Fool of a Foolish Thomas Foolery

(Untitled, 2010)

Thomas was a fool, sure of that, he ran around with his pants down, tripped here and there, but took it like a man. He was the bravest person I ever met, and I called him the bear. He ran in circles of friends, he was quite popular, and when he told me he was leaving this rock I had no clue what he meant until the following day.

Two weeks later I received a call from him, he said he needed to be picked up, he was at some gas station, naked and lost. He had been on the news, or at least his face from his mother's photo album, and was reported missing. I never told anyone else that he had the intentions of leaving or rather, disappearing, I felt he wanted mystery, I think I gave him that. I finished my coffee, got in the truck with a flash light and shovel and took off to Nevada in search of my dear friend.
The road was quite, it was moments from dawn but it seemed to take forever. My headlights trailed on and on with a sea of little paired spheres of lights appearing all around the road. It was a little dreamy in the morning fog, the coolness hitting my windows and fogging the frame of my windows. It felt like I was on my way to something great in the American landscape, like Monument valley; a sight never taken for granted, and a place commonly seen as photographs but never quite make it as grand as being there and seeing how ridiculous it is.

The gas station was exactly where Thomas told me it was, with two giant billboards advertising a Indian casino in the opposite way I was travelling. There in the first light was a spark of human glowing in red and orange, lost and wet like a newborn, and cupping his junk. That Thomas I knew too well, he must've been the craziest person at that moment, as I pulled up, killed the engine and steadily approached with my hands waving the side of my hips as if I was about to draw some real western shit. I was confused at the sight, and throughout the whole time I was wondering, what the fuck happened to this fool.

Thomas screamed upon touch, he had pissed himself earlier, and then calmed down a bit after, and screamed again. I laughed and then realized he was serious, and so I just started talking to him in a way a stranger talks to another stranger when one of the strangers is in need of help and the other stranger doesn't exact know how to help so they need some help on how to give help.
In the car, with an extra small work coat on an extra large dude, Thomas stayed silent for the whole way back. The morning light was now settled into a white light scatter and everything that once was spectacular was now gone, it was a normal day. Every once in a while Thomas would turn his head towards me, and stare. I'd look over, and just say what, and he would just look beyond my face and smile. I was getting tired of wondering if Thomas was joking or now at this point, he was the type to get seriously messed up and be serious about it for a moment, and then fade into this foolish character again without anyone noticing and just fool you in a new way. Damn! I got ya again, dickhead.

But that never happened, he just stared out the window, with his cold flesh slowly turning the familiar orangish pink of his former self. We stayed silent for the rest of the trip, seeing the roads interrupted with the occasional driver, and then open and quiet again. Was Thomas really that fargone that he couldn't at least let a fart out and keep a straight face? At points I wanted to kick him out of the truck, he was a hitchhiker, but I had to take care of him. What happened to the Thomas that called me on the phone, did he go out in the desert and do some messed up drugs? The car started smelling like shit so I rolled the windows. I had to get my head right in Thomas' lap to roll his since clearly he wasn't doing anything for the next little while.

Bumps would be hit, the sun would rise, and the stops will be made; for gas, for food, and for pissing and shittin'. The desert rolled by and it was looking like a nice day in Tucson when we arrived to my place. With abandonment we find ourselves with a tool in hand, from a stick to a knife, and the clothes on our bodies potentially the last thing we'll ever wear. Our teeth clinch together, and we let out a good ole GRRRRR! and we become wild. We piss and shit anywhere, and we'll eat anything. I've been in this situation, and you've been in that situation, between you and me we've seen it all; small islands in the Pacific to which haven't been seen since the days of wooden pirates, to lost in the high desert to which folk songs were inspired by. With each time you think to yourself this day and the next are not good days to die, you have to get all the final arrangements just right, and by the time you do that, while surviving in the mean time, you get out of that situation, and soon those thoughts of how to die pass you by, forgetting them to the everyday grim. Back in and back out, it all seems the same sometimes. I haven't lost a lot of hair on my head, but I certainly have a fair share of whites. The ghost of our past is catching up, it will haunt us, say a yes-yes-yall and a boo-who, and who? But never will that ghost harm us, it can kick over that book, turn off and on that light really fast and strobe-like, but it can't touch us. These days I'm beginning to think I'm a wondering in circles, from a desert to an island, to a marriage, to a divorce, I keep doing the same thing, in different situations, over and over, until I'm at the point...

