The Game Plan for Curing my Anxiety that I Actually Have to Follow

As most (if not all) of the readers of my blog would know by now.. I suffer from serious anxiety.
Although I have never 'officially' been diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), I have never really had a very comprehensive evaluation of my mental state ever done beyond what I've personally noted fits the bill (which may very well be part of the problem).

The fact that I haven't yet been officially diagnosed is probably due to the fact that it has only developed recently, about 4 months after graduating in June 2011. If I remember correctly.. it will soon have been exactly a year since I first noted symptoms of a serious form of anxiety while I was living in the Vancouver suburb known as Port Coquitlam (working at a McDonald's occasionally doing night-shifts, may I add).

In complete cahoots with the rise of my anxiety was the onset of my tinnitus. Undoubtedly, each fed the other in a strange and vicious circle (and still happen to do so to this day, albeit not quite on the same level). However, in the past 3 or so months alone, my anxiety has reached what (I hope) is its absolute zenith with the constant recurrence of panic attacks and, even today, an inner monologue asking if that strange head twitch I often indulge in may potentially lead to a sudden epileptic seizure (which I'm logically 99% sure it won't, yet still irrationally stuck in the physiological state that accompanies the groundless delusion that it will).

Mostly, my anxiety is a fear of going crazy in some way, shape, or form, and often relates to some strange phobia I now have regarding the nature of reality in which, at the complete and utter pique of a panic attack, I begin to imagine I may start hallucinating, or suddenly slip the matrix and end up walking underneath a street with backwards colors and alien shapes and forms (yes, this is actually what it's like, and thankfully putting it down in writing makes me realize how absurd and silly it really is). I suppose it stems from a fear of being absolutely alone in my own manufactured mental hell (I'm shaking a little even as I write this), and I believe that probably stems from my over-reading of philosophies regarding the nature of reality and further 'mind-probing' to the edges of conscious experience (ex: Timothy Leary, Terrence McKenna).

This past July, at Diversity Festival on Texada Island, I did try LSD for the first time in my life and have, at times, wondered if that may have contributed to the exacerbation of my anxiety.. yet it's in no way induced a psychotic state in me; but may have, perhaps, induced my fear of psychosis. However, I am heftily unsure, and although the acid trip was both good and bad, in its overall context, it was absolutely beautiful and amazing; most certainly one of the most profound experiences of my life.

As to whether or not I'll ever do it again remains to be seen (although probably not, I can see myself trying MDMA again). Certainly not in the mind state I've found myself in lately.

My job working in palliative care, in the case of anxiety, is both a gift and a curse.
Working in order to help the less fortunate certainly eases the ill feelings, but feeling a deep, bonded compassion towards clients who are on the last legs of their journey's (and not really enjoying it anymore due to zero mobility, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, bed sores, dysphagia etc etc etc) can occasionally leave me with an after-burn feeling once I finish (or, on occasion, during) my shift in which I imagine myself in the same position, and begin to panic at the idea that, not only is it a worldly possibility.. but it's actually happening to this person, who is just as real as me, right now.
This is usually when I pray that euthanasia is legal by the time I'm old enough to become so debilitated.

Anyways.. I've had somewhat of a 'game plan' floating around in my head as to how to cope with and eventually overcome my anxiety without the use of pharmaceutical drugs.

First of all; I am not one to simply give up everything within my lifestyle right off the bat (seeing as I've held it all fine, even if only up to this point). This applies to coffee.
Although I do tend to take a break during periods of deep and lasting anxiety (between a weekend and a month long), I always, always return to it, and I find that I am discovering, through trial and error, the right compromisable amount; one cup a day, when I first wake up, makes me feel amazing and mentally well-balanced for the rest of the day (usually), and never involves any sort of caffeine crash. Anything above this amount, however, usually leads to, in the best case scenario: an underlying feeling of squeamish discontent, and, in the worst case scenario: an hour long and recurring solipsistic derealization in which it feels like any moment I may begin to hallucinate, hear voices, or simply drop dead out of nowhere (none of which ever happens, just to tie that loose end up for the readers sake).

A much less belligerent reaction occurs when I drink more than 5 or 6 cups of caffeinated tea in a day. No matter how much I may consume, it's never ever as dramatic as coffee, and only ever leads to a squeamish discontent (if anything). Regardless of this.. I'd like to start drinking more herbal teas, especially after 3 pm in the afternoon.

Alongside all of this, I have been somewhat concerned (in the past month or so) about my overall sugar intake, and have discovered that refined sugars.. similar to caffeine.. lead to anxiety. As such.. I'd like to start cutting down dramatically on my refined sugar intake, perhaps having my daily dose with my morning coffee, and that's it. If possible.. I'd like to start buying unrefined cane sugar to use in coffee (as well as in general), and a steady supply of natural honey to use in my tea.

