Things are not what they seem.

This picture was taken by me - it is the outside of the opera house in Paris France. Paris seems to be on my mind a great deal lately. I wish I was there right now. Maybe it is because a year ago I was.


So last night I am riding on the subway home from my novel writing class at the University of Toronto. I am reading a book called Ladykiller (a book of short stories written by this woman that lives in BC - her name is Charlotte Gill - she is a Governors General Nominee - if that means anything to you (the book is good) Sorry I digress... I look up from my book and see a tall teenaged boy standing stately at the subway door stiffly balancing with the movement of the train. I look into his eyes and I realize that he is completely tuned on some sort of narcotic. I smile inside myself and think "Wow that kid is seriously fucked up - he must be having a good time." Observation made I go back to my Charlotte Gill (some story about a guy and a girl getting into a car accident with a load of BC weed in the back of their truck).

Then a few minutes later I hear a loud clunk and look up to discover the teenager has fallen flat on his face and is laying there unconscious with his arms at his sides and face straight down into the floor of the train.

I blink a few times to make sure I am not hallucinating and see for sure that all of this is real. I don't get up but I look at the teenagers mouth to see if he is foaming or frothing. He is not moving - he is frozen stiff like a lambshank. I stare fascinated and another passenger gets up and starts to pull on him. I think it is a bad idea but the kid wakes up and slowly gets to his feet like nothing happened. He says he is really tired and I get up and insist that he sits down instead of standing. People move out of his way and we all look at him. I can't seem to get back into reading my Charlotte Gill because things are just too interesting around me. Nothing else happens and until my stop the kid hangs his head and looks at the floor. I don't know if he is embarrassed or sick. I wonder what he is thinking. I decide he is most likely still way too stoned. On my way out I speak to him. I have been trying to decide what short sentence I could say that would help him the most.

I get up and lean over to him:
"When you get off of this train get yourself a bottle of water or some juice ok?"
The kid looks up at me and I know he thinks it is a good idea. An idea that he needed to maybe keep him moving. He smiles and says "Yeah, ok, thanks - thanks a lot."

I leave the train and return to my normal life again.

I wonder if the kid made it home or if he died on the train.

Yeah - well another day in paradise. The calendar keeps on chuggin and who knows what the fuck's around the corner. And so on, as Vonnegut says. The hatred is flaring good today for some reason - I guess it was just time for a little bit 'o big old hate to show up in my scull today - I have this strong desire to post a complete list of a few of the people I hate but they most likely wouldn't appreciate it and it sucks that even if you hate people you have to respect there feelings because you could get arrested or like sued and stuff. So like another thing about today is like I just wanna sound like a teenager for some reason. So like get off my back ok. Raw! The coffee is rotting my guts and it tastes like liquid metal in my mouth. No. No real news about anything - just more feelings - I am struggling with my novel right now - every time I look at it, it pokes me in the brain like a stick in dogshit - but it is about the only thing I am optimistic about - yeah my book - whew is it hot in here OR DO I JUST FUCKEN HATE EVERYONE!!!!

Do you ever feel trapped - like your stuck in something and can't get out? You're stuck in a really narrow hallway and can't move. Your car is boxed in and its midnight, there's no one around. The bathroom door of a single toilet restroom is mysteriously locked from the outside and you are in there fiddling with your hands and breaking into a cold sweat wondering what in the hell you are supposed to do?

I wonder what it would be like to know that you were about to drown and had to live in that instance for eternity? That moment when the heat-panic sets in and you just realize that something beyond your control is happeing to you. And as the cliche goes there is nothing you can do but try to solve the Rubick's Cube of your situation.
The water quickly rises as you desperately try to solve the puzzle but you are getting so anxious and paranoid that you can't seem to concentrate too well on you puzzle solving. You decide to take a few seconds and distract yourself even if you know the water is climbing. It is rising and it won't stop until it fills your world up right to the top.

"How highs the water Moma?"
"Five feet and rising son."