DAMN! GOT YA AGAIN, DICKHEAD!

(more elaborate: each time is a further attempt at something not yet perfected not yet realized, upon the moment, with each situation to read the air with a tongue, to taste the uncertain future.)

Momentary Pause

(The Tree, Maui, 2009)

I think sometimes I'm going nowhere but I end up at the intersection without realizing that I fell asleep at the wheel.

This thing keeps going because you keep going, this is a moment I would like to thank you, the viewers, for all your careful eyeing. I'll have some good stuff for ya soon, please bear with me.

WE ARE WILDer!

(November 25th, Sphere, Nocturne, 2009-2010)

About a year in the works by now, the folder on my computer called, CONTACT 10, featuring some of my favorite classmates in photo thesis, is now an exhibition on the break from opening.

With a collaborative effort from a fine young and talented curator and recent grad (ocad), Shelby Richardson, we were able to wrangle up an exhibition on the theme of nature.

Works by

Nathan Cyprys

Dianne Davis

Sherri Dawson

(yours truly)

Meryl "Medal Winner" McMaster

and

Darren Rigo

This exhibition is also the official release of my newest installation-based work, Before I Die, featuring the completed version of, The Man Who Disappeared, a speaking display case which narrates the last accounts of a nameless explorer before his disappearance.

To Each Their Own

(Lost In The Fog, 2009)

With stars crashing all around, I wonder how we survived. At first, I wonder how I survived, with a beating heart, and a hand in my hand. I felt lost, yes, buried under the ashes, buried under the rumble. I've become a mole, pale and blind, dirty and homely. An arm attached to a body, a face extends from there, and grows on me. I call it first light. To tell of wonders and such, to speak of things of imagination and dreams is to reach as far as your eyes could. But dreams reach as far as eye lids I tell myself. In the realm of Ifonly, where lingering thoughts dwell, and chance is enchantment. I dare not follow too deep, until I fall, break bone, and struggle to breathe again at the bottom of my well.

In a dark place I call my home, it is easier to live here, it is easier to conform to change, because it is easier to close my eyes and dream. And in time, the rocks and the slim form blankets to my comfort, I forget how to see, and believe there are stars beyond my well. For such things cannot exist, such as her hand still with mine, or sinking ships full of Aztec gold. It is an illusion, with shine and flicker, dancing before desire, I am drunk with my dreams I tell this demon.

I awake cold, and count the bricks that climb to the top. Counting each strain of muscle I see what I cannot, but do anyways. Brick by brick, I ascend. With slips of minor, and slipping a mind, I am sinking already but I push to stop such thoughts as I carry on. Each brick. In that dark-dark, it becomes a lighter shade of black, and detail starts to form before my eyes. I had forgotten my struggle to delusion, I am happy as I climb and climb.

Days pass, my arms are like sticks tapping against iron, my legs like old men doing the hammer dance, and I am surprised at my body, and perhaps my will. And in a moment, and in a scene, I hear a voice which sounds like me, but isn't me who fell down a well. No, it's the me that is still holding on, as he sings, line for line, starting with, and ending with, it is, it is the eye of the tiger; the will to survive.

...

I tell this story to my grandkids all the time, they used to like it but now they're older, driving cars, and listening to rap music. I try not to scare them away, or lose their attention, I try harder to get them to visit, but I would be lost without my son, my daughter, and my other son, Fredrick. I guess, I guess it is, after all, to each, their own, after all. Can't touch this! (as the author goes off to do the hammer dance)

(happy birthday, buggerface, 2010)

I look forward to another year of lower-case T trouble with this one.

Deserts of Sadness and The Infinite Love

(Lawrence Aki of Halawa Valley and his Taro, and his Land, 2009)

I was five when I first fell from great height. I got the wind knocked out of me, and I struggle to breathe. It was the first time I thought I was going to die, lying there on the grass, such a peaceful day in a peaceful place, it felt scary but it felt right. Relief came to me with that feeling of something which had been taken was now being returned. I was allowed to live again.