I would also like to stop my dead-end procrastination on two absolute essentials in this matter: constant mixed exercise, and mindfulness meditation; both absolutely key aspects to the alleviation of anxiety which I leave as a last desperate course of action.
As well as constant exercise and meditation, I would also like to begin doing yoga on a serious basis.

I also need to start reinforcing my somewhat lost aura of overall positivity to life. How I lost it was probably only due to the constant seas of change that swept upon my shores following high-school.
High-school me.. which I feel I never truly lost.. was a super chill dude who took everything in life as it came. I was well-respected, and partook in a hedonistic exploration into all forms of knowledge and learning.

Which leads me to my last point!
In the same way that I don't plan on ever entirely giving up coffee.. worst case scenario, I'll stick to strictly decaf.. I also don't plan on ceasing my philosophical inquiries into life. Perhaps I do indeed over-indulge.. in the same way I once drank upwards of 6 to 8 coffees a day.. but it's an essential part to who I am and is, in my mind, an essential part to being a full-fledged human being. Perhaps I should also stop taking plenty of it at face-value, and remember that the physical reality doesn't change, even if my idea of it does.

And it could once again be a blessing if it's properly balanced by the alternative to mind-chatter, which is mindful meditation.

I would add 'have more sex' to this game plan.. and should I come across a relationship in my last year here in Powell River it will most certainly be added, alongside a deeper sense of companionship and commitment with and to someone.. but I'm feeling pretty void of dating options in this town at this point, and am bracing myself for a year void of romance (although, only time will really tell for sure, and I won't write off all possibilities). I just don't feel like I should seek one out in a general sense, and should simply leave it to happen should it happen, and realize I'll be fine should it not.

However.. one of the reasons I'm so angsted not to be going to Victoria this September is the fact that I will have no change for a renewal in any sense until next year; much less a romantic renewal in the small town I went to high-school in.

Once again though, we'll see.

And the game plan will be set in motion as is possible.
Peace out, blue planet; thanks for listening.

Just a Good Ol' Quick Update (Like Back in the Days of Yore)

So, yes yes yes, it's been a very long time blogspot! At least in abridging what has happened in my life between this September and last June; last you all heard, I was living out north of town, half way between Powell River and the small community of Lund, in complete lack of internet, cable, or any other form of wider connection save for my iPhone.

I was also working out at Nancy's Bakery, having started as a counter-person and somehow ended up as a dishwasher with a little less pay (most certainly demotion, regardless of what my boss at the time may have preferred to call it). Although it did lead to a slow and growing resentment, similar to that which I developed for A&W and McDonald's, it wasn't all that bad outside of my sociopolitical mindset, spending hours upon hours upon hours listening to Terrence McKenna, Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, Alan Watts, and Graham Hancock lectures on my iPod. At one point, I somewhat considered it like going to school and doing dishes.

Due to my growing resentment, however, and the spotty hours I had encountered in June which had made it hard for me to pay July's rent until 2 weeks into the month, I convened with my roommate and realized he was having the same line of thought as I was; we couldn't afford to stay in Lund paying $850 a month for a cabin infested with ear-wigs and no effective bathroom door, aside from one cut from a few pieces of cedar which in itself barely assisted in keeping those doing their business properly concealed.
What ended up keeping washroom-goers in privacy was the unspoken knowledge of simply not looking at, or even in the general direction of the door during occupancy and passing.

So, at the beginning of July, we gave our 1-months notice and I began simply crashing at my moms place a majority of the month while searching for a new job in town. By the end of that month, the amount that I had paid as compared to the amount of time I had spent out at the cabin came out to my paying somewhere around $250 a night (if I had done the math correctly at the time).

On the job front, I was offered a chance to enter palliative care through a friend of mines mom. With the offer of $17 an hour and truly rewarding work as opposed to the futile treadmill labor of the food industry, I was eager to give it a try; yet also intimidated by the scope of the work presented.

So, after gathering all the certificates I already had and trying for some new ones I needed to start working, I spent 2 weeks of August in sort of a mid-job mid-move twilight zone of sparse beginners work and a lot of free time. During this two-week lull, I spent a full week of straight writing and little to no socializing putting my political/ spiritual/ lifestylist hybrid philosophy into words with 'Anarcho-Tantric Hedonism: A Treatise.'  
It remains one of my most prominent works in my mind (at 31 pages), and in fact seemed to sap me of any surplus writing ambition and energy for the next month or so.

