4 twisted and beautiful weeks in the city

So far, this jaunt down to the provincial capital of Victoria has been one of incredible tumult and beauty- signed by loneliness, depression, heart-ache, job-gain, job-loss, general existential confusion about my direction in life, and even a minor car accident.

Let's start from the beginning: the first week of August, my (now ex) girlfriend and I spent our time recuperating from MotionNotion festival, which we had finally returned from on July 31st to immediately sulk into our respective beds and individually mull over the psychedelic party we had both enjoyed and endured.
For the rest of that week, I spent my time saying goodbye to old friends in town as I slowly prepared myself for my final departure to Victoria, which I had been planning on migrating to for a good 2 or 3 years but had put off for a multitude of reasons and a multitude of different times. Finally, however, it was happening.. and I had the lucky bonus of knowing my girlfriend of 7 months at the time would be accompanying me on her own adventure to the University of Victoria, where she was planning on the humanities to take a year of general studies and test the waters.

My plans for returning to school in September had quickly dripped apart over the course of the summer months as I realized I had been accepted to Camosun College on the basis of only 1 or 2 classes I was technically eligible for in the Arts and Science program I was wanting to take, having neglected to notice that I was 2 percent off from the C+ in English 12, which was required for 98% of classes anywhere within the post-secondary spectrum. As well, I was only eligible for $1800 in student loans as I had worked such a well-paying job the previous year.. but the $5000 they expected me to contribute, I had spent in Europe between last March and April.

So, school became somewhat of a pipedream once again, but I took the half-hearted steps of attempting an English assessment (which I failed on the basis of my improperly structured essay writing), and then signed up for the SIDES English upgrade course, which I am still (unconvincingly and with little motivation) doing on the side from time to time. If I can really push myself with it and give myself the time to upgrade, it'll literally open up the whole post-secondary world to my intellectually hungry brain which is still waiting in books and internet articles to be fed in the same way it was in high-school.

Anyways, returning to the general narrative, my girlfriend helped me pack everything and even assisted in the painting of my room (which my mother had demanded I do before I leave) without asking for a cent. It was a labour of love, and the two of us were in deep with each other... to the point that we had discussed (what seemed like) the very real possibility of our spending the rest of our lives together. Obviously we made no guarantees due to our age, but the vibe was one of incredible depth and beauty that I now know will still float around my head like an aimless cloud for years to come (especially considering the very unique experiences we shared together). After we had the room painted, we desperately packed a rented UHaul trailer with everything we could fit and departed the next day down-island with the help of my mom and her significant other of the time.

I felt little sadness in leaving Powell River, as my mental faculties felt like they had been stagnating over the course of the last year as I overworked myself both physically and mentally at the care home job I had been working, as well as simply within my ability to overthink practically everything in existence.

So Powell River faded behind me and, although I was nervous to start a new life on my own in a new city, I was finally ready to face the challenge in its entirety.
We arrived in Victoria around 3 in the afternoon on August 9th and unpacked my things, picked up a few groceries and other necessities, and then said goodbye to my mom and her significant other. My girlfriend had decided to stay with me for the first couple days of my being in Victoria, just to spend time with me, as well as to help me adjust. Once she left on the coming Monday, I wouldn't be seeing her until her arrival on residence at Uvic on September 1st (although her and her mother later came a day earlier, and she stayed the night with me before going to set-up at the University).

The first few days we spent exploring and familiarising ourselves with the city, and I kept an eye out for job postings and hiring signs which seemed to be abundant in the city at the time. I also got a call from a hat store in Mayfair Center that I had applied to during a visit to Victoria in July.
After an emotional goodbye on the Monday of my girlfriends departure, I immediately went to Mayfair for my interview at the hat store and was called the next day with the news that I got the job.

I quickly became disillusioned with the job (having worked for the same company at Metrotown Mall in Burnaby back in 2011) due to its creepy forms of subversive salesmanship, as well as my general lack of knowledge for brand-names and sports teams (which are practically a must for Lids, which thrives on little more than the sports market). I began to become more and more depressed during my time there, and continued searching around for other jobs to both supplement my income as well as potentially replace Lids. I found one with a very upper class cafe downtown known as Dolce Vita. From the start, I knew their idea of 'work ethic' was going to be very different than mine.

Things began to get harder and harder for me, at least inside my head, while during a 4 hour shift at Lids I could barely keep it together and almost broke down into tears for no other reason than a cultural depression over what the world is based on, and why I can't be free to make it a better place. As soon as I got off work, I felt like it might be time (after 2 years of up and down severe depression and anxiety issues) to see a doctor about medication. I was aware of the fact that the stress of the move and my old world being turned upside-down obviously exacerbated these already pertinent problems, but still felt that, perhaps, medication was worth a try as these issues weren't something I wanted to live with for the rest of my life. Or, at least not in their current intensity.

The doctor perscribed me 10mg of the SSRI known as Cirpalex, to be taken once a day.
Within a couple days it seemed to be working in a strange way.. most likely placebo.. but I felt a general mood-lift about my life and, when a scheduling conflict occurred between my 2 jobs and my boss at Lids insensitively threatened to fire me if I didn't make the shift (refusing my rational compromises and insistences that it was simply a misunderstanding and nothing to explode over), I had the courage to stand-up to him and immediately quit over the phone after a speech that you 'don't just blatantly threaten someone with a loss of their livelihood like that. You treat no one.. employee or otherwise.. like you just treated me.' I believe that, had it not been for at least the placebo affect of the antidepressant, I might have just put up, shut up, and taken my boss's flagrant abuse of power.