I remember reaching high, I remember the texture of apple tree leaves, and rotting apples. I remember slugs drying in the sun, and how I killed them by leaving them in my secret spot. Of all of the countless cuts and bruses, I think of the heart of a child broken for such silly reasons. I blame sadness. I can hardly remember my childhood. I blame you too. And in the end, I blame myself, kicking pebbles with my foot, pocket in hands, being foolish, being dumb. I have a heart, yes, I have a spirit on fire, hot hot red. But what have I become, with all this knowledge and all these threads. I feel hollow to a child, I see a smile as a canyon of the grandest and I try to aspire to. I see you as someone of love, someone who bares the scars and tears of a broken bird, but strong, as I hold your arm, strong enough to take off in full wind, and light enough to fly far far away.

Once I was traveling in the desert, I wrote the sadness words of my life. My mother told me we were coming close to where aliens would run across the road, she said we couldn't stop. We didn't. I stopped writing those sad words. For aliens, yes, for my curiosity, even more, and what of the possibilities I probably asked myself, there is an universe before me, in a creature running naked across the road, in a child's mind, and in a fool's heart. If I could tell that boy anything, I'd tell him that love is more than me, and more than you, it will take us higher than we had even been, and it will drop us from even higher heights. It will hurt when we fall, and sure there will be broken things, but you and I are strong, our hearts, they were made to be broken, over, and over. And I am sorry, I am sorry I will put you through this boy, but you and I have too much love, and when it spills, and when someone slips, we have to pay for it. With the only thing we got. You are love. That's all that matters. And then I tell him, that we have each other, and end it there.

The Gosh-Darn and Gosh-Darnest

(Lost Memories and the Bible of My Grandmother, of Holy Mountain, 2010)

To Whom It May Concern,

Maybe it was the little pines and the windy wind that took a piece from me and took a piece from you. It's that lack of, the smell of, and the push-goes-to-shove. I am speaking completely naked right now, and I'm not cupping it either:

If anything says yes, if anything means more, if anything tells me more and more so, I'll tie myself to a rather large log and leave it by the river. Because nothing makes more sense than nonsense. On the second thought, let that river take me, I'll either drown or learn to breathe like a fish, and once I'm dead and once I'm amphibious I'll know the way the river flows. The way it takes me over, the way it throws me to the rocks, the way it gives me time to breathe, only to sink me into its rapids. And if I survive all of it, I hope you'll still be there, I hope that you'll still listen to my craze, my delusion, in my wet clothes; torn like my flesh and like my logic, of reminiscence of once was. If you are still there, I will tell you the most wonderful story I know. Yes, I'll build it, and yes it will be epic, for it is all I am. Until then, I keep telling myself, until then, I'll be here, by the river, ready to rock the unsteady. I'll drown, I'll hit that floor, I'll tell you it all, with a scream of whisper, of tales of the tallest and the shortest of lies, with hair on my chest, with blood in my eyes, with all the fire in my soul. All the fire in my soul, please.

If we make it there, can you just hold me.

Sincerely,

-J. Rivers.

Being Horrible (at life)

(Upon, 22x44" c-print, for NEXT BIG THING (OCAD Student Gallery)

In some many ways. Something beyond tongues and butterflies. An awkwardness from awkwardness; that feeling; that need to speak. You have to get something out, but you're worried, or something, and can't do anything. It is the block hits you and that tells you, you can't speak, you can't react. There is a naked person in front of you, and you can't say anything. Neither can you throw your clothes off, and be merry with them. You're stuck, you're alone, you're both alone, and it's that awkward. I would like to think by now I can form some reaction, something to either create humor out of the situation, the same sense of humor which has helped me out of a lot of awkward situations, but even that falls short. I can look lost and then find a penny on the floor, and say, "I found a penny", but there aren't any on the floor, just someone's clothes. I am trying to make them feel like I am on the same level, that I too feel naked, and that we are both alone, I just have my clothes on. I don't want to upset anyone if I keep them on, so I usher them with saying, it's just me, with my clothes on, always, you know, haha... For a child you can just comedically fall and hit the floor, for an old person you can just ask about the weather, for a person quite similar to you, all you have is a risk that scares you into familiar discomforts or can just stay still, hoping they can't see you if you stay still enough. I would like to shake their hand, maybe even give them a good old international hug. Can we just have the best hug ever without it looking like a cop-out, that I was afraid. A hug that says, I love you, you human being, yeah, sure, we're alone, that's the human condition, that's existential and stuff, but this hug is two bodies coming together to form one, and that this is the brace that is the only thing keeping two things falling apart.