Your finger nails have pulled away from your fingertips and the sides of your hands are raw from beating on the door. Snot sprays and spider webs down your face and clings to your lips over your mouth and chin as you sense your impending doom. The door simply won't open and there doesn't seem to be anyone on the other side.

So I guess the rain is here now. At least that is the idea that I'm getting. It is that time of year. I have to confess I sure don't miss the drive to work. It feels good to get up and hit Starbucks listening to the traffic reports knowing that I don't have to be a part of it anymore. There are a lot of things I don't miss. Actually I don't really miss any of it. Pretty soon it will be just like the place never existed. Except for some of the people of course.

Yeah so today is going to be a mellow one. Not much happening here. I will most likely spend a good part of the day reading and then start to rework the beginning of my novel. zzzzzz...zzzzz After that well who knows???

I see dead people.

On Friday evening my wife and I went to see an exibit called Body Worlds 2. It is a show comprised of over 200 displays of dead, preserved, human anatomy. I held a real human brain in my hand and got up close and personal with more dead people than I can count. There were exploding heads, dead mothers with babies inside, fat guys cut into strips, cocks and vaginas pulled out and on tables, kidneys to play with, and livers to fondle. Everything was dead and it stunk like something - but I am not sure what. Most of the people had their skin pealed off - but some had it left on in special places like eyebrows, lips and genitals.

It was like walking through a human butcher shop. I look at a hand with all of its skin removed and then I look at my own hand and move it in front of my face. I swallow my spit and glance over at a tongue attached to a windpipe laying on a table. There is a man with his skeleton pulled out and it walks ahead of him - it looks like he is following it - trying to catch up to it - he doesn't have any skin and all of his guts are pulled out and hanging on a rack beside him.

He still has his eyebrows and toenails but his brain is missing. People have their kids here waking around and looking at the dead people's genitals determining if they are boys or girls - "Look mommy this one is a girl!" There is a skinless woman with a wig on. Her hands and feet are flat on the floor and she faces the ceiling looking like she is doing the crab-crawl. Her nipples and labia are left on. I get really close to them and look real hard at the insides and almost want to touch - I am touching them with my eyes I am looking so hard and intensely at them. I keep telling myself they are all fake but I know they are real. They could be me, and they are me.

Child skeletons hold onto skinless father's hands and they are posed in a casual way, like you might see them walking down the street. People don't say much - everyone just stares and stares in a subtle form of shock. Everything is macabre and very unpleasant to look at - it is as surreal as reality can get. At one point I want out. I wish I hadn't come to see this cavacade of torture and dismemberment but there is nowhere to run and my morbid fascination represses my desire to escape so I take a more clinical and educational attitude. - I push my emotions away and say wow - how fascinating.

That night I go home and dream that I have two human heads in pillow cases in bed with me. I am supposed to keep them with me because I know the people that are now just heads in pillow cases. I am supposed to take them to the show and put them up for everyone to see. In my dream I am killing people and taking their bodies to the show - I have to do it to show dead people with their skin on - we need to add that to make the show complete. The heads in the pillow cases are going to go on stands and I worry that they won't be smiling and will they scare the kids...

It has been three days and I still think about it - somehow it changed me and I am not sure yet. Something is different. Everything just seems a little less pleasing. It kind of reminds me of the day after you loose your virginity - you keep thinking about it and wonder what's left now that you have experienced it.

Some things are beautiful even if you don't see them as they are.
These boxes were begging me to photograph them.

Another day on planet earth and nothing really out of the ordinary to write about except the fact that I keep having dreams about my deceased mother. Last night it was one with us in a car eating some weird form of oriental peanut brittle. We were eating it and talking about how it tasted rotten and that we would never buy it again - we agreed that it looked way more delicious than it tasted.

There have been other dreams too. Ones that don't really have any substance - I just wake up and feel like I have spent time with her. Others - just conversations or appearances - but for the past week she has been here in my head each night.

I find it strange because she has been gone for over 20 years and I don't spend too much time thinking about her - Years pass and you learn to even forget your own mom. The brain has strange ways of recovering from pain.