At the end of the two-week lull, work picked up more than I had ever expected it to, and for about two or three weeks I was working upwards of 45 to 50 hours really learning the ropes and really loving the work, as challenging as it could most certainly be at times.
After realizing somewhere along the line that this job was too much of an opportunity to pass-up with only a month or so of working, I (somewhat dismally) cancelled my original plan of moving to Victoria come September with 3 friends of mine, and instead, for the first time in my life, decided to sit on a job for its practical benefits in the long-run.

At the very beginning of September, after a week on/ week off of night-shift, I departed to Vancouver to meet up with a friend of mine and begin 9 days of adventure bouncing back and forth along the coast.

This was when things began to become strange for me. The friend I had met up with Downtown, throughout the duration of the trip, was giving off almost pure negative vibes and we began to clash on some strange subconscious level that I really didn't wish to enter, yet something about him was conjuring it up from deep inside of me.
It seemed like every second or third step he had something to complain about, something to worry about, something to critique; and it was too much for me.
After two days in the city, I followed him back to his home across the Georgia Strait in Nanaimo, where I was planning to stay for 2 or 3 days before rendezvousing with a couple friends of mine and heading back to Vancouver for a concert we had all planned to go see.

However, things began truly coming to a flaming head bunt with this friend of mine during my stay with him. On a few occasions, he exploded into fits of completely irrational rage which truly and genuinely terrified me and began sending me on a further downward spiral that would last for a good part of the trip and would recur now and again due to small misfortune before my return home on the 9th (when I was originally planning on returning on the 12th).
My anxiety began to flare up like it had never done before, and panic attacks became an almost normal occurrence for the next week or so.

So, after two nights of what felt like a true pummeling of my very soul, I realized I couldn't stay with him even one more night. I planned on numerous different escapes; some as benign as simply paying for a night at a hostel downtown, some as desperate and sleeping in quiet parks where I wouldn't be disturbed. Some, even, tilted in the direction of redeeming myself through some form of romantic adventure and making my way to one of the three gulf islands in the Nanaimo harbor; Gabriola, Newcastle, or Protection.

After my friend left for his first day of classes at the local university-college, I quickly grabbed all of my belongings and darted out of the apartment. I walked downtown, and followed signs which lead me to the ferry terminals to each respective island. After eeny-meeny-miney-mowing between two of them, I decided on a day-trip to Protection Island, the smallest of the three.

As I was on the small ferry heading to the island, a best friend of mine whom I was originally going to rendezvous with the following day told me that he would be in Nanaimo a day earlier than expected, and said I could stay at his dads place while he slept at his girlfriends parents house in another part of town. This was good news, as it would save me money on a hostel, save me the risks of bad weather and potentially bad people sleeping outside, and give me a chance to reconcile the dismal situation inside my head by being around people who truly loved me.

So, I spent the day being completely enchanted by Protection Island's quirky and quaint ways, following small dirt-roads with the name of 'Pirates Lane' and standing upon great complexes of smooth rocks with the wind billowing through my shirt, looking out across the Georgia Strait towards Horseshoe Bay, Vancouver, and the endless stream of mysterious mountain-scape surrounding. With a sense of childhood nostalgia I watched the large white pearl of the Nanaimo ferry crossing my path in the distance, and for some reason it reminded me of travelling with my father.

Using my iPhone, and so deeply taken by Protection Island, I wrote the following poem:

The salted air elates a feeling of real real. 

And by real real, I mean the realist real there is. 

Child like intuition and loss in present ecstasy

Underlying a layered and angsted mind. 

I loved a psychopath as a best friend

But finally His confusion clawed at my chakras with convoluted and displaced passion 

But on Protection Island 

I feel

Protected. 

Whether the next sunrise meets me through the dingy drapes of a budget hostel, awash in a strange and urban melancholy wrapped warmly on all sides

Or on a windy beach with the blue flow of sparkled wash and distant cloud capped peaks and Dover-beacon ferries which remind me of novelty globes and my father

The buzz of early morning travel as a child 

I will be fine. 

To lighten my load I hid The Dhamapada and St. Francis of Assisi* in the hopes and faith that they would be left in peace blanketed in underbrush 

Being peacefully caressed by ocean wind and the beautifully dilapidated wood-house 

The protectors warm grin of welcome. 

I want to feel okay again

And I feel like okay is finally waking up from her peaceful slumber 

Returning from vacation to remind and comfort my unassured and pummeled mind

Like a lover returning from a followed dream 

A long, warm embrace which says it all

No words for I love you 

Just a feeling and oneness as old as the world itself.

*referring to the bag of used books I hauled along with me, and decided I didn't wish to drag along as I explored the island, thus hiding them in an underbrush near the harbor I'd later be returning to in order to catch the ferry back.