In the end, no one will clap, no one will cheer, no one will realize we just saved humanity.

Oh! You, Golden Child

(Justin Just In Time, 2009)

Good times with good folks goes a long way. You can spend your whole life trying to find the right company, the same producers of comfort and pleasure. I think I got it here in Toronto, a place I call a city of love. There's love everywhere, but not necessarily everywhere, but with the right people, close to your heart, they'll make you explode. I just wanted to say how much this city, these people, these faces, and these times are grander than anything of me, or you, and anyone we know, because it is happening right now, in our lives, and their lives, all around us, and within us, together and forever let's make this work, let's make it right, and you're damn sure it's all alright, because damn right I like the life I live, because I went from negative to positive (and it's still allllll good)(bab-baaby)(B.I.G).

More Than A Feeling

(Modern Ghost, from whatijustmightcall; Holy Mountain!, 2010)

Here's a little diary entry. I finished thesis last tuesday. Days prior I felt fed up and tired. I didn't see anything beautiful in my work because perhaps it was too worked, it was too watched, and it was something I had to talk about over and over. I got better at talking about work that was loose but I got tired somewhere midway. I was feeling like I just might not continue doing work for a while, and there was even a brief thought of doing something else. I am a stubborn person, I am also complicated and unorganized (in an unconventional sense, that unorganized like a sea of chaos only one person knows how to navigate through and when you ask that captain chaos he or she will tell you they can't explain it, but they'll try either way).

I say, it is my stubbornness that is my greatest and worst asset as an artist and as a person. I'll be stubborn to change when I feel it should it should remain or have a different direction, but it is my stubbornness that keeps me going. That's it, I'm too stubborn to give up now. And after writing a whole lot of something-something about one body of work, I just want to make work that is as loose as the pants you left behind when you got shipwrecked on a deserted island. I want to focus on the strange but beauty for a while, I want to start making work that is more intuitive than conceptual. I want a feeling over a reference, a pain over an intellectual epiphany. I'm not trying to change the world, but create something I like and for reasons I can't explain. I want you to have the same song that is stuck in my head stuck in yours. Moore than a feeling by Boston, and here's a youtube link because if you've gone this far with me, than I think you need to refresh your ears, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcsVPis1iNs

Learning to Love Yourself (More) pt. 13

(Welcome to the Jungle Pt. II, 2009)

UnDefeatable

1. Getting angry and getting frustrated seem like good ideas at the time but then when you eventually cool down they just look ridiculous.

2. Reason and reasonability seem silly too when you think of when you thought one way and now think completely differently. How can you trust your word when you're constantly changing your mind, it's like knowing yourself is knowing your greatest enemy (awkward small-talk at the urinal)

3. Sometimes lying can get you out of a bad situation, like lying your way out of getting your ass kicked. It is a means for survival, but why just let a lie or two stop there, why not use it to get people to like you. Just tell them the truth once in a while to throw them off.

4. Yes, survival. Like when your body becomes numb in cold weather, you wonder why your heart becomes numb after being broken (winter seems to get longer the older you get).

5. Good days happen, and when they do you realize it is a good day, with a smile, and you think positive about everything. ALL IS GOLDEN. You can lick the concrete for God's sake, everything is good. And it's because of all those bad days.

5 (pt.II). We constantly fall to be reminded how good it is to walk.

5 (pt.III). But as walking is a regular thing we do on a day-to-day basis, I should say we crawl, metaphorically speaking, we fall, and then crawl because we're half-afraid of falling again, and half-brave to walk and risk it all.

5 (pt.IV). And when we walk a good deal, it's hard not to feel good.

5 (pt. V). Now RUN!

6. I think we all need a partner (friend or other else) to hold their hand and promise to each other that we will help each other get through this*

*and this could be anything: a break-up, a death, a break-in, a bad day, a few things all at the same time, a quicksand pit, an apocalypse, or just a vague this that alludes to the universe of possibilities.

7. Sometimes the F-word could be a really great way to deal with one's problems, as simple of a solution it is, there is always something nice in the act of saying, fuck this*!

