there is this thing i want to do

and i don't know why i want to do it. well, i have some theories.

i want to help a friend create a character in his play that is essentially modeled on someone i was once very close to. it was just a freaky coincidence, at first, how many similarities there were between the person he'd initially written and the person i knew, but the picture wasn't complete. the first draft of the play left an awful lot out, information that was pertinent to understanding both the character's essential motivation and her relationships to other people. maybe i started identifying too closely, but there was so much truth between the lines, and i could see it, i could see everything that was missing so clearly.

understand, i would never choose to write a play that dealt with a character like that, or even with the particular subject matter. they may say "write what you know", but at some point - especially with dramatic writing, perhaps - it stops being a work of art and becomes a form of self-journalism, which i would absolutely want to avoid. it's just not dramatically viable. there needs to be a sense of the bigger picture, a way to distance oneself enough from the story in order to add texture and structure to it. real life is raw, unwieldy material which does not readily bend and fold into a balanced narrative... unless someone else is telling it, someone who's just far enough removed to wrangle reality into shape.

whoa. have i written this before? i'm having the oddest deja vu moment.

anyway, back to how i don't really know why i want to do this. i'm kind of terrified of being used as source reference. for one, the real person in question has not given her consent - and, for reasons which are too complex to get into, i would rather she didn't. i am only a perspective, after all, and there is nothing there to actually identify the source of my source. writers do this all the time, anyway, consciously or not.

but more importantly, this endeavor would leave me extremely vulnerable. me - not her. our dealings with each other have been... well, dealt with. locked up and stowed away, ages ago. what hasn't, perhaps, been dealt with so effectively, is my feelings about the entire experience. it's rickety ground. i don't know why, but even the thought of remembering that year of my past makes me instantly uncomfortable.

i'm going to do it. fuck it. maybe it will all be good for something in the end. maybe that was the whole point all along.

i know exactly which drawer the notebooks i need are in, and i'm going to go get them, and all the years in between will melt away in a single second.
but only temporarily, of course.
i can do this.

we're sipping drinks

on the triangle patio after rehearsal and we're talking about clutter. you know, the stuff amassed in the back of your closet. old pictures, letters, boxes full of sentimental garbage... to ditch or to keep? all those in favor of 'ditch' raise their hands. i'm not one of them.

not that i'm a pack rat. anyone who's ever been to my apartment knows i travel light. but if i were to collect the essential pieces of my life in a bundle and hang it on a hobo stick, 90% would consist of keepsake shit with no real value to anybody else. i like to carry my history around with me.

"but, you know, tossing all that clutter is so much more liberating. memories are contained within you - why would you want to cling to the physical manifestations? it doesn't make sense. it's only what society's telling you you should do."

"on the contrary, society tells you you shouldn't do it. there's a mass culture of self-help books out there preaching the virtues of 'letting go' and 'moving beyond'... i think what you're talking about is the bastard child of basic denial and a materialism-is-the-root-of-all-evil notion. if you truly learn from and grow with your past, then why this ritualistic need to purge yourself of its reminders?"

"umm, well. it's just a way to... start with a clean slate, i guess. who wants to look at old love letters from people they don't even care to remember?"

"i do. it reminds me why i don't care to remember them."

"do you really need the letter to remind you, though?"

"yes, sometimes. for the most part, i don't actively remember them. i think that says more about having truly gotten over something."

there is more to it than that, but i get the sense i've said enough - the conversation reaches a halt and i realize there will be no consensus, and no consensus is needed. people have different ways of dealing with their past. theirs is just as valid as mine.

besides, i don't really expect anyone to fully share my taste for nostalgia. most people only like to reminisce about the good moments, the happy golden snapshots of times gone by, and i'm exactly the opposite. it's the sad moments i want to remember the best. it may seem a little backwards, but i've always been of the opinion that this is actually healthier, and makes me more of a natural optimist.

healthier how?? well, i'm in no danger of getting stuck on the past, for one. i don't miss anything about it. in keeping a memory bank of my unfortunate experiences - and the negative aspects of certain choices i made - i appreciate my nows that much more, and look forward to everything new that is to come. a friend told me last week, in an entirely unrelated context, that he's impressed with how well i deal with change - where he himself wishes for same-ness and stability. i do take a certain amount of pride in that, whether or not i should. i gamble a lot with the life decisions i make - financially, emotionally, and in every other way. i burn, i heal, i go back for more. it never stops. thank god it never stops.

but yes, i like the reminders. they're tiny imprints in time of all the different people i used to be and am not anymore. i like having a connect-the-dots map of where i went before. and maybe, in the end, it's a cultural issue as well: one of the things that forever sets me apart from those around me who grew up on this continent, with its default ideals and sentiments. or maybe not. but the concept of needing to exorcise bad memories in order to "move on" from them seems a very westernized pop-psychological party trick to me. no?


