Bye Bye Blog

It’s almost been two years folks and it’s time to move on. I haven’t been nearly as prolific as I had hoped and this wee bit of cyberspace is taking up some much needed room.

Hope you liked what you read.

The Clear and Ever Present Now

It’s a grayscale afternoon/A flat humidity wrapped in a low gray sky/Oppresive and threatening air. It’s nostalgia weather.

The type of day that makes you listen to warbly chanteuses and troubadors pour out their melancholic hearts through your headphones. You ache for times past and friends that live an ocean apart.

Time was soft then. We were smart and cooler then we knew. Spurred on by the blind mission to be different.

Polaroid dreams now. Climbing buildings. Dance parties. Easy laughter. Gang wars. Fearless with a smile. Waiting impatient for the day we’d be free from the John Hughes tropes.

But the layer of humidity falls off sooner then expected and cloying memories evaporate. It’s time to begin again and live for the clear and ever present now. Trying your damnedest to stay focused while ambition and clarity are clouded by late night anxieties. Answers aren’t locked in photo albums or treacly blog posts.

But we try to escape the grasps of reality through celluloid dreams, six word stories, second guesses and procrastination. Perhaps this cocktail of evasion will work its magic but for right now … it’s fueling a healthy habit of misdirection.

Sounds like adulthood to me.

C’est La Vie

You’ve changed someone told me recently.

“For the good?”

“For the better”

“What was I before?”

“Blue”

“And now?”

“…You’re better”

I was all sloth and contempt. Self inflicted wounds courtesy of cabin fever and a Vitamin D deficiency. If this were the fur trade I’d have been the first with scurvy. I was clawing for answers. Living with my head in the past – stuck in dank and humid memories refusing to see what was right in front of me. Clear as day.

~~~~

Looking at the skyline I sighed.

“It’s beautiful right?”

“Yeah…I’m almost starting to like it here.”

She bit her tongue. She wanted to say: “Well I’m here.” She didn’t out of fear of seeming needy. Don’t show weakness the rule books say. Be independent. Don’t open up. Don’t expose yourself for being anything else but a wry maven with wit in spades. Protect yourself … bite your tongue.

He looked at her silhouette in the stillness of an urban dusk and sighed. She laughed at his weariness. They stuck their feet in the water and let them sink in the quick sand as water lapped against the shore.

Their silence was easy and the space between them warm.

“After six years…I gotta say. It’s pretty damn beautiful”

“It’s a hell of a view.”

“It sure is”

Let Forever Be

Inspiration can eat away at you sometimes. It can corrode your well being and suck clarity out of the ether that surrounds you. To put it simply. Inspiration can cloud your judgement. Wallowing in self pity can lead to great prose but after those words have flowed out of the tips of your fingers and on to the pad of paper it needs to be expelled. Move on. Find something new. Something sweeter that confounds and compels you to sing. Lingering can bring you no good. Only heartache.

Keep moving. Push yourself. Seek it out.

I sound like a self-help guru.

I haven’t posted in a while for that very reason. My inspiration stagnated. I held on to what I thought was good stuff until it was rotting in my hands. Limp and petty. My anger had gone. So had my need for clarity and closure. There comes a point when you just can’t live in the past anymore. It’s debilitating. Yet when you live in a fog memories and it’s comfortable, calm and sweetly melancholic it’s hard to just say: fuck it. It’s hard to understand why you’d leave.

Then after one too many night of licking your wounds alone on the beach at night. Or telling the same story. Or reading the same passage you realize you’re fading. Pale. Sallow. Weak. That aint no way to live. Worst of all you’re at a loss of words. And that…you’ll think is never a good sign.

So with confidence, conviction and commitment you let bygones be bygones and breathe a sigh of relief and move the hell on with your small, slightly insignificant but nevertheless entertaining life.

Sluts R Us

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the word “Slut” as: “a slovenly or promiscuous woman,” it’s derived from Middle English and has no known origin. The OED may be the most definitive record of the English language – but that definition is being hotly contested by a group of feminist activists based in Toronto. On April 3rd their voices were heard, thanks to the first annual SlutWalk. A protest that promised to tackle the destructive practice of victim blaming in instances of sexual assault, redefine the word “slut” and act as a counter argument to the disparaging remarks made by Toronto Constable Michael Sanguinetti. Who, at a York University event in late January, said: “if girls stopped dressing like sluts,” they could prevent being raped. His much-quoted slip of the tongue sparked a flurry of debate about sexism in the police force and the myth of the “slut” in our society.