8. Man-up, Woman-up, kick the bucket, bite the bullet, and blow this popsickle stand (in a non-suicidal way), and make explosions happen (in a non-terrorist way). Ripe this, your, world apart, and make it a new asshole because this, and all of this, is yours, all your pain, all your guff, all your struggles, brother, sister, mother and father, are yours for a reason, to prove no to me, nor anyone else, but yourself, that you, and you alone (because we are all alone (Sartre)) on this, and it is your fight, it is your life, and your death, and you may only have this one and only life (Nietzsche), you get one shot (Eminem), so get up and get ready, rock this, and drop that, you got it going (on)(Marvin Gaye).

9. Because this.

10. Is it all: Before you, after you, and everything you, it means nothing, without you.

Broken Winged

(Somewhere in the Country, 2009)

Take a walk, fall apart and start it all up again.

From arrow tips and to deadly ends,

Poison darts to rough starts.

False beginnings and unpaved roads.

Unsettled waves and underground flows.

All of the above and a few who knows,

Counter balance who you were (for who you be),

For the future of prophecies and the most personal of legacies.

Like cookie crumble,

Jumble to be bumble, and ramble of the old ways.

For future days, rest for peace,

At least it ain't done.

Until winding suns, crossed-fades, and hey-days of hades.

A life time of maybes, the or to the yes and the no,

To be an outsider and to be in-the-know.

In-between the forest and the machine,

The manchete in the hand,

A strike for a stand,

To fall again,

True value is in getting back up.

Step up, broken heel to a limp,

Blood moist, damp, then vent.

Now saying what,

Now saying this.

Twenty-four years is this,

Too many years of that.

It's more than matter,

And it's more than a fact.

Each step, each break,

It takes more, and with each a shade, a split of core.

It gets harder, harsh, and tarnished.

Prism of shattered light vanish.

Into the thin and thinning,

Losing, taking, breaking, and fading.

Apart from this,

And apart from that.

Each a stroke, a failure, a joke, and a chance of fat.

Of mine, of yours, separate, equal, divided as we fall.

Knockle and skull,

For all and all.

Like a stranger and a friend,

We do this over (again and again).

Fragmented this, of bliss, of creation.

Phased out and phasing,

A peak in it's raising.

Soar like eagle,

Taunt like metal.

How I wonder how it all...

Now saying what,

Now saying this.

Twenty-four years is this,

Too many years of that.

It's more than matter,

And it's more than a fact.

For Other Things (i can't help)

(Aurora, 2009)

I try too hard (but if I didn't try hard enough then I feel didn't really deserve it). But that's not the world we live in, it's me trying.

I'll keep at it. With everyday. And soon it will be something else I try at. Because in the end, all that effort can be rewarded with either success or failure, and most of the time I feel like I had no say in the results (they just happen).

So I'll continue trying, if you don't mind, because if I didn't I'll just be sitting around with my hands in my pocket, kicking pebbles off the road.

The Forest Where Trees Fall (but no one's around to hear them fall)

(Triangle, 2009)

1) My uncle Gaaaa once told me, "A fart in your room when no one's around is a fart that is no fun."

2) I used to roll around in a human ball on my carpet until I rolled over my sister's mouse.

3) Billy and I used to make fires down by the ravine until I heard my neighbor's fence burnt down.

4) I kissed Mary when she was sleeping, I thought she was faking it, but she wasn't.

5) I use the walls of my closet to write naughty words, but they're more sad than naughty.

6) When I grow up I want to be architect so I can build homes that aren't falling apart.

7) I wish I could close my eyes and disappear.

8) If I could have any ability, besides from flying, I want to be able to talk to anyone, in any language, and understand them.

9) I think there should be an encyclopedia of every scar there ever was.

10) I hope I don't get old and forget where I put things.

and 11) If I could fly I could never tell anyone about it.

Smoke, Mist, and SFXs

(Just. Like. That. (in sexy night mode), from Reminiscence, 2008-2010)

I keep telling myself, one of these days (with rolling fist). I think I just might be full of love, and once in a while it might just be too much for me. I am overwhelmed, I hit the ground, and that's probably how I really bum'd my knee. There's some songs that come into my ear, bypass my brain, and make their way to my heart. Your name, your face, your memory do that to me with some much force I almost poop myself. I'm sorry if that is crude of me to say, if it is naughty and nasty, I am a disgusting person, a pervert and a loner. But if I were to die today, please tell me you'd remember be as an honest person (I think its the only thing I really try hard at it).