Finally, after a couple more hours, I returned to the harbor, gathered my belongings, had a bite to eat and a quick drink at the one and only bar on the island, and caught the next small ferry back to Nanaimo.

Once in Nanaimo, I got a hold of my friend and discovered he was still on his way but not quite there yet. So, for a little while, I walked around downtown aimlessly until I decided to take a seat at a bench and read some of Jack Kerouac's "The Scripture of the Diamond Eternity." It cheered me up a little, so I decided to do more walking, following the city train-tracks to the 7/11 where we planned to meet. 

So speeding up a little, I met with him and his girlfriend, we hung out for a little while, I did my best to explain what had happened between me and that other friend of mine as well as explain the profound time I'd had on Protection Island only hours before, went back to his dad's place, met both his dad, brother, and the exchange student living with them, and quickly fell asleep until the next morning.

The next day was one of relaxation. My friend introduced me to the most powerful and incredible romance movie I have ever seen titled 'Before Sunrise,' which, in my mind-state at the time, left me feeling an intense beautiful melancholy for the next 4 or 5 hours, and somewhat hungry for as rich of an experience with a woman.

That same night was one of the craziest and strangest of my life; a group of us got drunk and romped around Nanaimo equipped with spray-paint and paint-pens, writing what we felt where we felt like it. 
One of the most brazen (and, frankly, stupid) things I did was pass what I judged to be a very 'bourgeois' looking hair salon, flip on a hood, and write, in a downwards step upon the front door, the words:

"EX

PEN

SIVE" 

The next day, sober once more, I began to feel regret over that particular vandalism due to having done no homework on the place in question. I imagined, with a pang of guilt and a fit of laughter, the manager of the place coming to work in the morning and saying, 'What.. what the fuck! We charge $5.95 per cut!"

Although I do doubt to this day that it could have been so cheap; it just seems unfair to declare war on something without precedent. But mistakes are mistakes, and that was, quite honestly, a pretty good one to make.

That same night, in a drunken haze of further stupidity, a friend of mine had decided, as a joke, to write my full name in paint-pen on the sidewalk in front of another friend of ours house. I then proceeded to add our rapper names to the mix just below.

It wasn't until our sober awakening in the morning that we both began to panic, realizing that all of the vandalism that night could be traced back to us if they found this particular writing on this particular sidewalk. As such, hiding spray paint in a bag with a sweater I had found on the ground the night before as well, we quested to find the sidewalk vandalism and reconcile our wrong in broad daylight.

After a couple hours of searching, we finally found the mark of our stupidity, and were relieved to discover that it didn't seem at all as obvious or pointed in daylight as we had imagined it would. Regardless, we awkwardly keeled over and took turns covering as much as we could in an awkward wash of red. Needless to say we really did ruin the sidewalk, but it was better than spending a night in jail. 

The next day, we finally set-off to Vancouver for the concert. It was a long, slow day of tame adventure and a search for a place to sleep. We ended up deciding on the Cambie Hotel in the downtown east-side, where at one point we ended up getting mugged for a dollar. I felt as if I was picking up on each and every negative vibe with increased intensity due to my experience earlier in the week with the old friend of mine. I began to become further fatigued, anxious, and depressed.

It all came to a true head that night when I was denied entry to the concert on the grounds that my drivers licence had expired during the previous November. After a few minutes of arguing and debate and, finally (being drunk) my flipping the bird to both of the bouncers, I walked off and explored Granville intent on making my night just as worth it and, perhaps, meeting someone special. I felt like I was in the right mind-set to flirt or do something outrageous and forward. 

At one point, I remember, I was passing an attractive young woman who looked about my age who was perched on the street side with her dog, drawing passer-by's in her sketch-book. I stopped to chat with her for a moment, and eventually asked her if I could sit and join her for a little while. 

She plainly rejected me with a, 'no, I'd prefer if you didn't,' and forcing a smile I nodded and said, 'alright, that's fair enough.' The whole night, it felt like I was staving off rock-bottom with one weary arm which was just about ready to give up the fight.

Near the Granville Skytrain station, I came upon a beat-boxing busker equipped with a loop pedal and a guitar. After watching him for about 20 minutes, he took a break, and I inquired as to if I could rap with him when he started up again. He said we could definitely work something out and, after running into his girlfriend  for a 10 minute chat, returned to the 'stage' and performed a song before motioning me up to join him.

Not really in the mood for effective freestyling, I went off lyrics I had already written (confident that nobody who had gathered around knew they were pre-written). Half way through, however, I forgot a part of the lyrics and compensated with freestyle which, in my mind, seemed a bit forced and awkward. 