“the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware; joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
~ henry miller

at the same time,

it's really not all bad. what am i even saying - i love it, most of the time.

i went for a long walk around the north end tonight. and while there was nothing particularly special about the night or the walk, on some level it was profoundly memorable. i know i will miss it. i know i will never have it again, not like this. i can already sense the impeding shadows of stress that are just around the corner - stress about the show, stress about money, stress... about other things, bigger things, scarier things.

but right now and right here, there is a calmness unlike anything i've felt before. or perhaps i have, but not since i was a child. nothing can touch me here; i'm surrounded by some kind of golden shroud of peace, and i walk at an extremely even pace, and all my thoughts are so wonderfully lucid. i had a dream last night that they offered me my job back at the restaurant - "it was just a test, you're back on the schedule now" - and i just stood there, watching the boiling bubbling chaos of service industry hell around me, wondering what i could do to make them fire me for good.
i woke up laughing with relief. oh, it's so good to know it was a dream! i wouldn't go back to that life if they offered me twice what i was making. i'd rather eat nothing but kraft dinner for months.

i really would, you know. this is something i was thinking about while wandering around tonight: how it was all too easy to forget that living on a tiny budget can be more rewarding; how fully i had myself convinced in no time that i couldn't do without a serving job i hated, under a boss i didn't get along with. there is literally not a thing about it i look back at fondly. time slid away from under me like quicksand in that job, and so did all that glorified cash i was making. jesus, how much money did i throw right back into that bar? all i ever had there that's worth remembering was fun, but fun and being happy are so fucking far from being the same thing.
besides, come on - even the fun wasn't usually much to write home about. all my best stories come from other places.

i'm realistic. i know i probably won't love the next "real" job i get, either. but i'll be cautious this time, and mindful of what chances i take. it's far scarier to be owned by a shit job than to have to cook your own dinner. i chose the career path i did far from naively: i knew i would end up living in houses that look like junkyards, and that i'd have to budget for things that are bare necessities. i knew and i didn't care. i know how to function under dire financial conditions, it's what i know. i came from that. how to put money away and invest in the future? not so much. i chose a moment-to-moment kind of life, and when that moment-to-moment yielded more funds than i was used to, i spent it just as lightly as i had come by it. and then that's what i became used to.

concentric circles, though, right? i'm here right now, happy to have reclaimed a peace of mind that's been lacking from me for entirely too long. also happy to be in better control of how i'm living and what i'm spending. it will get old, of course, as being broke tends to. in a year i'll likely be making more than i was leading up to all this.
well, either i'll be making more or at the very least i'll be much happier. maybe both. but definitely one.

right this minute, i'm feeling pretty optimistic about everything.

look ma, i wrote a fairy tale

we may learn from life a little
how to look men in the eye
how to make a great martini
how to tell the perfect lie


back in olden days, in the old country, when i a wee thing was being dragged around outdoor markets by my grandmother - perhaps i should have taken a moment to talk to the gypsy women.
of course, i wasn't actually allowed to. gypsies, as per common knowledge, would take your money and put a hex on you. make you grow up ugly. especially if you looked them in the eye.

but maybe i should have anyway. spited all superstition and just walked up to one while my granny was haggling with the tomato vendor. i should have given her some spare change and let her hold my hand and talk to me in her odd tongue, a mix of slavic and romani, as she told my fortune. perhaps, even at seven, i could have made out the meaning of what she was saying. perhaps the story would have gone something like this:

" you will not always be this shy. you will not always be scared of people. you will lose all that you now think defines you, and travel to a cold land where people drink unboiled milk without fear of disease. your skin will go pale like the midnight sun in this land, and you will try to forget your roots and change your name. you will grow up without a god, surrounded by much love but little guidance, and you will run wild when the opportunity presents itself, and you will never look back.

" as a young woman, you will travel once more to a faraway land - a strange place where even elegant folk wear sneakers, and look to tv instead of books to provide meaningful commentary on their lives. you will hate it there, for a while. but then you'll meet people who turn your life around. you will want nothing more than to be on stage. you will invest all of you into this place, eventually, and with this will come many sacrifices: you won't see your family for years. you will not be able to be near your mother when she gets sick. you will not attend your parents' graduations, nor they yours. and you will wonder, forever, if you've made the right decisions. if your passion was worth it.

