oh my beloved terence.... an existential crisis on the go.... i totally hear you - i am completely freaked these days.... been having crazy episodes... which makes me happy that i am spending the weekend on a farm.... i can use some peace and quiet...maybe we need to have these freak outs to help us figure shit out... cause i am in this mode where i am 'supposed' to be figuring out what to do with my life... and this degree... and where to live... and all that... but mostly i get caught up in living everyday because thats what we do... we live everyday....we eat... we talk to people... we work.... we take showers... we made dinner... and where is the thinking time....where is the figuring out time.... i can only slip in freak out time here and there....

i am virtually hugging you terence... and i will be thinking about you while i am on the farm.... and while i am meditating on the farm... hopefully it will be so peaceful and rejuvinating that i will come back and life will make a lick of sense....

if not at least i will have fun pictures....

love you t!

okay.

what the fuck is the reason for my existence???

i feel another existential crisis beneath my skin.

scratch, scratch, scratch. 

one of the best things i could look forward to in elementary school, from grades one to five was the promise of ms. collins' class at halloween.

(side note: ms.collins was also a lesbian, and the first teacher at st. james elementary school to ban SNAP BRACLETS)

every year, without fail, ms. collins would put this on the slide projector (and yes, i know this is a short film, but there was totally a filmstrip version available with a 45 record) and i would sit, year after year, completely enthralled with what i was seeing projected before me.

i look at this film as a bonafide twenty-six year old, and can see how these five minutes, once a year for five years, shaped my art.

the grim and sad, dressed up and packaged as the hilarious and beautiful.

the best lesson i learned from the time i was able to remember was that if you don't laugh at the tragic, heartbreaking and sad, you'll crumble. some might call bull shit! and others might call me a fortress-on-an-island-builder. these are gospel truths and angels that i wrestle with. this is what makes me who i am.

oh, dramatics! comedies of errors, errors of comedies. a neverending circle.

anyway, here it is, the 1929 walt disney SILLY SYMPHONY "THE SKELETON DANCE"

life going the other way

so i realized today that i have this habit of only wanting to post blogs when i am having some sort of freak out - when i am completely and totally panicking about absolutley everything in my life - whether it is the completely mundane or the most serious and imminent catastrophe - this tells me two things about myself - one: i use blogging as a means of processing my life - which means it serves a purpose for me other than sharing - which is good and bad i suppose - depending on how you read it - and two: when i am freaking out - i want to not be alone in that freak out - i mean i generally don't want to be alone any of the time - but when i am freaking out i particularly dont want to be alone - and blogging is a contact with the world that is comforting to me in more than one way......which brings me to this post

what on earth could i be continuing to freak out about - cant i just relax and just 'be' - well - maybe - but i am working on it - so rather than blog about my fucking freak outs i am going to blog about what i am doing about them - which is far more interesting to me at this moment and will hopefully be far more interesting to you as well -

yesterday i meditated for the first time - i have been reading this book about mindfulness and meditation practice for over a month and i purposefully didnt start meditating right away because i dont want meditation to be this 'quick fix' bullshit that i dont take seriously - so i read - and i thought about what the intro and prepration chapters had to say - and i thought about what it means to 'let go' and to 'be mindful' - and i thought about taking my life 'one moment at a time' - and i thought about the idea that we only have moments to live - and i thought and thought and thought - and finally - i decided to try and meditate - which sounds so much easier than it is if you have never done this before - its fucking hard as hell for me to track my breathing - the idea of thinking about breathing makes me feel like i am choking - it really does - but i sat and i did it anyway - and after the first minute or two of sitting do you know what happened - the first thing that happened to me when my life slowed down to the pace of my breathing was that i cried - not for any particular reason - not because i was thinking of something sad - and not because i particularly felt like it - it was just the first reaction that i had to the practice of meditation... if you can believe it

so that brings me to here - i was having a freak out earlier - which happen from time to time - and the thing that i wanted to do once i was done being an initial maniac was blog - and now i am brought to the second thing i want to do - go and meditate - maybe it will ground me - maybe it will center me - maybe it will just be some quiet in my life... but i am going to give it a shot - because i think it might be something that is good for me and for my life - and because everyone needs a slowdown - right - its like traffic lights - we all take the yellow light to mean speed up when in reality its trying to tell everyone to slow down...and maybe i should take myself up on that offer

canada was a happy, happy slap in the face that is going to knock me into being an official adult.