Once I was done, he congratulated me with a look of cool-guy apathy, and proceeded to freestyle himself (in my mind it seemed as if he was trying to one-up me, or remind everyone there who the true artist was. Perhaps it was simply for fun and I was only interpreting it the way I did due to the head-space of strange insecurity I was in, or perhaps he truly was trying to assert his artistic dominance over me. Either way, I figured, it didn't really matter). 

As I left the area of performance, I felt the drunkenness beginning to wear off and decided I needed to get drunker. So, I pulled up the directions to our hotel on my iPhone and made my way back. The walk was a haze of delirious ambition and the underlying realization that I'd just have to put up with the true ordeal I was in for the time being.   

Finally, I got to the hotel, and just as I was entering our room I began chatting with a couple of young people around my age (early 20's) who were both from far-flung reaches of the globe; a young man from Brazil, and a young woman from Germany. We chatted for what was probably 45 minutes about our lives and what brought us to Vancouver, and I told them a little about my less-than-ideal night, and their presence cheered me up a little. After 45 minutes of conversation I finally made my way into the room and immediately began taking swigs of  Jose Cuervo Gold (my friend described it as tasting like Christmas, and I agreed).

However, one of what should seem like the darkest experiences of my life (yet seemed more like a brighter realization than anything, at least at the time), occurred when, during a drunken haze, I leaned a little ways out of the window (our room was on the fifth floor) and gazed downwards at the people below, looking across to the Downtown Eastside Woman's Center and then down at the sidewalk and thinking; I could totally jump out of this window right now and check out of this experience. I could even feel a slight ecstatic push in my legs telling me it was possible if I so chose. 

This was quickly followed by laughter as a great weight felt as if it unburdened itself from inside of me. It reminded me that life is a game and I had to return to playing it, instead of taking it so Goddamn seriously. I'm still working on this aspect of things, but I have a feeling the realization will explode inside my head and create an incredible me in due time; in a sense, it will resurrect a part of me that I lost upon graduation from high school, but in a newer, more powerful and self-assured form. 

After a little while I climbed into bed, and didn't really sleep but rested for an hour or so before my friends returned to the hotel. They woke me up and told me the concert was alright, but not amazing, and that they had given my ticket to a punk-rock anarchist girl they had met on the street. I didn't really care, but I was happy I had paid for someones enjoyment so the experience hadn't been wasted. They then got me to get up and get dressed so we could go check out a strip-club downtown. We walked and walked and walked until we got there and decided as soon as we entered the club that we were catching a cab back. 

The first thing I noticed was a realization I'd had along time ago; just being in the strip club with real people and real naked women was a lot better than porn, in the same way that sex had a lot more going for it than watching somebody else dramatize a cliche fuck. I didn't get paid till the next morning so I had no money on me and couldn't afford a lap-dance or even a drink; my friend paid my cover charge with the promise that he'd get paid back the next day. I quickly realized I wished I wasn't so impulsive with money. I'd spent $200 on books at that point in the trip, and was going to spend another $200 before the trip was over.

A woman came up and offered, quite flirtatiously, both of my friends a lap dance (if they could afford it). Already in an insecure mindset, I felt personally hurt when she asked me last as a sort of side note (although it's likely she simply realized none of us were going to pay her as soon as my friends had regretfully declined). 

We eventually left the night-club after one last dancer, and as we were walking around the thought of all of my interpretive reasons to be insecure which had compiled throughout the day exploded into a sunk ship of over-thought despair. I told my friends, as tears ran down my face, that I would meet them at the hotel later on, and walked off to go sob in a park for awhile before slowly making my way back. 

When I made it back, they had made it there first and were relaxing and goofing off, it being around 4 in the morning. I hung out with them for a little bit as they asked how I was, and then I simply crawled back into bed in a fit of drunken self-pity and fell asleep.

I was delighted in the morning to check my bank balance and find it at $856, although it certainly didn't reconcile all the drama that had occurred the night before. I was quickly beginning to realize how aimless I was in life, and how important it actually was for me to have some solid ground to stand on, or otherwise risk sinking into where I was right now on more of a regular basis. Although poetic melancholy is nice from time to time, I don't think I could frame my life within it. Like any other average person, I was looking for a balance between adventure, spontaneity  happiness, and security. Unlike one of my best friends, I felt like I never wished to fully politicize my life. 

So, we checked out of the hotel, grabbed some breakfast, did a little more book-shopping, and hopped on a bus to Tsawwassen to catch the next ferry to Victoria. We were on the move once again.

We arrived in Victoria in the early evening, and already my mood was beginning to lift as the honestly friendlier vibes of the city began to permeate me with a feeling of welcome warmth. The long bus-ride from Swartz Bay to Downtown was a beautiful interlude and the Saanich farmland was a nice touch. I suddenly remembered, with a tinge of excitement, why we had come to Victoria: for the Anarchist Bookfair that started the next morning at 11 AM sharp. 