He hung up, and I was left to hinge my bets on Dolce Vita.
However.. I had had one strike of luck. On my last day actually working at Lids, a disabled fellow and his worker came to browse hats. I sparked up a conversation with the worker about how I used to do that sort of work back in my hometown of Powell River, and he immediately informed me that they were hiring to work with the particular client he was with. He gave me 2 phone numbers and an email, and I slyly slipped them all into my back-pocket to avoid suspicion from my boss at the counter.

After 2 days of further tumultuous work experience, this time at Dolce Vita (once where they threatened to fire me due to my missing a spot while mopping), I made the call and scheduled an interview with the care home in Esquimalt for as soon as was reasonably possible. Within 2 days, I had been out there, done the interview, and got the job. They planned to schedule me to work Sunday's with an incredible 26 year old client with cerebral palsy. I was excited to see the rules were loose due to the company being a family affair as opposed to an organized care home.

Around the same time, I began to realize that the antidepressant was having the blatant side-effect of severe insomnia. I would never really sleep.. I would simply roll around with my eyes closed all night, and wake up feeling unnaturally awake.
Eventually the crash came, and it was pock-marked with severe anxiety and a fear of psychosis, so I quickly scheduled a new appointment with my doctor who prescribed me Ativan, and instructed me to take both the Cipralex and Ativan at night (as the Ativan would help me fall asleep). It now seems to be a regimen that's working for me, despite my little inner shame over being medicated.

Dolce Vita finally came to a crumbling halt one day when, completely out of the blue, my bosses sat me down and told me in the nicest way that I was good, but not good enough for the cafe (seeing as the job description is to basically run the whole place on your own). So, they offered me 2 options: 1: take my last pay-cheque and the last of my tips, or, 2: take one last week of working to prove myself.

I took my last pay-cheque and headed on my way, and they gave me a free Spanish Latte as a way of saying 'sorry' and ending it on positive grounds.

So now I was left with nothing but the care home, which did give me a few sparse hours here and there at random points throughout the next couple weeks. I continued to look for jobs, but with less of the same gumption I had before and with less of the same success. At a certain point, I decided to take near-joblessness as a chance to make my art work for me and paid a visit to the Victoria City Hall where I bought a buskers permit. So far, I have only truly busked once (as I only really have one song to play), but I made 4 dollars in 4 minutes, so it's a definite incentive to learn more of my own songs as well as covers, seeing as it could potentially pay as much as a minimum wage job if I could conjure up enough material.

Around this time, my girlfriend was packing up in Powell River and saying her last goodbyes to all of her friends. During an all-nighter prior to her departure, she was suddenly kissed by a guy and did not tell me for the next couple of days. I suppose it helps to add the context that her and I had been fighting quite a lot (on and off) for the past couple weeks over the phone regarding little things like her always being late to Skype dates and just generally late to anything at all, thus causing me to put my life on hold. This issue (and others like it) never seemed to get better, so the intensity and ferocity of the fights increased with each passing incident. Anyways, upon her arrival, she came and stayed with me at my place and we had a typical mushy lovey evening of 'I've missed you's' and all that. It was beautiful and of the depth we had already swum within one another.. of course there were things looming over it now that were stranger and more pronounced than ever.

The next day, while I was at work, her and I got into a fight over the phone and she admitted that a guy had kissed her on her last night in Powell River. She said it was only a split-second peck, but had her friend not interrupted, it 'could have escalated' and she 'would have enjoyed it.' I later discovered (too late) that, although the kiss had very briefly occurred, she had only embellished the details to deliberately hurt my feelings at the time. This was the first step towards our rapid and final demise as a couple. This particular call ended in my yelling at her that I wanted nothing to do with her, and that I wanted her out of my life for good, thus proceeding to block her throughout my social networking profiles and return to work in a frazzled and dazed state of confusion and shock.

During this state of confusion and shock, I was driving with my disabled client. We were both having a bad day, so we decided to go find a place to pull-over and just rant to one another. As I drifted to take a left onto a back street, someone pulled out of a parking lot without looking and I, being as dazed as I already was, wasn't in the state of mind to notice them in time, so they collided with the broad left side of our vehicle, dragging both of us to a screeching stop right next to the left I had planned to take. It was an older couple who had been driving a brand new Ford Mustang, and despite my shock and panic, I was relieved to know that nobody.. neither the couple or the client (save for a slightly sore back) nor myself had been injured. The older man who had been driving seemed to have put out his shoulder a little, but both were competently walking within minutes and we were all giving statements to the arriving police officers who proceeded to block off the scene. My phone had died so I had no way of getting a hold of my boss (the clients mother). A police officer lent me his cellphone anyways, so I called the first number I could think of (my girlfriend) and told her I had been in a car accident, but that I and everyone else was alright. She was shocked to hear this news, and we both agreed to meet later that night to just be with one another, whether that meant discussing our issues or just holding each other due to the shock of what had just occurred.

I spent the rest of my shift with the client organizing a way home and getting a hold of his family, informing them as to what had happened. It was all so overwhelming; police report numbers, advice on who to call, ICBC details, etc.

I saw my girlfriend that night, and despite our melancholy towards our current situation, we cuddled and just listened to music, discussing a little of what had happened earlier in the day between us (I forgiving her for the whole kiss fiasco). I wasn't allowed to stay the night in her dorm as it was the first week, so I left around 11:30 for home.