" you will fall in love with the wrong people, at the wrong times, and you'll act foolishly. you will break and think you're beyond repair, but this will never be true. you will know and understand both the pain and the value of leaving things behind, and this will be your triumph in life and also perhaps your tragedy. "

...i wish i knew how her story would go on from here. or do i? i certainly wouldn't have wanted to hear all the things she's said up to this point, back then. or i wouldn't have believed them. not a one of them. same difference.

can knowledge of future events help shape them? change them? does fate exist? and other such cliched questions. at best, we can perhaps manage an educated guess as to the short-term course of our lives, although looking at my past - it's one big mishmash of unpredictability. i wonder, i wonder, i wonder. i'm having a 'what if' kind of day. the good kind, not the bad kind... but still.

well, no matter what. i mean, no matter what. i'm still trapped in the fluid, yet finite confines of the now, and there is no gypsy lady to tell stories of my future, whether or not i actually want to hear them. thank fuck. isn't the excuse for doing things that seem ridiculous in hindsight always that they made perfect sense at the time??


though I've gained a little insight
lost my heart and sold my soul
i am still a rank beginner
when it comes to self control

(poetry excerpts from fran landesman, of course.)

in my third year of university, i

took this contemporary studies class with the longest, wrongest name ever. from symbolism and surrealism to the new novel and beyond. does anyone else feel that if a course title seems to require punctuation, it probably indicates bad things about the curriculum? well, anyway.

i never did finish the course. i wasn't terribly attached to it in the first place, it had been an elective - and in the end, the credit was mine for the taking, i simply opted out of it. the class was an afternoon lecture i rarely made it to, and whenever i did, i always seemed to end up at the grad house afterwards, drinking wine with the prof and a couple of the other students. it was hilarious to watch the way they idolized him. he was this bohemian-looking british man with a glint in his eye, a bevy of ex-wives and a summer home on the french riviera. i remember once i was behind on an assignment and tried to make him give me an extention on the deadline: he listened to my excuses, flashed a very wolverine grin, and said a sentence i can't forget. don't worry about nonsense. do the things that exhilarate you.

because, really - isn't that what every 22-year-old with a discipline problem needs to hear? give me a break, mr validation.

perhaps it was his attitude, then, that made me pause and decide that i really didn't care enough for maguerite duras to drag myself through a year's worth of the coursework. his arrogance; the decidedly decadent notion that none of it mattered unless it made me drip with passion. the other students tripping all over their own feet in fascination over this man's unorthodox methods and ideas - i didn't get them at all. i wasn't the least bit taken in by the intellectual rebel act. surely, i was already rebellious enough without needing him as a reminder.

so, yes, on some level he completely failed to inspire me - if that was indeed his aim. he also failed to impress me, seduce me, and teach me anything that i might have found useful (i know for a fact he was trying for at least two out of three). maybe i'm being a little harsh here; i don't necessarily believe he was a bad man. but he was full of reverse psychology tactics and poetic pep talks taylor-made for impressionable campus co-eds, of which i wasn't one.

regardless, this isn't about him - although an introduction into his persona is necessary to fully appreciate the assignment that broke the camel's back for me in that class. i had been on the fence for a while about continuing to pursue the credit, procrastinating a term paper on andre breton's novel 'nadia' practically to the point of no return. eventually, there came a moment of truth: do i buckle down and write the damn thing? even though i really, really don't want to? or do i say to hell with it?

or...

the prof had called me into his office to discuss what "options" there were for me. this was confusing, as i thought i had thoroughly examined the options available, and there were exactly the two. yet here he was, telling me no - no, you can still have the credit. forget the term paper. here's what you do.

take three sheets of paper. put 'to have' at the top of the first one. 'to do' at the top of the second. 'to be' on the third. now write, in list form, everything you want out of life.

you're kidding, i said. you're going to grade me on that??

no, he said, and grinned that wolverine grin of his. not grade you.

...oh.

i didn't end up doing it, of course. too weird. and i think i had already given up on the credit anyway at that point. i mean, really: if you can't give away a bag of tricks, what makes you think you can sell it? shouldn't i have been more insulted at being offered special treatment in the form of a parlor game of sorts?

well, i just stopped showing up and dropped the class and that was that. never discussed why. but i did, later, ponder this curious notion: three sheets of paper. to have, to do, to be.

i did it then, just to see what it would look like. and i'm doing it again now, just because. and i wonder if the two versions would have been much different - i wish i'd held onto the first one for posterity.