Sing me a song, let me sleep in your arms, and let me steal some more of your time.

I wish I could just be a little voice for you. I wish I could be that voice from behind the curtain. I want to be all mist and special effects, in full echo and intensity. Because once you're behind, once you see my face, I'll be a smaller man who doesn't fit the part. Kinda like hearing your favorite book was written by a serial murder of kittens, I sometimes like just knowing someone by their words.

That's all I have to say.

-b

b.o.n.e.r.s (which you give)

(I Wish You Were Here, from Reminiscence, 2008-2010)

Like all good things we had to put an end to this. Sorry to be said, without you I'd be dead. Set to stone, farewell you drone, now let's kick the road and go ...home. Bury me with a ton of trees, but not from ones which haven't fallen. Pick these (points to some dead trees), and if there's a house to be built, build it instead. For real, this time and the next, there's better use for waste, better taste for your haste, and sugary toothpaste (it hurts to tell you this).

I was never good at any of this, you know it better than me. I'm just, a just a little bit; a tweed and tot, havenot and forgot. I am history to me, and to you I am a past which is hidden by your shadow. For me, and to you, for I am growth that happens beyond your eye, like fungus, mushroom bloom and dances in your childhood room. Never to say what I am about to say, again, yes, with reverb and hiss, a little off the top, and always off the topic. I wish, you pray, one day, we, will, be this, transform to that, and grow like roots, digging toes into a sinking sands of a tide-washed beach. 1 and 2, a 3, a four, and a 1, 2, 3, FOUR, you know the score, let's do this to the fullest (let's do it hardcore).

Again my friend, you know the drill, with matching vannypacks and bootstraps. Panty hoes and low-blows. Oh! if anyone knows how this goes, it just has to be you, I know it is you, all blue, all red, all yellow, and all black (& white). For your delight, at your disposal, my face, your western front, and we're getting all quiet, before our storm.

Come on baby, hit me (just once, and again, one more time).

...

Repeat!

2bYNG-AGN

(Kawaki & Lawrence and the rock the brings the luck, Halawa Valley, Molokai, HI, 2009)

I am so awful. Awfully shy, awfully awkward, and awfully strange; the only place I feel like I fit is when I fail to fit in.

When I asked my mother if I will ever stop being so darn confused about everything, my mother told me: probably never, but that's a good thing. You just get older, and things get more complicated, but it's all the same (really), just in adult-size. But this time I don't get a little toy at the end of this meal; a meal I had to pay for; a money I had to earn; and a wallet I had to steal (not really, that just sounded nicer).

THIS GETTING OLDER BUSINESS NEVER REALLY GETS ANY BETTER (at least I don't think it does, but if it did, that would be nice (even for just a day)).

I started biking a lot recently, even when I'm not on a moving bike (stationary), and when I'm really going at it, I mean, like going the distance, and I'm passing everyone on the street, or I'm seeing people come in to ride beside me, and see them look at the miles I got on my display, and they look tired, and then leave; I feel young again. Not a young that is found when feeling old, because I'm not that old, but a young that is found in childhood. I remember that kid, he was the fastest runner around. All the kids would look fat and unhealthy to this (points to his chest with the only pride he has) kid. Because back then; back in the day, it was all about that. It wasn't about how much you can bench, or how many holes you dug; it was about how fast you can run, how long you can hold your breath (I'm no good at that), and having the best ghost stories around (I'm still pretty good at that, I did live in a haunted house after all).

I'm talking that youth, that kid, and those times; in these times, with these faces, and all that I have as a human. THIS AIN'T NO BOOK, THIS AIN'T NO MOVIE WITH A CLEVER NAME, THIS IS LIFE ("AND IT IS ALL HAPPENING RIGHT NOW")

So check it out now, because THIS funk is your brother!

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt.12

(My mother swims with a diver's weight belt and a knife, 2009)

W.D.Y.W.F.M?

What happens when the thing that once made you happy makes you sad? How do you deal with seeing their face, hearing their voice, and all of their gestures and imperfection that make them, them? Is it the contrast of who you once were, in a memory with them, in comparison with who you are today?