The next day (and, frankly, week) is a bit of a blur. I recall perhaps having a minor fight with my girlfriend at some point the following day, but nothing to the extent that we had had the day prior. I believe we agreed on a week long break to figure things out and just give one another space.. however, later that night, I was hanging out with a new friend of mine, drinking and ranting to each other about our problems, and no matter how hard I tried, I could no get a hold of my girlfriend. Her phone rang sometimes, and other times went straight to the message machine. She later admitted to deliberately ignoring me due to her 'losing hope' in our relationship. The friend I was drinking with was suspicious (after I told her the 'kissing' story) that my girlfriend was probably cheating on me. I thought of it as a possibility, but wasn't sure. Once again.. in all fairness to her.. I can't remember if we had agreed on a break or a break-up at that point.

The next week was spent back and forth between her and I, until finally, she admitted that she had had sex with some Christian freshman and taken his virginity. She claimed that it had been on a night after I had said I had wanted nothing to do with her and wanted her out of my life, so her claim was that, although it was a slutty and terribly disrespectful thing to do to all parties involved, she had done it because she was so depressed about our relationship ending that she just wanted to get me out of her system as quickly and effectively as possible (both her and the Christian freshman coming to regret what they had done right away).

She had kept this information from me for close to a week, finally informing me during an emotional phone call at 3 in the morning. She claimed that, although it hadn't been intentional, during the act she had figured it would be best so as I would hate her for it and move on at a quicker pace.

I was beyond shocked and heartbroken at this revelation and now, in retrospect, know for certain it had not been the day I had yelled at her and told her I wanted nothing to do with her (as that had happened only once, on the Sunday of the crash, and we had seen each other later that evening) and, in retrospect, see it was most likely the night in which she ignored all my calls and texts. Although I would like to believe her in her claims that she truly thought the relationship to be irreparably over, my retrospective investigations make this harder and harder to believe seeing as every day and every night after the Sunday, I was trying to get a hold of her and work things out (whilst she was slowly weaning me off of her with weird 'breaks' intended to push my away so I would go off on my own and be okay without her).

After a dramatic reaction by my friends (incited by myself) to remove her from their Facebook's for what she had done, there was further drama and emotional turmoil. We continued to talk things out in ferocity and later in calmer detail, but we now held an angry tension between us that wasn't about ready to burn out. I removed her on all social networks once again, and even went so far as changed my number to avoid her texting me. It was all 'good' (or as good as it could be in a situation like that) until about noon the following day, when she texted me because she had found my new number via a friend or Facebook (still not quite sure which). She insisted that we should meet that night and discuss things, and that we should try being together again or, at the very least, leave each other on good terms. I fervently denied her, but she was relentless and went as far as threatened to sit on my porch all night until we talked things through in some way, shape, or form. I eventually acquiesced (and I regret doing so to this day), so we met later that evening after I finished my orientation meeting at the UVic community radio station (as I'm looking to get a show there within the next couple of months).

We ended up walking around downtown in awkward tension which occasionally burst forth into anger and frustration, until finally we were able to calm to a point, and agreed to try this relationship one more time. Which is what we did.

We went back to my place and discussed the details of what had happened. I investigated her claim that it had been the day I had told her I had wanted nothing to do with her and realized that was not at all the case. This lead to a fever-pitch in my heartbreak, yet we stuck it out together throughout the night and did, indeed, have times of comfort reminiscent of the way it had been back in Powell River. Despite all this, the night and the following day made me realize how significantly damaged I was by the whole affair, and how I secretly hated her for what she had done and that any relationship with her now would simply be one of resentment and jealousy, with me taking out my anger in vindictive and completely unhealthy ways. This led to a long message via Facebook in the evening in which I described the situation and told her it was unequivocally over, all things considered. The following day, I left her a voice mail saying the same thing (as I hadn't got a reply from her yet), and her response was, "Kyran, maybe you should just go sleep with some random girl [to get it out of your system]."

The self-righteousness and blunt stupidity of the suggestion (which I had made as a joke a couple nights prior) made me feel hopeless regarding the situation despite a sudden flood of intense nostalgia and reflection over the relationship as it had used to be. Later that evening, she finally agreed to ending things completely. We promised to talk exactly a month from the day (October 11th), and just see how it went. I spent the rest of the evening with music, flashing back to all the little details of what we had once had; the way she would smile when we joked, the way she used to look over at me with such adoration instead of watching the road when she drove (whether because I was serenading her with a song or just because), the adventures we had gone on together (MotionNotion, random jaunts out south and north of town, an impromptu exploration of Texada), the way her lips felt whenever we kissed, the poetry we wrote each other, the MDMA trips in which we looked into each others eyes and naively declared that we would one day get married.. I don't know if these feelings and details haunt her in the same way. But as is obvious from my writing this at the time, they are still on my mind. I have a lot of anger towards her for what she did to me (seeing as the ex previous to her had done the same thing), and won't be able to help myself in taking it out in sly and vindictive ways using nothing but the truth of the matter. I do still love her with all of my heart, and with the same passion I always did.. and this is why my relative 'hate' is also an adversary to overcome, as it is simply the energy that had once loved her writhing in pain due to her betrayal.

This basically sums-up what my life has been since my arrival in Victoria. There isn't much else to add at this point, except for my hope that things look up, I find another half-decent job, I get over my ex, and I get involved with the art scene as well as CFUV within the coming months. I have no plans on a retreat to Powell River due to this tumultuous start.. but I am unsure as to what my future holds in store at this point. Most likely school, if I can self-discipline to the point of actually upgrading my English.

Anyways, thanks for listening, blue planet.

Au revoir.