by official adult, i mean one with a job that isn't faking smiles and wiping people's mouths off for the mere POSSIBILITY of a 15% tip.

i talked to the transfer counselor today, and she said i should take an intersession class and go full time in the spring, and then apply to hunter and see where that gets me.

i can count on every appendage of my body how many times i've fucked school up, and often times that counting makes me count the hairs on my head, that's how many times.

i am watching SUPREME PRESIDENT OF AWESOME GEORGE W. BUSH in a press conference, and he's talking business and smiles, courage, conviction. i really love the way he says "KOREA" and "MILITIA." he's almost got this gay lisp thing going on, which is sort of adorable. it's always everyone elses fault, is what i am getting out of this press conference. democracy, democracy, democracy. the blood he bathes in daily makes his skin positively radiant, a shiny beacon of light atop the hill.

i am begging for a HELEN THOMAS CAMEO, because she is all kinds of woman.

last thing: the new BLOW album, PAPER TELEVISION, is all kinds of INCREDIBLE, tightly packed into roughly 30 minutes. it holds me close and tells me that everything is going to be alright, even if things being alright is a false concept, an intangible gospel lie.

post-script: sorry to do this to you diana, but the new cat power video for the song, "lived in bars" is probably one of the most sincerely sweet and honest music videos i've seen in ages.

post-post-script: also, anyone who reads this blog, and has their own should leave a comment and diana gee and i will add yours to the sidebar. provided, of course you requite the feeling.

'Enter Sandman' should never be played on the Subway

so i am walking in the subway the other day and this man who is playing electric guitar for money is playing the most horrendous version of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" in the most noodly awful way possible and all i could think was 'is this how my day is going to end - is this what is going to sum up my life??' - some 80's metal song bouncing off the glass and metal bars of a subway hallway - some guy playing this song for loonies and toonies and any spare change - everyone walking around humming this ripped up shitty version of this song while they commute home or to the mall or to whereever people go - what made this man think that 'enter sandman' was a good idea at that moment - why not a little simon and garfunkel - or maybe something more modern and sappy - some death cab for cutie or some bright eyes - something that doesn't sound so awful when you are playing some noodly version of it on the toronto subway all by your lonesome self - why, i ask? why?maybe i need to relax and not think so much about everything - like why every single year i have been teaching there have been twins in the class and they always take the same tutorial - you would think they would split it up and make the sweet valley high swtich up much more subtle - but no - or asking why my nieghbors think that kareoke is a good idea - maybe i need to take a step back from the ridiculous things that make life seem so... well..... ridiculous - and stop worrying that everything is just some facade to cover up the human misery that lives somewhere deep in us all - stop imagining that we really are just a loose cannon about to go off and that all the love in the world and all the caring and all the beauty that you can imagine is going to disappear - or that all the love and all the hate and everything is simply pointless - and that we are doing all of this for absolutely no fucking reason other than to keep our silly little lives full of shit - full of absolute shit - maybe its the past of broken hearts talking - maybe its the abd blues - or maybe i am actually going to fulfill my existential freak out and just go off my rocker - but i am starting to feel like even the good is still shit - i mean... love is shit - and loving people and then living far away or having them die or having them break your heart or something like that is just shit - its all shit - or its all suffering - like the buddhists have argued for centuries - love is suffering - happiness is suffering - i don't know - maybe the noodly version of enter sandman just set me off - maybe it was a bad day - or maybe i am right and this is all just a big pile of shit - either way - this is a note to all subway performers out there - do me a fucking favor - don't play metallica all by yourself to a bunch of subway riders on a thursday night - it totally sucks ok - it just plain sucks...

i know it's diana gee's turn, but she did the same thing to me a few weeks back.

anyway, i saw the ORION CONSTELLATION, my most favorite constellation in the universe, for the first time since last time tonight on the cab ride home.

and i sort of cried about it.

granted, i was also listening to "PARENTHESES" by THE BLOW at the same time (my AUTUMN SONG) but the feeling of both was a heavy weight and i let it all go.

on a cab ride home!!!

mr. orion constellation, I LOVE THEE.