It hurts to know I used to dream more, that I saw a world with more possibilities, and had more enthusiasm. It is the before and after that gets to you, the knowing that the world was once greater and fuller of promise, and now all you have are memories with no real insurance of the future (oh, uncertainty). But what is left once all the cookies are crumbs? The answers aren't here today, and sure there is something to be learned from our past, but what I'm getting at here is that the future is where's it at. For shiny stars and futuristic landscape, where deer roam the field with robot-version deer, and where we picture ourselves happy again. Let yourself dream again, and escape this reality of today for another in future-tense. See the future as not something as far-fetch but as something that seems far-gone because it is that much different from today. And ultimately, see it as the opposite of how you see your past, and all your favorite memories to your detached present; letting the contrast fill you with hope.

Because it could happen, it could be true, and it isn't as ridiculous as wild as your imagination could be, or how your dreams see fit, because once we're there, in the future, it will no longer be the steps before us, and that once contrast will be the difference between yesterday and today. Once we're there, once we're happy again, and everyday starts with a burst of unknown excitement, we'll know we earned each and every moment of this and that, and everything; with each tear, and each fight, we earned the rite to be happy, to let our faces smile on their own.

Let the good times roll on.

Outreach Program

(October 17th, The Wedding of Lawrence and Eva, 2009)

I used to do this thing where I have someone stand before and I reach my arm as far as it could go. My closed hand would hover an inch away from their face, and I'd tell them to be as still as possible. I'd throw my fist at them over and over and miss them perfectly. Never once have I punched someone in the face from this act.

I have a cigar, a gift from Cuba from a friend, that I have been sitting on for a while now. I keep it hidden in a fake cigar box (McSweeney's 19th issue) for a time of celebration. The fact it still rests in that box, with the odor of Cuban tobacco seeping into the pages that fill the box, I wonder when such a time for cigar victory will be mine. When will I grasp the day, and call it my own. When will I look at my past with a grin knowing little of the harder times, the sadder times, the nothing-really-going-on times? When will I forget this little person I am today, when will I leave this plane of existence for another? When will evolution be not a thought or idea, but a means of living?

I see a face or two a day, that brings me to thoughts of possibilities. I ask myself if I am strong enough, if my foundation is still well held, and if my soul has enough calcium. I want to be that person who is a double figure before me, with all my thoughts as a separate vessel. I want that image to float before me, as I carry on, trying to reach what is there.

And where quotes are said,

"I'd rather chase an illusion than my own shadow."

Last Minute Valentine

Hello,

you,

stranger or friend,

or perhaps relative.

Today, at 1pm, I'll be doing a reading of one of my short stories. It will be one for the occasion of Valentines, and I hope to see you there. There are many others doing their thing there too, and they're a whole lot more lovelier and grander, so please see them too!

Holy Oaks,
1241 Bloor Street West,
Toronto, ON

And here's a list of the others, Amanda Rataj, Matthew E. Duffy, Thom Gill, Adam Harnest, Devon Sioui, Nathan Cyprys, Yuula Benivolski, Felicity Williams, Brooke Manning, Maya Postepski, Sabarah Pilon, Elaine Kelly, Elise Victoria Louise, Angela Sweeting, Taiha Peron, Stefan Berg, Allie Hughes, Andie Clifford, and Craig Currie.

(Hand in Memory, 2010)

Flood the basement where I dwell. Fill my ears with cotton. I say, you say, I write, you read. Stop in your steps, sink your feet into your shoes like feet on a beach the tide eats away. Remember when things were good, remember memories so far and so foreign. I call you, flutter and fall, dusty and wore, a face of the times; of times long gone. I linger on a song; a feeling, a goose pimple on a flat rough surface. I examine my skin, you once were smooth, a baby before the scratches. Time after time, all is the same, new faces come, old faces they turn, and what is fresh is fragments and gestures of historical figures, cave-drawings, doodles and Rorschach. Tie down for now, and a moment is made, a memory is filled, and is lost. Flutter, fly, dusty wings of a house fill with memories.