Cardiac Arrest

Poised between hope and despair, today's youth glance at a world where a sudden flush of hope could bring about tears of elation and explosive love, whereas limiting their glance so the harrowing descent is only within a peripheral range will bring about the repression we all so cynically expect.

Apathy is on a rise-and-fall like the half-committed fat man on a diet. One day it's down; he checks the weight, he smiles. He is proud of himself.
The trend continues for a week until he decides to treat himself for keeping with his diet so well.

One treat leads to several. He checks his weight on day 10 and sees he's shot up past 300, and this disgusts him into the predicament we find ourselves in today: give in, what's the point? If he's going to die of cardiac arrest already he might as well eat everything he damn well feels like whenever he damn well feels like it.

Or, conversely... this disgust may make him gaze at himself in the mirror. He will notice his mistake. If he wants to live much longer, he has to stop playing his silly meritocratic games and start taking his salvation seriously. He stops with the 'gift mentality' and focuses on the truth.

One truth I find is brutally neglected in this day and age is one which fits with the above analogy very well: that you quite literally are what you eat (as well as drink, which should go without saying), and to watch how carelessly the entire Western population downs all kinds of food dosed with industrial-grade preservatives in complete awareness of its ambiguous chemistry is a good base upon which to measure the populations apathy in all regards to modern life. This is also reflected in the Western populations addiction to the 'forget-it-all' psychoactive known as alcohol; quite easily one of the most harmful of psychoactive drugs in a complete and rounded physiological sense (greatly harmful to all three facets of soul, body, and mind if taken in excess), alcohol is an expression of the Westerner's gaze into the dismal affairs of modernity with complete compassion quick to be repressed to maintain the moral and existential simplicity of carelessness (the worst kind of 'reckless abandon').

On the periphery of globalised indoctrination, the Arab Spring uprisings showcase humanity as a wholes desire to avoid the coming collapse. Within the beating heart of the West, however, these revolutions are approached from the point of academia and not practice. The interest resides, predominantly, in the 'University mentality' of mind which sees it all as a part of a history-book-in-progress, keeping it at arms length as nothing more than a conceptual curiosity like the ideological occurrence of the Second World War in retrospect.

To truly save the world, the Westerner needs to release. The Westerner needs to gaze at the flames on each arm and stop, drop, and roll.

To truly save the world, the blame has to be pointed backwards- inwards. Into the very soul of the rebel. Into the very heart of the fat-mans apathy. Look to yourself in the mirror and know that, as you fight capitalism, you fight a phantasm. You fight yourself.

And you can win the battle against your ideological obesity only if you're ready to give into that holy awareness and give up the 'gift mentality' of treating yourself with purchase.

None of us are several steps away from the world we study.
You are as real as the starving Ethiopian, the murdered Syrian, and the embattled Palestinian.

Let's save the world before the chest is seized in cardiac arrest because a new world has always been as possible the old.

on the potential of being bipolar

After months of strange and seemingly irrational mood-swings, I decided to take it upon myself to research bipolar disorder as it's been known to run in my family. After taking some non-descript online quiz offered by a psychological center in some far off corner of the United States and being informed that I seem to fit the bill.. at least at this point in my life.. for moderate to severe symptoms of the disorder, I decided I’d do a bit of descriptive research and see what said symptoms imply. 

Almost immediately I was struck by how generally this ‘disorder’ was described; episodes of intense elation or, conversely, of rock-bottom depression… but what really piqued my skepticism was the description of the ‘hypomanic episode,’ described as “a mild to moderate level of elevated mood, characterized by optimism, pressure of speech and activity, and decreased need for sleep. Generally, hypomania does not inhibit functioning as mania does.” Reading on further: “What might be called a "hypomanic event", if not accompanied by depressive episodes, is often not deemed as problematic, unless the mood changes are uncontrollable, volatile or mercurial. If left untreated, an episode of hypomania can last anywhere from a few days to several years.” 

How, by any measure, could someone even venture to describe several years of general emotional well-being as the result of some mental offset? All emotions are being pathologized in the modern world to the point that an effect is made of creating said mental disorders through a ‘nacebo effect’ (the opposite of the ‘placebo’). The fact that years upon years of happiness can be described as a tame insanity is near-irrefutable proof of this. Perhaps my issues are simply the result of a subconscious belief in the authority of the Western psychologist. No matter how far I try to claw from their influence, it seems ingrained in my head as a matter of course. As I try to escape, I am further flushed into their categories as a safe-haven to protect myself and others from responsibility and, as such, mental sovereignty.

P.O. Box 222

Patter sat as silent as an iron girder.

Noisy when he moved.

His laptop clicked and clacked away as he swathed his fingers upon the keyboard.
He was an extension of the mainframe as far as the ambiance to be heard from the next room was concerned. His sister was fast asleep.

She was always sleeping.

The last time he had spoken to her was 3 years ago when she had awoken to make them both breakfast; smiling, speaking of how great 'last night' was.. the board games.. visiting grandparents.. ah, what a Christmas eve!

But that had been 4 years prior. When she fell asleep that night, Patter assumed her dead.

He would check on her every half-day to make sure she wasn't rotting.

And she was never, ever rotting.

She was breathing.

In his determination to remain by his sisters side, he had enveloped himself in the 2 dimensions of the computer screen to the point that reality.. the 3rd dimension.. became a surreal trip with a strange depth to it he was no longer used too. It was a trigger for panic attacks, so he would only brave the 3rd dimension in search of food, water, and coffee.

He often fell asleep at his desk.