We spent the rest of the evening doing a bit of exploring before a friend of a friend and his girlfriend (sorry for the confusing terminology, gotta keep it confidential) picked us up and drove us to his place where we'd be staying the night (but would sadly be getting kicked out at 8 AM because he was heading to Nanaimo and didn't want to leave us there with the landlord in town). 

However, the whole night, my anxiety wheeled right back in full-force and I managed to stave it off with more alcohol. We later went downtown, where I was barred from entering yet another club due to my expired drivers license and, after asking to talk to the manager of the place, ended up getting put in a head-lock by a bouncer and tossed away from the line-up despite the friend of a friends girlfriend (haha, seriously, sorry) touchingly standing up for me in my defense as I walked away in frustration and further depression to slink onto the street corner and stare at the ground, overwhelmed by a feeling of angry futility at life.

I was saved from sinking further into my own head as my friends friend and his girlfriend both came out to embrace me and talk me through my despair. She lay herself on my shoulder and stroked my arm while he put an arm around me and held my hand to get me out of it. It was a beautiful reminder and reconciliation, and for the sake of not wishing to further ruin anyone's night with what I felt to be my pointless drama, I charged upwards and we all made our way to a gay club across the street.

Within 10 minutes of entrance, I had 3 men flirting with me and decided to discover, once and for all, whether or not I was gay (although I've always been pretty sure I'm not, but have assumed I am a ratio bi; either way I let loose with a sense of reckless 'what-the-fuck-is-the-harm-in-it' abandon).

That night, I ended up making out with three guys around my age, with a couple hoping to take me home. I agreed with much reservation, and before they had a chance to lead me back to their apartment I ran outside to meet my group of friends and said, "Guys, I don't think I'm gay. There are two guys in there that think they're taking me home but I honestly don't want to go so we should probably just leave."

And that we did.

So we caught a cab back to that friend of a friend of mines house and crashed on the couch until we were softly awoken at around 8:30 in the morning.

I woke up feeling light and well (that's the kind of hangover I usually get), but after about 3 hours, I began to descend further into anxiety and recurring panic attacks framed by derealization and a feeling similar to coming up on acid (which is terrifying when you consider you're not on a drug). 

Even the Anarchist Bookfair, which had been a main hall-mark of the trip, was little fun for me. It was interesting at arms length, but after about 3 hours of up-and-down panic, I decided I needed to go home the next day and simply bought a plethora of books like a pirate hoarding loot and made my getaway. 

Despite all of this, a recently re-befriended ex of mine wanted to see me before I left, and was a little upset to know I was going home a couple days early. 

We ended up hanging out that evening, and not only did she understand where I was coming from; she tore the answers to all of my problems from the bottom of my soul with a casual remark and made me realize what I wanted all along. 

I wanted to move to Victoria; I wanted to leave Powell River which was becoming stale to me after a year of restless wait; I wanted to go back to school because part of why I kept becoming anxious and depressed was because I was completely stagnating without intellectual stimulation beyond the lonely act of absorbing knowledge through books and chatting with a couple select friends; and I knew that I knew what I wanted to do and the life of poetic insecurity, no matter how much I may have idealized it as a result of Jack Kerouac's On the Road and The Dharma Bums, was not a life I was, at least as of yet, ready to live. If ever I was going to pull of something so brazen and incredible, I would need something to stand on first. And, perhaps I was never meant to live a life of such homeless wandering. That didn't mean I wasn't meant to live a life of wandering; in fact, I knew (and still know) somewhere deep inside of me that whatever I end up doing as a career in life will have to include adventure and intellectual stimulation otherwise I will never stick with it without some form of depressive resignation in a jaded form of adulthood (which I knew I would never let occur). 

So, I had the goal: school for the sake of school in a beautiful new city brimming with beautiful new people and beautiful new experiences, with the goal of eventually becoming an investigative journalist for reasons too numerous to list, and for its very own sake as opposed to working towards retirement and a seat-belt ending, although I also figured I want to grow old with a life partner and have 2 to 4 kids (having kids, I've realized in the last few months, is a great big beautiful goal for me and, although I'm in no rush to get there, I can't wait for it to happen).

So, after that beautiful encounter between myself, my re-befriended ex, and my future, I returned to the hostel we were staying at despite a couple more panic attacks along the way and slept till the morning, when I walked to the Greyhound bus depot and bought my ticket for later that day.

I was home by the same evening, and damn glad to be back in my own bed. I already began to feel much better, and simply spent the next couple of days sleeping, relaxing, and recuperating. 