Anyways I have just been seeing her in my sleep way more often lately so I guess deep in the core of my grey-matter there is some reprogramming going on and her files came up - maybe my brain is re-indexing itself - yeah that's what it is.

Maybe the dead just come back once in a while to remind you about them.

... ooooo...spooky...

Huh? What was that?

Today there doesn't seem to be too to much on my mind. I know I was supposed to report back later - so I guess this is it ... I keep getting up really early in the morning and going to bed really late. This picture was taken for some reason - but I don't remember why. It has something to do with the colour and composition I guess but I don't really want to go into it - It's really not that good of a shot and I don't really know why it made it up but its all I felt comfortable putting up this morning. I will try and do a more interesting post later - but right now I am feeling a little burned out - there has been a lot going on for me this week and I just don't have it in me right now to give you anything good. - sorry.

Large - DAABO - Daabo - DAABO

Yeah so anyways I says to the guy...

Theres a Tim Horton's just down the road from here I went there yesterday at 8:30 am. Some guy held the door for me so I gave him seven dimes. He said thanks but I don't think that he really meant it. It seemed more like he was a kid opening Christmas presents - ok got that now lets get on to the next one. I was just an object in his assembly line of collection - after realizing this I wanted my seven dimes back. - Oh and yeah as I was waiting in line for my Large - DAABO - Daabo - DAABO the lady in front of me started to beak off about her political views and how she thought the government must have jobs for people like that and huh - why doesn't he just go get one.

It was so rewarding and enriching to hear her pontificate the political climate and the homeless. I wanted to grab her by the back of the neck and rub her face in her own shit. But somehow I doubt that would of gone over well so I just got my coffee and walked home.

There's a large bridge I cross to get back south of the Danforth and as I was crossing it I remembered the time my wife and I looked over the side and watched a bunch of EMS people cleaning up a jumper - The go trains run through there at top speed and someone launched themselves out into one. There were three piles covered with silver plastic and a bunch of stains - there must of been 30 people gathered there watching.

It made my wife sick but I found it to be kind of fascinating. It was like seeing the end of something and knowing that it really was the end. It was morbidly intimate.

Nice talk huh - Well a memory is a memory and an experience is an experience isn't that the most profound thing you ever read?

Man am I ever full of shit today.

See ya I am going to go stare at a few things and then I will report back here later.

Do you ever think like maybe your brain is going to explode? Sometimes I will just be sitting still and wondering to myself shit how can there be so much going on inside my head and how is it possible to actually make any sense out of it? It seems like there are constantly just blasts of money-shots over and over again - like in that movie braisnstorm when the guy loops his orgasmic experience and plays it over and over again until he goes into a seizure ..... It's like watching lava bubble out of the earth non-stop forever. It just keeps on going and going and going. Some times I wish there was a switch on the back of my scull that I could just switch off - but the problem would be how would you switch yourself back on?

Think about it - we could all turn ourselves off but never be able to turn ourselves back on - we would have to wait around for someone to come by and hit the switch for us - I guess we could pin notes to our shirts and write times on them - "please turn me back on at 1:30" Wow you really turned me on there - thanks.

People could just switch off at any time - it would be great if you were on a plane that was about to crash - you could just switch yourself off and then hope that someone would be able to get you back on later - when it was all over.

Click.

Thanks!

Hey - thanks - you know who you are - the ones that have made the effort to contact me and to send me the kind words. The ones that made me feel better by telling me all they have - I know this is a sappy post and sure there won't be a dry eye in the house and all that shit - but you have to give credit where credit is due - not all of my posts can be as tight as a jaybird's egg pouch - some are just bound to be a little leaky around the edges (I told myself I wasn't going to cry). You all really are helping - darn tootn' damn strait. Just had to let u know.

Shit man it sounds like I am terminal or something - poor fella got kicked out of heaven and can't get back in - cashed in his wings for a pitchfork and a scalded ass.

I went to the beach again - I tell ya it works wonders - a few straight shots of brandy and then a long walk off a short pier. It clears out the sinuses.