Patter had always been a fan of travelling or at the very least the idea of travelling.. seeing it as a romantic endeavor beyond the hallow point of a single geographic locale.
He often dreamed of walking the length of the Amalfi Coast in Italy.. visiting adonis street vendors in Positano or admiring the quaint picturesque of tiny Roman scooters parked on the sweet cobbled beige of Sorrento.. but the third dimension had become a frightening and surreal place for him to reside.. and besides, The Screen was always grander and more crystalline than the stuffy business of packing bags and flying from one side of the planet to another in an aluminum coffin suspended in the exalted puff of God's annulled cigarette.

It was closing in on 4 AM now. The distant star of the street light down the road peaking its way through his slightly-ajar blackout curtains caused his heart to skip a beat, so he was quick to shuffle to his feet and set the curtain right so the outside world would remain the 'outside' world.

Over the course of the last 3 years, Patter had become intensely infatuated with political geography.
Sometimes he wished he had friends or his sister would wake from her slumber simply to quiz him on world capitals so he could brazenly show what he knew.

He assumed his sister would be up for breakfast within the next 8 to 12 months, and from his online study of the cosmos he figured that wasn't too long in the big scheme of things.

In fact, it was probably .0001% to the power of 10 of a quarter of a blink on God's part.

Perhaps it was less.

Within half an hour, Patter could feel himself fading. His head began to lull forward until, eventually, he blacked into sleep, neck craned in an awkward jam.

- - -

His dreams were a strange collage of fire and brimstone.

Hellish in the most stereotypical of ways.

He saw an image of himself entering his sisters room.
Leaning forward, he takes her pulse. It's steady.

Steady.

Steady.

Stop.

Shocked, Patter leaps up, screaming manically; screaming at the wall. Screaming at the floor.
Screaming at a stock image of Satan marching through the door to laugh straight to his face.

"And that," Satan spat between chuckles, "is a show!"

Patter swung madly at Satan's nose.
His every punch threw itself through his holographic mist and the devils laughter became louder and louder and louder until tears began to stream down his cheeks and his head warped into a magnificent balloon of hateful spite and.. pop.. 

He was gone.

Patter collapsed to the floor. He gave himself a few moments to simply breathe.. heave.. heave..

Eventually, he clamored back to his feet and limped dejectedly over to his sisters static body.

He took her pulse in one last desperate gasp and..

Steady. 

A cold chill of relief dripped through his body. She was alive.

"And that," a deep, stone voice bellows from behind him.

Patter swings himself around and sees a stock image of God gliding through the door..

"is a show."

pop

Sentence over.. the image snatches away into thin air.

"P.. Patter?" 
A whisper barely distinguishable from the cold breeze wafting through the room flows from the lips of his sleeping sister.

Patter turns to her.

"Matilda?"

"P.. Patter.. you need to leave this place.."

"What do you mean?"

"You need to leave this place and brave the 3rd dimension.. follow your dreams.."

A stock sentiment.

"What dreams, Matilda? I can't leave you."

"Your dreams of travelling.. please, Patter.. I won't be up for breakfast for another 12 months. You have time.. you have time to see the world"

"There is nothing for me in the 3rd dimension but a heavy heart and death."

"Think of the sights, Patter! Think of the smells!"

"What sights? Matilda.. please.."

"The great Golden Gate bridge of San Francisco.. the influenza syringe of the Space Needle.. the wide open tundras of Siberia.. the crowded squares of Beijing.."

"Matilda.."

"The statues of Lenin crawled with ivy.. the great painted skies of St. Paul's Cathedral.. the beaches of Normandy.."

Patter ceased interrupting. He slouched himself awkwardly next to her bed and listened patiently.

"The quaint picturesque of tiny Roman scooters parked on the sweet cobbled beige of Sorrento.. the smell of fresh strawberry shampoo in a French girls hair.. the soft blanket of snow atop the distant Himalaya.."

for what felt like days, Matilda continued to speak of what Patter would see.. of what Patter would taste.. of what Patter would touch.. of what Patter would smell.. and eventually..

Patter nodded awake.

- - -

His room was hollow and dark.

His eyes adjusted uncomfortably to the blackness around him and, like some psychedelic vision, depth perception invaded his sight and he tumbled his way off the floor to find his computer.

The only light was the blink of his laptop's sleep indicator.. and looking from the blinking light towards the bed he never slept in, he began to wonder how he had ended up on the floor.

Something hot and sticky clung to the soles of his feet. He clicked the space-bar and, reassured by the bright light of a booting screen, he leaned down and felt the hardwood below him.

It was his sweat.

Like a pool of blood spilled from a jab of fear, Patter uncomfortably stepped away from the mess he'd made  and back into the seat at his desk.

His fingers once again began to swath themselves upon the keyboard as he tried to forget the dream he'd just had.

And then he remembered his sister.

Bolting upwards from his seat, he knocked the chair to the ground as he dove for the light-switch near the entrance to his room. It flashed on like a bolt of lightening, causing Patter to waiver a moment in shock as the door slammed itself against the wall and he dragged himself into the hallway.

Hitting the hallway light was another strike of death to the eye. He clamored again as he quite literally ripped Matilda's door from its hinges and into the wall behind him.

For some reason, things began to shake and slow as he fought an invisible current, dragging himself forwards towards his sprawled sisters body.

He was like a child, dragging his feet.

Like a child, like a child, like a child.

The current was too powerful. He collapsed forward clasping his chest on the floor.

Winded, Patter began using his arms to propel himself onward.

He staggered to make grip with the dirty mattress and once he did, he hauled himself upwards and immediately grasped his sisters wrist to check her pulse.

No pulse.