I eventually got back to work, which made me feel a lot better as well.

It wasn't until the 3 friends I had originally been planning to move to the city with went down and found a place, returned and began packing, that I became depressed again at the remembrance that I could have been going with them if I hadn't been so transient and unsure in my affairs, and hadn't realized what I had wanted so late. Although I knew it was probably for the best with the job I had, and it wasn't as bad as I was making it out to seem because I still had plenty of friends in town as well as my radio show every Friday night, which was about to return to its former 'glory' with our added effort and co-ordination.

So, I still oscillate back and forth between depression, alrightness, and happiness; and I'm beginning to figure that's just the way it's gonna be for the next year until I finally get my show on the road with more money and experience to back me up.

My plan for this next year in Powell River is to partake in more artistic endeavors (perhaps actually write a full novel?), improve the radio show, take a class or two at the local Vancouver Island University come January, and work plenty whilst hopefully taking a few short trips here and there to visit friends in the city or explore parts of the area I've never taken the liberty to visit before. 

And then in March, I'm off to England for 3 weeks with my dad, step-mom, and brother; and I expect it to be an absolutely incredible experience, but it is still quite a long ways off so for now I'll just do all of the above and plenty of reading.

This has been probably one of the longest and most intricately detailed posts I have ever written. 

Jove, Jesus, and the Ghoul

Thomas remembers the day that the guns finally fell silent in the tightly-packed alleyway next to his apartment block.

The sunset-colored bricks, already a deep orange and red, were now splattered with a dark shade of burgundy like some sort of abstract gallery painting designed to insinuate intellectual oppression.
To the murky-mind of Thomas Lord, this strange piece of true born art hissed like a summer afternoon fever dream, awakened to the blur of an ear-shot migraine.

Ouch.

Every time he would march through the alleyway on his way to catch the early morning bus, his thoughts would begin to wander. They would wander into the open abscess that was the lack of context; the lack of a coherent story as to what really occurred over the course of those 3 tumultuous months between last Snow-flit and Sunrise.

He would begin to wonder about the dead.
Who and what?
What and why?
What and what and what and what and what?
He imagined the chain of events that had led to their incessant battling for the tightly-packed alleyway in his head like a roll of film set ablaze to the horrified panic of the 80 year-old part-time projectionist;

One copy.

One
fucking
copy.

Although a few of the strange men and women Thomas had spotted from his previously bolted window could have passed for everyday street thugs battling for territory and control of some sort of underground drug trade, a majority of them seemed to be of a much higher, and therefore a much stranger standing in the drama-dream situation.

A good chunk of the mysterious street worriers were dressed in casual business-wear, while another good chunk had been dressed like city construction workers.

On this particular morning, Thomas wiped away the condensation from the window next to his seat on the bus with the lower part of his sleeve as he mulled over trivial matters like monthly finances, the current state of the world at large, and his recent withdrawal into reclusiveness following the sudden and unexpected end of the neighborhood hostility.

Gazing like a sad animal through the moving glass box, he began to trace shapes in the slowly redeemed condensation as if he was searching to give form to his headached thoughts and release them like a therapy upon the world of indifference outside.

Incoherent laughter is all he could represent with a faint fever dream hiss.
The window began to leer back at him like his own eyes in a mirror; "Look, I'm just as confused as you are."

Unable to gaze any longer at himself, he ripped himself away and spun suddenly towards the woman sitting behind him.
She noticed him with a quick awkward glance; continued to gaze at herself in the window.

She noticed him again as he did not turn away.

Continued to gaze at herself in the window.

Thomas didn't move. He didn't want to, he didn't have too.

She finally wheeled towards him slowly and looked into his eyes. For 2 minutes they
glared
and
gazed
and
stared
and
waited
for

words?
probably
smiles?
no
connection like an audio jack
finally
she said;
"You too?"

Thomas remained silent. The bus shifted gears as it made a left at 705.

Another 2 minutes of silence before it struck.

"Me too."

The ends of her hair were dyed a darker blonde than the body to the root. The way she glared, with her lips parted restfully, her two front teeth calmly landed like Celtic statue, was like some beautiful piercing child scream giving way to joyous playground laughter.

And she knew.

And she knew Thomas knew.

And her body said, 'wow.'
But her eyes said, "Look, I'm just as confused as you are."

That was enough for a final word, so Thomas turned back to the window, wiping away his fading shapes to erase himself from the moment.

The bus pulled to a stop, letting a group on.
One of the newly arrived passengers scuffled to the back, face in his hands, draped in a torn black and purple business suit.
He kept chanting; "fortheloveofJoveJesusandtheGhoul.. fortheloveofJoveJesusandtheGhoul.. fortheloveofJoveJesusandtheGhoul..

