell of fresh rain drying on the concrete...it must mean it's summer in Vancouver.

je, tu, nous

All things considered, my affection for the unknown has always been strong. Perhaps this can be linked back to the time I dropped the loonie I earned for washing a car down a hole in the wall to see if it was hallow. My affinity for foreign films aside, I find glimpses into an unfamiliar culture the perfect way to satisfy that said affection as well as learn more about myself without my situational give-ins. Working where I do for the summer, my paths obviously intersect with a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds. The key is that I'm in the position to not only have to talk to these masses, but get to listen to the stories of these masses...I get to talk/ask/parley with people who by default interest me because of their difference in origin, but who maintain my interest with their all too familiar interest in the unknown.

Maybe the most edifying part of these interactions is not the finding of our differences...but rather in the finding of our common denominator in a foreign equation.

On a personal note, my french is getting back up to fluency. This is in thanks to every conversation about our climate, every assurance I've taken in that Paris is not the only city in France, and each large gestured chat about Edith Piaf's best songs.

I'm realising that despite the joy of independance, it's all absorbed when I get to share in the human experience. Plus...English or French, it's a great assurance to know that I can still find myself inside a smaller vocabulary.

(AAAAAH)?

I've had an interesting week...I'll put it that way. As most know by now, something I've wanted for a long time has come to actualise. On Monday I spoke for the first time to my father, and really it couldn't have gone any better. Him not having known of my existence all twenty years of my life, until just months ago, makes this phone call having gone well a difficult thing to deal with consequentially. I never really went there...to the what if they told him, what if we'd known each other like kin for my whole life? I'm going there now though. I can't help it. I can't help but feel a bit tampered with, though it's years later. The decisions made on my behalf weren't meant to cause damage, but here we are. Of all times to be angry...this is it right? This would be okay. That...is a hard emotion for me to tap in to. Anger or amour...it's all too uncontrolled maybe. It's blindly popping a pill that'll either cure your headache, or make you atrophy.


I'm rarely one to be walked upon, but it seems with some I'm more willing to be the rug.


Maybe it's having let myself feel sometimes disposable within my family dynamic, that I expect directness will push them away for good. Maybe it's the doubt if I'm worth listening to in a visceral state. Maybe it's the reserve of being on display, and dealing with the consequences of that whatever they may be. Maybe it's the fear that being candid...not cerebral...not contrived...not guarded...will make me seem weak.

This isn't a woe is me post. This is an I-dont-want-to-waste-anymore-time-or-energy-just-paying-the-interest...you know?



I'm going in...headlong.

It's a good life if you don't weaken

As I get older things get less romantic. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I can't help but wonder what the whole point is. I'll elaborate on this as best I can...

I've grown up always thinking something better comes with time, and that no matter how bad times are there is always technically an alternative improvement...some sort of utopia ahead. I've given up thinking that that is true. With time comes experience right? I've always been one for that. That said, after having seen more, and more recently touched a piece of what I once would have described as part of my utopian ideal (only to be disappointed by its droning familiarity) I can't help but drift towards the once unimaginable side of absolute pescimism. Does this mean I curl up and begin a life of un-producing consumership, too jaded to think there is any other option? No. But I'm realising that the knowing what you have is about knowing that you’re going to lose it. It's now finding a way to enjoy the expected, and fill the present...even if it means accepting that a bouquet of flowers will wilt...and that it's dirty underwear, conversation, and funeral costs coming along on the same train with whatever good the future holds.


*note: I shouldn't be drinking wine alone on a monday with blogger open.

lonely war

Photo: Robert Capa


I saw a recruitment ad for the army today. It really made it enlistment sound like a trendy idea. I wonder then if most of those considering it, consider as well that most of the time spent in war isn't the social function the ads depict. I'm sure war is lonely and individual work. I can barely imagine how small it could get. Eventually it would boil down to ten unshaven gaunt looking 18 year old men from small towns in America stationed off a dirt road with nothing but the sound of enemy tanks filled with darker skinned dopplegangers coming in.