Shocked, Patter leaped up, screaming manically; screaming at the wall. Screaming at the floor.
Screaming at the..

there is a note crunched within her pale, dead fingers.

A rancid odor wafts through the room and Patter knows now she is rotting.

He pries at her stiff tenure and unfolds the crunched paper.

P.O. Box 222

an ode to hampered indifference

in the wind of a slight canyon

the water of a displaced ocean lost at land finds promise

as wax during a power-outage

and light empty in no sun-up or sun-down

winds itself onward into cavernous evil.

fools of the America

fools are a prince.

fools of the Europe

fools are a prince.

and why ask if in asking one receives?

had you asked in time for the last supper

you may have afforded a bite

as Christ and Peter ate you whole.

fools of the Australia

fools are a prince.

fools of the Asia

fools are a prince.

Patter began to shiver of fear and confusion as he read the small post-script his sister had written at the very bottom of the page.

The quaint picturesque of tiny Roman scooters parked on the sweet cobbled beige of Sorrento

dream of a certain

pitter-Patter.

He looked to his sister once more and began to weep uncontrollably. He sunk to the ground beside her bed.. until eventually..

Patter nodded awake.

- - -

Patter's neck cracked as he jaunted into consciousness at his desk. Before he could help it, his chair fell backwards and his head bounced violently off the floor.

Writhing in pain and retreating into the fetal position, Patter regained his sense of space and time and hoisted himself slowly back to his feet, still gently caressing the back of his head as if to massage it into the shape of a skull. 

All of a sudden, a primal rage began to pulse through his caffeine-constricted veins unsure of whether or not he was simply dreaming away and awake and in his anger, swinging his fists in the air as if still to punch the holographic mist of the laughing stock devil and, before he realized exactly what he was doing, his knuckles drove straight into the glassy gaze of his computer screen. 

The laptop LED began to bleed a bruised purple as the glass shattered in a fantastic array of electric blue and the computer itself jerked backwards, flipping itself to the ground as if Patter had broken a human spine. 

Patter heaved 3 anguished sighs.

3.5.  

At that moment he knew it was time to leave the crystalline perfection of The Screen behind.

- - -

Heart racing and head aching, Patter stammered slowly down the one-way street beyond his home. 

Everything was glowing with a conceited realism he couldn't digest.

The star of the streetlight at the end of his road became brighter and brighter and brighter until suddenly, as he got close enough, it's light began to fade into oncoming darkness and through the threatening pink of the dawn sky, he understood the star had been dead for as long as he had lived and all he had ever really seen was the light of an older generation.

A light under which his father may have kissed his first love, or his grandmother may have walked past as she strolled with a teenage grandfather, coyly dispersing herself into nervous giggles as grandpa made obvious reference to copulation in his suave 30's accent. 

The light he had fearfully observed as a beacon of 3rd dimensional existence was not his existence and in the approaching chill of predawn, Patter recited the lines.. "in the wind of a slight canyon, the water of a displaced ocean lost at land, finds promise as wax during a power-outage, and light empty in no sun-up or sun-down, winds itself onward into cavernous evil."

and then he whispered to the quickening breeze, hoping the words would laxly drift their way home..

"Matilda."

As his steps progressed like a piano concerto deeper and deeper into the light-bulb of the unknown, the street began to fade into decay and disrepair until eventually, it was nothing but a cracked desert below his feet.

It wasn't a burn, or a freeze.. just a warm chill that worked its way through his sleeves.

He stopped for a moment to gaze backwards towards home, and laughed insanity when he saw that, not only did the street disappear, but his home no longer seemed to exist.

It was simply nowhere.

He stopped laughing abruptly, like a *STOP* placed in the middle of a long run-on sentence, and all that surrounded him was a moving silence and winded dust.

Blissfully obtuse.
The horizon was freezing in the distance. His perception screamed in fear with every single step, but he managed to cuddle the anxiety like an accident child he was obliged to love.

Wiping the sweat from the palms of his hands like discarded bleeding, he rummaged through his small black backpack and pulled out an old, broken Samsung pay-and-talk he had received for his 13th birthday. The delicate wiggle of broken prose and scratched screen sunk into the further deserted backdrop beyond.

Redundantly he pressed and held his finger on the 'end' key for several seconds, expecting what he knew would not occur.
When the phone refused the jolt to attention, he grappled through his pocket for something to write with. There was a bobby-pin floating in the mist of lint at the bottom of his bag. Gently grasping it by the sharp end, he slowly and surgically moved it into the light. Looking to his scratched screen, he began to chip away at it.

"I can't forget. I can't forget. I can't forget."

Like the morning mantra of a Buddhist sage, he chanted as he carved his words into the phone like a new-age Stonehenge notebook.

P
O

BOX

2 2 2

Whatever significance. Whatever it wanted.

A Hectic Life and Times (with your host, Kyran Paterson-King).

Aloha, blue planet.

It's been a very long time. So long, in fact, that I have moved out of my mothers house and into an apartment in the dead-center of the Powell River 'downtown core' with a couple friends of mine since I last graced the blogging world with my presence.

I've kind of fallen out of attempting to iterate everything in my life via the blogspot written word, so I'll really only tell you what I'm about to get up to and why I have decided to finally do a write-up now rather than prior or later.

I've got a bit of a cold, and technically, I should be sitting in my Criminology class seeing as I'll be missing three weeks due to my departure to Europe this approaching Tuesday!!!@@&$@$!!! but I've decided to get my most important chores for the day out of the way early before this cold saps all of my energy by 4 o'clock and I have to drag myself to my last 4 hour shift at work before I leave.