TO HAVE
- permanent immigration status, for once in my life
- a career
- freedom to travel, move about, or stay put, and do exactly as i please
- fun
- love, in its many forms
- relative financial stability
- excitement - i go through phases where i tell myself it's overrated, but those never last
- good health
- recognition

TO DO
- act, direct, produce, create
- travel
- laugh
- love
- write
- hedonistically consume all the finer things in life
- meet everybody and experience everything (gluttonous, i know, but it's been my burning wish since i was a wee thing)

TO BE
- happy
- intellectually stimulated
- entertained
- appreciated
- working
- loved
- self-reliant
- free
- wise
- real

grade this, dr ***.

ok then. it's been pointed

out to me that some of my old writing still exists out there on the three-double-ewes, and while i suppose i did know this in theory, in my self-configured reality old websites wear out like newspaper - the further down the list of google search results, the more yellowed and wrinkly and illegible... no? that's not how it works? damn, all these years of internetting, and still so much to learn.

the thing is, i'm not particularly proud of the shit i was writing then. some of it was all right, but most of it was self-indulgent, awkwardly facetious, and choke-full of so much pop lingo. gag me with a spoon! yeah, like that.

anyway, i forced myself to re-encounter 23-year-old me, and i can (with some amount of relief) report back that she's not all garbage. so, vintage moment! here's a little tidbit of nostalgia that i actually still appreciate, dated july 12th, 2004.


There are days when it's so much easier being warm than being cold.
There are days when I feel like a character from a book, by which I mean rather more real and well-composed than an actual human being: every single tiny imperfection makes sense; every blemish on my skin is deliberate and meaningful. A unique composition of flesh and mind, gritty and paradoxal, continuously invented. This is tragedy at times, but god, what a beautiful tragedy.

If only I knew what those moments - minutes, hours? - were made of, how to replicate them, how to wrap them neatly and present them to loved ones when the world seems threateningly non-sensical. The real tragedy, of course, is that we are all completely unequipped to alter other people, and only barely ourselves.

There are different days. There are days when I am a blank, a non-person, a random incident in a plotless story. Everything I am is entirely futile in the face of everything I am not. I am only words and words are only excuses.

Those days are every bit as subjective as the other kind. Only quite a bit more selfish, and a whole lot more cruel. Why do we do this to ourselves?

There are many kinds of days, many kinds of nights, many kinds of love. There is only one kind of people: the kind who have the capacity to feel happiness and pain beyond any power of reason. We all know this. We all are this.

I wanted to say something else, but I don't know what that was anymore. Take care of yourself, and I will take care of me, and maybe somewhere in the middle we can share ourselves with each other without falling apart in the attempt.


i wish i could remember what prompted this - though it could very well have been nothing. i guess i never did grow out of the capacity to wax melancholy for no particular reason. though i like to think that when i quit capital letters, i also cut down on the pretentious.

still, i like it - so sue me. there's a sweetness there i didn't know i had, and a vulnerability that i'm sure is genuine. maybe i'm just more introspective these days. or just honest about the right things.

this is a place and a time of

such sweet, precarious perfection. the north end, this house, this spring, this moment. i'm scared i'll blink and it will be gone, drowned out by the hum of bigger and more important life things.

but this is where perfection lives, that much i know. i do double-takes just to double-notice every gorgeous flaw, like paint peeling off houses in the sunlight. trying to read the paper on my stoop and the breeze not letting me. my feet ache because i bought a new pair of converses and then wore them all around the neighbourhood. so glorious.

i quit blogging in the summer of 2005 and i don't remember exactly why. i mean, not the ins and outs of it, anyway. it had something to do with a girl. i wanted to be alone in my head, maybe... it was a bad summer - beautiful, but bad. i only retain glimpses of it: bike handlebars, rain, a jacket that remained on my door hanger for too many weeks. then i became addicted to michelle tea and started missing those 5 am phonecalls.
and then, just like that, summer had turned to fall, and everything changed once again, like these things go. i stopped whiting out paragraphs of my inner narrative.

no, i didn't. well, i did, for a time. then i re-edited everything and i didn't do a very good job.

we travel in such strange concentric circles. i don't remember last summer at all. i want to remember this one. i would like to be new. i think i deserve to be new. i hope the narrative is here to stay, this time.