The past couple weeks.. this most recent week, in particular.. has been the time of my life, with an unprecedented culmination of simultaneous events of superfluity, pleasure, pain, confusion, love, depression, and substance abuse. Last night was my 6th straight night of drinking, and on top of that, we hotboxed a bedroom and dropped cubensis mushrooms. I haven't worked in a week, and slowly December is creeping up on us already, making me fret about rent less-so than food (I really don't want to ask my roommate to lend me money as I already owe him and 3 others substantial sums of currency on-top of the fact that I need to pay to live and wish to save for a so-far pipe-dream trip to Iceland in June).
I'm testing out a new preemptive form of blogging in which I input videos of songs or whathaveyou that I happen to have listened to / am listening to while I write this post in order to add an extra dimension of subliminal communication between my mind and the mind of the reader (welcome to my head, I've prepared some hors d'oeuvres), Scroobius Pip, everyone:
As soon as I say that, the song is played a second time and I can feel the vampire of corporate American music exhausting my spiritual blood supply.. so on to greater things in the next video. Something genuinely inspiring, and not some laughable teddy-beared ego in expensive clothing.
Anyways.. back on topic, I've been hurting profoundly inside and can't find it in myself to look for the transcendental solution, whatever it might be, so instead I allow my conduct to be willingly influenced by the poetic trend toward adventures in alcoholism starring Jack Kerouac. Last night, I went home and sat in bed with my computer trying to distract my mind by giving it way too much to chew on in the form of the late, great Terrence McKenna
and that all-too-familiar hopeless sink-hole spirals into my bones as I realize I'm basically out of work, may not make rent, am in-debt to more people than I care to remember, and recently lost a love that I can rationally realize had turned into a toxic kill-zone but emotionally speaking, I still love her as much as I ever said I did despite all of this.. dead and remembered trace-images of her face soaring eerily throughout the empty streets of my mind like tumbleweeds across the desert or plastic bags across a car-less urban parking lot, maybe malls at night in Powell River.. so, regardless of a hangover and 3 hours of sleep (it being 10 PM now), I text my friend Chai and ask him what he's up to and if he wants to get together tonight so I don't have to deal with my own fucking company or think about Anya like some sad little pony boy who cries at the end of every sad movie involving a cancer death.
Chai is an interesting fellow. For the sake of privacy, I will not go into much detail, but to summarize, he is in his thirties, born in Thailand, moved to Cambridge upon his own initiative in his early teen years, and somehow managed on a scholarship for Oak Bay High School, thus plotting himself into the intricate path of my life by graduating and deciding to work himself relentlessly at three jobs, one of in which he befriended my 'brother-by-design,' Tim Reuben (high-school friend, we go way back). This sets the stage and the now-inevitable introduction occurs 2 months ago, he and I hitting it off right away as I see he is a man of no pretension and much genuine kindness. The end of the world comes to neither of us as long as we are talking.
On this particular night, I manage to leave the sordid me at home, in exchange for the bottle and a realization that everywhere else feels more like home then my home actually does (my room a barren waste of a bed, a bookshelf, dirty laundry, and unposted posters- note the suitcase that I have been living out of like a dresser drawer since October of 2011).
Chai and I make the most of our vices (as we always do) downing beer after beer, smoking 'tea' (an old 60's term for marijuana that me and a few friends are attempting to bring back), and eventually deciding on toast topped with butter, jam, and psilocybin as Richard Linklater's Waking Life melds into the streamers of color branching throughout the room which now seems to be breathing slowly like a Tibetan monk at thoughtful rest. I try to feel ashamed of myself for substance abuse, but can't take it upon myself to really believe I'm doing anything wrong. So I keep sipping at my amber ale knowing that the only shame is from society and parents wearing creased foreheads thinking, 'I didn't teach him to brush his teeth so he could drink himself to life.'
We're up until the suns up, pursing our lips out a now-open window in an attempt to make our own little clouds. I can't help but wonder if I'll ever sleep again. Eventually Chai has to float to Esquimalt for work. I migrate to Tim's place and try to sleep, but instead find myself on my third cup of coffee writing this personal expose for reason of case-study, therapy, art, and the great big 'why-not?'
The other night I attended a party at Uvic in which it was my second night faking a British accent to much critical acclaim and success. Despite my admitting to being Canadian, no one seemed to mind the impersonation (except friends I'd grown up with.. 'I've had enough of it!' said Joseph half-affectionately and half-actually-annoyed, sick of British accents as he was born and raised in Northern Ireland), and in fact, girls found it quite attractive.. especially when combined with an awkward retreat into the corner with someones textbook on Latin syntax because I honestly was not sure if I dug the club-bro vibes of a couple of guys desperately and drunkenly grasping at straws of culturally abhorrent misogyny. A couple girls followed me into the corner and asked if I was learning Latin.. in boyish Birmingham I reply that I am not, but that the 'structure of language' is something that intrigues me to no end.. finding Latin especially interesting as many English words root back to Rome. The conversation flows, and eventually I'm talking with a girl who claims I'm her male doppelganger (fringe-blonde hair, a British father, interest in similar subjects yet I'm not convinced we're actually doppelgangers because she's in school studying biology and is literally busy 95% of the time.. both of which are very not-me as I tend toward the lazy 'wow-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life' kinda vibe and also, she makes time for exercise, which I do not, and has a very nice flat stomach which I suppose I also share but not for the same reasons). We hit it off, and head to her room just to hangout. I feel too strange and anti-misogynistic to attempt a one-night stand with someone I just met, but foreplay and make-out and agree to sleep with one another.. literally just sleep with one another. Our conversation circles the entirety of the universe from the smallest string within an atom, to the marbled stars spread endlessly across the sky.. and immediately, I have a crush on her.
Mid-sentence, I interrupt her to ask if we could ever go for coffee together. She says 'yes' in theory, but 'no' in practice as she is (see above) busy, quite literally, 95% of the time. Perhaps it was just us in a philosophically drunken stupor, but I have thought about her since and hope life is kind enough to let us meet again.
Eventually, she ended up kicking me out of her bedroom as I could not escape an obnoxious insomnia-head plagued with a trillion little synapses. I was hurt, but couldn't blame her. At least she thought my Canadian accent was sexier then good ol' Birmingham (my new nickname for my accented alter-ego). She gave me her number, I texted her once, she never responded. I wrote her a poem while she slept and woke her to read it aloud, perhaps I came on too strong. Honestly, but strong. She thought it was beautiful, anyways, so here it is:
Tomorrow is a sliver of custom
and today is just tradition seating the young for fairy tales written in Sanskrit.
she sees through the veil, only because the water split by divine intention,
and confusion is left beached and butchered in a slab of brain meat way up there--
trapped in the solstice of carrion baggage and the summer months of mind.
I wonder if she'll forget me
as the morning singes the corners of the earth and crumples whatever idea I had of nothing
and nothing and nothing and nothing
reminds her, exist only in detail, in prose:
so roses are red, violets are blue,
eruptions occur, and the water sees you
the water sees you.
I'll leave it on this strange, awkward, embarrassing note, and just let the experience write itself out (I hope I see her again)
fin
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