In this case, the chore I'm going to have done for today is the photocopying of important travel documents at the library just down the street from my apartment. Just so, you know, if someone robs me of my passport or it slips out on some train in Toulouse I won't be without a confirmed identity. And I won't have to wait a month or so until the Canadian Embassy is Paris can finally take the time out of its afternoon coffee and donuts to print me off a new one.

I am getting increasingly excited, but I'm really hoping that this cold subsides, at least for the most part, before I leave (so, preferably this weekend if you're listening Mother Nature).
The only thing (or, rather, person) I leave behind is my girlfriend who, regrettably, will not be accompanying me seeing as we met long after all these travel plans had already been well established. I'll be gone for 3 weeks, which isn't an obscene amount of time... but as I know from her week-long trip to Mexico last month... even 7 days is a long time when you're in love.

I feel very blessed to have a reason to look forward to coming back, however. 3 or 4 months ago, I would have seriously considered missing my flight out and beatnik scrounging my way through Europe until they finally decided to deport me. If she's reading this she can know that I'm coming back for her, and not for Powell River.

Anyways, I'm assuming you're all curious as to where exactly I'll be going in Europe. The rough and general itinerary is as follows:
On the morning on Monday, March 18th, I'll be picked up by my father, step-mother, and brother at my apartment at around 6 AM in the morning. We'll spend the morning driving down to Vancouver, where we'll be spending the afternoon before staying at a hotel overnight.
The next day, March 19th, will be similar. I'm assuming we'll spend it tying up any loose travel-ends, purchasing anything we neglected or remembered prior to leaving Powell River, and doing a bit of last-minute adventuring in the city before we catch our plane out at 8 PM.
It's an 8 hourish or so flight, so we'll be flying into Gatwick Airport in London around 11:45 AM on the 20th of March (Western European time). From there, we'll be getting picked up by family at the airport and brought to their hometown (and the town my father was born and raised in until the age of 12) of Canterbury, Kent.
We'll be setting up a sort of 'base-camp' there.

From here, it turns into a little bit of an improv where we're not quite sure where we're going to end up first.
We plan on spending at least a night or 2 in London, and renting a car to drive to Wales to visit some of my step-mothers family in the area and just generally partake in a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. We plan, also, if time permits, the drive from there to Liverpool (although this is a wildcard no ones completely sure of quite yet).

And I, between the 27th and 29th of March, will be leaving my family behind for a couple of weeks to catch a ferry from Dover to Bruges in Belgium to start my solo adventure on the mainland. From Bruges, I'll be catching a train to Paris, where I hope to see one of my favorite bands live, although we'll see how timing plays out.
From Paris, I'll be hopping across to Avignon for a couple of nights, and from Avignon I have to navigate the complicated procedure of finding my way to Barcelona.

I hope to spend a good chunk of time in Barcelona.. at the least, 2 nights.. but my charter flight back to London departs on the evening of April 8th from Saragossa so regardless of when I arrive in Barcelona, I need to be near my departure location at the right time.

After leaving Barcelona for Saragossa, I catch my charter flight back to London, and from London I'll meet with my family and head back to Vancouver on the morning of April 9th.

And there you have it, folks. I'm late for class so I'll keep all y'all updated as best I can.

Preview of "Anarcho-Tantric Hedonism: Addendum" (Sect. 13: Essential Differentiation and the Intrinsic Sin of Global Homogeneity)

In the wake of a lack of new (or, rather, published content), I have decided to give you all a preview of what I've been working on as of late (neglecting a scholarship essay worth $3000 in the process). 

It's been 7 months since I wrote the first draft of Anarcho-Tantric Hedonism: A Treatise, and since, I've had plenty of new ideas stewing in my brain which are now finding expression in an upcoming Addendum treatise. 

Enjoy Section 13, my fellow counterculturalists:

The homeless man of the Pacific Northwest, in a climatological respect, is in worse straits than the homeless man residing in Los Angeles where, despite the occasional rainstorm, the climate is fair enough year-round to facilitate a satisfactory sustainment of the physical body. In respect to social forces and the rate of violent crime for a myriad of mingled and networked reasons, however, the homeless man of the Pacific Northwest is (speaking generally despite the thesis of this particular section) in a better place. In particular I make reference from perspective in my own life, imagining myself homeless on the streets of Powell River, where, despite being satisfactorily fed and clothed, the climate would permit little in the way of bearable living through the winter months. Los Angeles, in a statistical context due to the sheer amount of intermingled lives forced into social co-dependency, would be more likely to house psychopaths with an itch to kill and eyes likely to see the homeless as easier prey than the named and average middle-class white male residing at a physical address, easily located via ZIP codes and other documents of social reality.

The modern world, although on local levels making attempts to address such problems, is of an intrinsic inability to solve them due to its rootedness in conceptual generalization in all fields of thought and action. Coupled with this, globalization represents a trend of attempting to economically homogenize the planet as a whole despite organic circumstance and existentially essential differences which, unallowed to develop in themselves both on collective and individual levels, has lead to the deprivation of something requisite within each of us, represented on a collective level by the economic deprivation of sustainable existence for certain 'kinds' of people known in the dangerously general sense as the 'lower class.'

All of the above is an illustration for the sake of analogy; although truth is represented, the whole truth regarding such issues as homelessness is infinitely more complicated in all respects; from climate to food availability to psychology to appearances to social context in all forms, the world is networked in such a way as to make even my generalization for the sake of description nearly completely null and void, thus proving my point.

Nature in itself is made up of what is similar-but-different; not necessarily inevitable, but inevitable only in the sense that it is.

