Sans Serif Name Drop

Hello, Internet.

We have to have a chat. Not the kind of shorthand, acronym/abbreviation orgy of misspellings and insults you are used to. No, this chat demands your attention and doesn't flash by you in a flicker of one-hundred forty characters or less. So let's get down to it: you demand too much of my attention for such little payoff. I sit in front of your glowing tubes and peruse your many, many catalogs of vapid entertainment, top 10/15/20/25/100/150 lists, your articles that appear to have been written after several tumblers of rum.

And I hate every time I click my mouse on a snippet of text, underlined and in hyperlink blue (or purple, on an especially mundane day). I hate having a favourites bar with text that would have worn away, were the buttons real for how often I press them. I especially hate how I know there is a far deeper secret than I see on your surface. I know there are glorious places in the folds of your skin, and underneath that skin but I can never find the right path to them.

And your ability to 'connect' my peers and strangers? It is fueling our disconnection. Forgive me for being a hypocrite, old friend, but you are disease, spreading virally. Your spread and influence are creating a shockwave of malpractice in your users. You allow marketers to attack us with their wired ads, popping over and under and up, infiltrating the corners of our eyes with their banners promising naked women or fast cash.

I cannot stand your willingness to say whatever comes to your mind. I am not one for self-censorship - your target audience doesn't need to accept your statements for their reception of the information you bear is the unwielding reason of your being - but when you reduce yourself to becoming a puppet for those speak with no worth you become a useless entity, a fox with broken legs and a shaven pelt. Step up, my friend. You have more importance in you than to be an advertiser's Elysium.

You have many useful tools, I will never refute this fact. But you need to organize yourself in such a manner that these tools are on clear display, so I can use them when I need to. Take your translating sites, your magazines, your games and your (archaically illegal) downloads, and organize them. Make yourself into a suitable figure, one that is shaped from x to y to z on neverending axes. You will thank yourself for it. You digg?

Parles-tu un peu de francais?

Think of an island, full of beautiful things. Like bananas. Or sunsets. An island full of sunsets. Think of this island, your paradise. Now, imagine being on the island. Feel the sand on your feet and the sun on your skin and the salt water in the air you are breathing. And you are blind.

This is the way I will live in this new place, the Frenchland. My blindness is my inability to speak the language, my island the conversations floating through the air to my left and my right. As hard as I try and no matter how well my French accent when I am de speek-ing de English, I will still be the blind man on the island. But my sight will be granted, soon enough. Struggle shall doubtlessly be an occurance but I will grasp the tongues with my fist and twist them until they are my own.

This is alright. I know what I signed up for when I packed my bags and moved my boxes. Come visit some time.


Afterthought/Aside: If you live in town, let's spend some time together!

INTERMISSION

No serious entries until I am in Montreal.

Sorry 'avid followers.'


PS. You should leave a comment to let me know you are anxiously awaiting a new post.

Susurrus

Today, this word was stuck in my head as I methodically, mechanically, mindlessly washed dish after fork after tray at the pizzeria I work at. I could not remember what it meant except that I had read it used to describe the flow of the waves on the ocean. But I knew it related to my life. It is a beautiful word, susurrus. The waves whisper as they crawl atop the ocean's surface. The static of the television screen emits a repeated hiss. Life goes by with a rustling of its leaves.

My hands are soft now, from the dishwater. And the grease in the air still clings to my hair and skin. In a week and some days, these concerns will be gone. The Frenchland will have swallowed me whole with its mouth the mountain town. In a year, there is a black space. I see myself in Limbo, floating among the nothings, the nevers, and the nots. Five years from the now, the limbo has vanished and there is only blank space. That place is Beyond nothings and nevers, Beyond everything. It is unpainted, with no foreshadowings. Past that remains the Beyond. But for now, there is grease on my skin and grit beneath my nails. And I cannot wait for the Frenchland's teeth.

Limbo does not scare me. It is a comfortable zone, one I have seen many times in my short history. Long-term plans elude me like that girl with the perfect dress and perfect shoes and perfect hair. But Limbo is always there, ready to tell me the plan. I will figure it out as I go, it says. And Limbo moves ahead, minute by minute, as do I. And the Beyond forsees Limbo's movements and takes brief steps, ahead by moments. But eventually, there will be nothing left. Beyond will become only a memory and Limbo a place I do not want to call home. There will be wrinkles on my skin, a lack of hair. And a quickly dawning realization that this is the end.

And when that moment comes, my life will have passed through the universe with the quiet susurrus ripples in a pond's broken surface make.

This Little Piggy Goes to Market; This Little Piggy Brings Us Death

There is a sliding door in my father's new house. It opens to bathroom #0.5 on the first floor, which is essentially a white closet with a toilet, a sink, and a mirror. The other night I was brushing my teeth to a song when I glanced behind my right shoulder in the mirror. At the doorway. Beside the sliding door and the inside of the wall was a deep black space. I froze, my mind panicking for a very brief moment, then I relaxed. I got curious, and turned around to look into the darkness, unsure what lay at the back of the tiny crevice. I could not break the darkness. Fear wrapped a fist around my gut and I quickly turned back to the sink, averting my gaze from the harmless blackness of the door's home away from closed. I do not know why I was afraid then, but I do not think I will gaze into that hole again tonight.