Thomas, almost against his will, felt the pull to enter this mans aura.
As he hauled himself out of his seat to make his way to the back, the woman who was sitting behind him, with the hair dyed a darker blonde at the tip than the body to the root and the calmly landed teeth, grasped his hand and said,
"Wait."

He turned to her for a moment.

With a look of near-death urgency pounding across her face, she said
"Come and see me again before your stop."

She let go.
Thomas didn't reply, and he slinked his way onward to the back of the bus.

The man let out a piercing 'AAAAHHHhhhhhhh...' which faded back into.. 'fortheloveofJoveJesusandtheGhoul..' 

Thomas took his seat next to him.

"S.. sir?"
No reply.
"fortheloveofJoveJesusandtheGhoul..."
"Sir.."
"fortheloveofJoveJesusandtheGhoul"

Thomas waited a few minutes; and then suddenly,
"Yes?"
Eyes clicked and bloodshot, eyeliner now smudged across his cheeks, the man stared at Thomas with a look of rancid distraction.

"I felt the need to speak to you."

"Alright."

He had no idea where he was going with this.
The man began to tilt slowly back to his arm; but before he fully buried himself once again in his purple sleeve, he said; "Look, I'm just as confused as you are."

"fortheloveofJoveJesusandtheGhoul.."

Thomas simply watched him for another moment before he got back up to return to his original seat.
Passing by the woman once again, she grasped his arm and said, "sit next to me."

Looking to gauge her intentions for a moment, he sheepishly acquiesced.
She looked tender and frightened.

Thomas suddenly asked her; "What was the war about?"

She smiled a little and placed her hand softly around his neck.

"It was for the love of Jove, Jesus, and the Ghoul," she said.

Thomas's face, lost and confused, convulsed for a moment about to erupt a sentence before she kissed him on the lips
a long
passionate kiss
knotting tongues
sweet caress along the base of the spine
she pulled away

and said

"Look, I'm just as confused as you are. And I knew that."

Thomas, a little lost to it all, gazed at her for a moment and realized;
"You too?"

she gazed into his eyes with a warm embrace of a smile.

"Me too."

Grease on the screen makes me rainbows

I just recently became friends with an old ex-girlfriend of mine that I dated in 12th grade. We fell for each other quite hard, but ended like a terrible car crash.

I also ran into my most recent ex by complete fluke while on a bus in Vancouver. She was with a young man who seemed to shroud himself in the 'tough guy' veneer, while she had a cigarette on her ear and a look of sarcastic and cheeky false satisfaction which masked her emptied and defeated soul.

7 days later, on the same trip, I hung out with my recently re-befriended ex for the first time since the break up close to 2 years ago. She was absolutely relaxed with life, living with her current boyfriend, and rolling ecstatically in the intellectual life-love of school.

3 days later, back home in Powell River while sitting at a cafe between split-shifts sipping coffee and reading the latest headline about an American diplomat with the last name of Stevens being killed in Libya during a retaliatory bombing regarding an offensive depiction of the prophet Muhammad by an Israeli-American real estate agent, I realized what each ex represented to me.

Cigarette donned, soul bleeding and in a state of constant flux, my most recent ex had fallen into a ditch of solipsist misery over the entirety of existence. She was beginning to fill the empty whole with sex and substance abuse in an attempt to stave off anxiety and depression, inadvertently.. yet somewhat consciously.. digging herself even deeper into the great labyrinth of 'what the fuck.'

But, on the polar end, book in hand, smiling to the edge of the solar system over the complacent beauty of life and worried not at all with the misery of depth and study which hold no true consequence except as some strange self-fulfilling prophecy, my newly re-befriended ex was life as it is and was and always will be.

Calm, and disturbed only from without; never from within.

Within was flowing like a river, as within should.

And each time I spoke to her, she would tear the answers to all of my problems from the bottom of my soul as a casual statement, making the point.. it is always right in front of you, so what the fuck have you been looking for?

In my current state of limbo between the two representatives of ideal and un-deal, it was like she knew me better than I know myself, and all because she knows who she is; simple; refusing to become perturbed by the pointless confusions of the world which create no consequence aside from themselves.

I realized hers was the state of mind I wished to embody.

I did not want to live a life of a cigarette-laden ear lobe, ready to cope with another episode of existential confusion and psychosis, when I knew led to a pointlessly murdered soul.

a casualty of the stupidity which disguises as intelligence

like heroin disguises its hell in a flash of heavenly ghosts

To learn is a great joy
But how can you take it to heart
When the heart is a forever state
Of childhood beauty and love?

To grow up is to realize you had it right
as a newborn baby

Never, ever take life seriously because it really is just a game.