If we imagine the globe as a wheel representing the colour spectrum (fig. 1), we can clearly see what nature is in its different-sameness; each colour, although different than the next, fades into one another as it is. This isn't to assert that this occurrence was ever a philosophical inevitability, but regardless of such speculation, it is inevitable as it is what it is. From space, too, the same phenomenon can be witnessed. Although the paints added to the Earth by each of our individual personalities, cultural mind-models, political standings, and spiritual beliefs are an invisible paint only available at ground-level, they are still as consequential as the fading of deep jungle flora into desert, and the upwards jut of ocean into land. For the sake of expediency and economy-of-line, we will refer to this different-sameness as the 'natural fade.'

Fig. 1

The requirements of life in the desert are radically different than the requirements of life in the rainforest or the requirements of life in the Arctic. Modern nation-states are a chunky and inefficient expression of the natural fade which, instead of blue sliding into pink and slowly into purple, or Algerians fading into Libyans and slowly into Egyptians, opt for an arbitrary line at an arbitrary point designed and calculated with obsessively microcosmic accuracy.

This obsessive microcosmic accuracy represents an antithesis to the natural fade in which it is not top down or bottom up, but a mutuality between the two with neither taking exclusive reign. It is the compartmentalization of preexisting generalizations into smaller generalizations based on certain areas in certain spaces at certain times. The globalization of economy, although by implication leading to an overall reduction in terribly catastrophic world warfare due to economic interdependence (for example: the Golden Arches theory of Conflict Prevention states that no two countries with a McDonald's have fought a war with one another since the introduction of the franchise into each respective nation), has led to an all-pervasive generality which threatens to homogenize the entirety of the world as if attempting to erase every colour from the spectrum and expand it all into a solid red (which, by analogy, may very well occur in blood as individuals, races, and cultures of all different colours, in both physical as well as spiritual terms, are violently squeezed out of existence as they are not red enough to appease the oppressive artists painting in stiff brush).

What is being illustrated throughout this section is one of two things: the essential differences of populations and as such, cultures, economies, laws, and customs, as well as the way in which these differences are not static or binary blocks of area or thought, but connected and interdependent fades into one another in the same way that a lake flows through a river, down a waterfall, and into the greater scheme of global ocean.

Prior to the age of satellite imagery and the internet, ones experience and point of view within the world were understandably limited and fragmentary, thus leading many to draw lines around what they knew and saw in order to properly orient themselves and give grounding to their consciousness on all levels. This illusory fragmentation, represented in the form of a 'worldview' walled-off from a dauntingly greater terra incognita, stuck around despite the advent of global and somewhat universal awareness, just as often expanding its borders as manning the walls and preparing to fight the now encroaching 'everything-else' outside.

In this day and age, it is often encouraged that one expand their borders and worldviews beyond their traditional outposts. It is unlikely, in modern generations, to find walls built in defence (as their parents and grandparents had done before). Instead, many employ the haranguing and lonely border guard of scientific objectivism to question all immigrants and tourists into their developed sense of reality, denying entry to any who cannot properly satisfy its interrogation.

Although this is a step forward from previous states of mind, it still exists within binary borders which do not completely accept the existence of the natural fade. In fact, it is simply as was stated above; microcosmically reduced generalizations in a blocked and neatly ordered spectrum all revolving around an objective centre (fig. 2).

 Fig. 2

Granted, there is an element of fade, but it is not a progressive flow, and is instead a logical continuity, almost a chain of causality between colours. Some borders are blurred, which in analogy could represent the slow and inevitable disintegration of humanity into proper unity over time, however others stand clear and concise against their neighbours as if there is a relation, but the water in their particular cup cannot be trusted to the ocean. 

passionate thoughts on the bus to work.

Life is what we make it. And through collective decision.. both conscious and unconscious.. humans have made life a tragedy.
A daily grind in the name of 'progress' and symbolic monetary subsistence/ hording.
Does the Safeway employee look absolutely ecstatic at the prospect of a days work?
No. Perhaps he will flinchingly say that he is thankful 'to at least have a job,' but only perhaps 1 in 100 would say, 'yes, I'm honestly glad to be here.'

If money were no object, how much of the current job market would exist?
I could see nobody wanting to work in fast-food (as it was no longer a necessary last resort in the name of subsistence), thus causing the industry to plummet into the mud and disappear forever. The same thing would happen to 3rd world shoe shops, 7/11's, and large grocery stores. All there would be is mom and pop shops established and propagated by the truly passionate of the field, no longer salted with armies of secretly resentful wage-slaves submitting to the fact that they have no way out, and thus will probably abandon their dreams due to the incredible amount of resistance standing in their pre-defeated way.

If the world did not subsist and exist.. at least not entirely.. upon the foundation of money-the-moping-middle-man, society would still be running. And not only running.. it would be a passionate circle of true love where you could look to every shop and artists studio and know it rose from a love of life and that particular profession.. a gentle, burning passion.. and not from the near-death experience of having nothing but $20 in a chequing account while trying to establish ones ideal life.

It would be a loving circle, one that reinforced a true success and pursuit of ones passions and dreams, as opposed to the vicious circle we live in today, where it just keeps degenerating.. falling, falling, falling.. until the human spirit is beat to a loveless pulp save for those who bow down and co-opt and look for their niche in the current system, giving up plenty of their ideals and dreams in the process in the name of a comfortable familial subsistence.

Fuck us. Fuck all of us for our 'rational, reasonable' existences.


Our irrational human passions should be of a much higher stature than any scientific worldview.

Follow those irrational passions, you near-dead sleepy head.