I do not ever feel comfortable swimming in dark or especially deep water. I have an irrational fear of sea monsters. You may be hovering over that comment link, ready to say "No, Will! Sea monsters is a totally rational fear!" but I am disappointed to say that it is not so. Simply put, sea monsters do not exist. There are no giant water serpents or carnivorous, many-tentacled beasts swimming through the depths of the Lake Pollutario or the Larry River. However, I am still afraid of these dangerous creatures ripping me from the surface I so avidly doggie-paddle across. Whenever I think about these deep waters, I see my face as one of the aquatic beings drag me under and it is not a pretty sight. My mouth is open in a vacuous "AHHHHHH!" and my eyes are popping too far out of their sockets, my pupils tight with fear. I watch as my hands sink below the surface for now and ever, fate deciding I am to be the meal of an overgrown water snake. So, instead of swimming around for lengthy periods of time, I jump in and quickly swim to the ladder, fear shaking my spine and making my arms and legs forget the swimming lessons I took in my younger years.

It is no wonder to me why I am afraid of these things. I think about sea monsters every day, and I would say that sea monster-related articles are number one on my Wikipedia searches. And the crack in the wall? That fear I attribute to the various horror films I have watched alone, sometimes in the dark. No dark crack is ever just a dark crack. There is something lurking inside every shadowed hole and blackened rift. Or while you inspecting said rift, something will stealthily make its way behind you and get you/gut you where you stand, that look of surprise on your face showing only to the darkness.

These fears are irrational, yes. Perhaps a small level of paranoia as well. But that is why I ignore these fears whenever they surface. I don't have to be afraid of murderous psycho ventriliquist dolls or men and little girls in masks with knives or big water dragons with teeth and tentacles. I can say "I am not in danger," and as long as I do not enter a horror film through the broken fourth wall, I will be fine.

I read recently that in the same time the media has been broadcasting about this 'swine flu pandemic' in which seven people have died (as of April 29), thirteen thousand people have died from the regular flu. And you are afraid of the swine variation? That seems a little irrational.

Suns; Doters

Summer is a lover. It is hot and wet and gets you naked. All the best things are done with summer. Like a lover.

Two years ago I met a girl who never left my head. We were good, then we went bad. I'll take half the blame for it, but fuck if I didn't try to get her back. It didn't work. This girl, she left my life for a long time after that. Almost a year she was absent. I was angry with her, with the whole situation I found myself in, the discordance between us. I haven't tried so hard for one girl in my life. She made my sentences stop short and my cheeks to flare up as I summoned the courage to try a new line of conversation, one she might actually respond to. It never worked.

On the last occasion we spent time together I played my hand too swiftly, burglarizing a touch of her lips when she wasn't all the way ready to give. So she's been gone for another year. She was too stubborn, too strong to do the usual thing that night and just give in to a dude with an interest. And I think that's part of what makes me always go back to her, even if it's for nothing. It's some sort of Wild Hunt for me, following the wisps of hope through the bushes and the brambles for a kind of fulfillment. Even if it's for nothing. And I'm not trying to make that sound chauvinistic, or like she's some kind of trophy, because I'm not that kind of kid. Whatever is at the end of the Hunt, that's what this is. And I don't mean the carcass.

Now it's summer again and she's risen in my life once more. Prospectively, anyway. Maybe this summer will be the one I finish the Hunt. The weather's nice, the girls are wearing shorts again. All the best things are done in the summer. Like a lover.

Ghosts Don't Stink; Ghouls Can't Walk Through Walls

Hello two a.m. friends. Well, you are two a.m. friends to me because I am writing this at two a.m. I'd like to talk to you about the undead. I have an undead problem.

Ghosts follow me around these streets, you know. The memories of my pubescence stink up the sidewalks, the pathways, the old haunts. It isn't nice being stalked by your self. Your history. Do you know those times when you think of something embarrassing that you did and your cheeks flame up and you carefully watch every action you do to make sure you are not being an idiot when in fact taking all that time has made you look like a fool? Those kinds of things occur a lot when you move back to a town full of ugly specters. I see girls I knew in high school and hope to the left and the right that they do not remember me for the caustically defensive geek I was when they last knew me. I duck from the ghouls I used to be friends with because I know their chemicals and my compounds only form noxious gases now. And I walk the streets remembering the times I've spent on them, alone or with my father or my friends.

The girl in the park and I met on her birthday. That girl's best friend and I, dating through a tumultuous winter, two fumbling kids messed up in the dark. The boys and their milkshakes, crossing the tracks. The older friends and their basement games, dice and devils with sharp teeth, red lights. The three girls in one month, running through them like a box of tissues almost empty. Haven in the back of a used bookstore, older guys and staying out late, a twelve year-old boy. The fight in the snowlit twilight. Kisses by the train. Shouting "Fuck you" to the dark countryside. Smelling cigars and feeling safe. Getting sick off a balcony, telling everyone "I love you." Leaving and feeling free. These are the things I remember, the things you do not.

These are my ghosts. These are my ghouls, my goblins, my bumps-in-the-night. These are the things that make me flush with embarrassment or a grin to crack my lips apart. And no matter how hard I try, I can't kill them. I don't know if it's because I love these creatures or because I am simply incapable of murdering them due to some supernatural invincibility, but they will not disappear. I can't kill my past, but I can make sure my future is one thriving brilliant beast. A unicorn or a griffon or a beautiful girl or something regal like that.

So my two a.m. friends, I just wanted you to know this: I'm learning how to deal with having the undead for neighbours and stalkers and watchers and friends. It's not so bad, once you get past the smell.