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 11

(School's Out (for summer), something of Bottomless, 2009)

If Only All Your Faces Were Pies, I'd Eat Them All Up

There is something absolutely beautiful in all of us. A character that makes us individuals, and in our time together learn the traits of others; with some we keep and others we leave behind. Over and over we become something closer to our history. Of all those we have known, their surfaces have scratched ours, and we have scratched theirs. They have rocked our very core, they have danced with our feet, taught us how to smile, and showed us how to live, and perhaps even to love. We are only examples of each other, picked and studied; fragments of everything and everyone, and what comes from all of this human wine-tasting is who we are.

Let's get back to who we are.

Try to pace your walk with a stranger, try to keep ahead of them by a step or two (as not to look like a creep that follows from closely behind), and keep them close. Slowly let them catch up to you, and walk with them for a while. Look around you ever so slightly and look at the faces of everyone in your sight; see them seeing you and your stranger as one, as something, and then look down to your feet, and look at the feet next to yours, and see if you are hitting the ground at the same time as them. Left, right. Left, right. Left, right (repeat).

Get Your Head (Outta of Your Ass)

(My Father's Hand, 2009)

I can't wrap myself around this, the field is bare, and the summer is long gone. Pity is a fool I forgot to call friend, and sequels are making their comeback this time of the year. I called her Josephine, she called me Waitz, and how I know of her name is a ringing of something that truly once was. I'm the dog that knows where his past is buried, but chooses not to go digging for that hole. There's a shimmer of who I am, who I once thought I was, and who was known as Waitz, and today; I sit on the fat of my belly, sick to tell a tale of forgotten love.
She asks me if he still lives, if I've seen him around, and I tell her, as cool as sharks playing a game of fortune, no. Don't get too close, I have teeth you know.

What Falls Apart

(untitled working image, 2010)

Tear it apart, take the splintered limbs, fragments in your hands, and walk down this path. The river man calls the ferry over, and we take a ride with him. For a while it is peaceful, as sky turns to dusk, we speak of the passing night and rehearse our stories together. To be on the river until you fall asleep in my arms. I whisper to your ear that this is where we belong. You heal the cuts on my arms; the scars disappear like the stars above. I ask to a nameless god of what creature we are, and how cruelty is as natural as caring for each other. The river man looks at us, and then stares into my eyes for a moment. He knows.
The current picks up, a grunt or two wake you as our guild fights his control. Soon our vessel will run wild, our screams will be heard from both banks, and no one will come. The falls are just before us, and I doubt we'll reach the eastern bank on time. Our cargo, our burden, will be thrown, and our hands will fight the hissing waters. I can hear the roar of falling water, and it is grand, it is great, and much much larger than me, or all of us together. There is a silence in the air, and just before we can wish of another life; one to be taken from our past and reversed in our ways, and just like that we float off.
Of baby trees, of fertile grounds; rich with mineral and life, of spitting rain on the surface of bare flesh, and such laughter that follows. I cried, your smile as grand as monuments, drunk in a moment, fireworks explode unexpectedly, and I carry you away in my arms like newly weds without a future, without a home, and nomadic like the barbarians.
The surge stops, the thundering sound of water disappears, and I see your face, lifeless and dull, eyes screaming to winged creatures, asking to carry us away from this. I swear I see your soul leave you. In my arms you feel weightless, and I hold on for as long as I could. I can't remember the rest, I can't remember what happened. All I know is we are here, somewhere in the milk of dreams, of legend, and of the past, and that we can no longer change beyond what has been done. Those who spoken, tell of our stories, but know not of what follows, for nor do we speak of such moments. We reached something grand, beyond our memory, and who we were could not have spoken for such times, so we left who we were behind. Something has changed, our flesh as the shells of what once was, but to us, now forgotten, for future is in our feet. Each step is new life, each breathe our own, together.

Give A Little (Take A Little)

(faye, pine, and mel camino, January 20th, 2010)

I'll meet you halfway, where the getting gets tough, and we'll have to use our life jackets for fire wood. I'll turn my bed into a boat, and we could live there for a while (an evening). We'll throw records on the player, I'll pull the pulleys and put the needle on right; a drop as quiet as a mouse fart. With each rotation, with each hiss, crackle, and pop we'll melt before the lamp and a dancing flame. Remember this time, remember that time, and let it all come back. Before we were, after we weren't, and what we are now, who you are, and who I transformed into, with awkward shoulders and naked in a broken miniature house. I'll operate on your hand, I'll pick away at it until all the splinters are gone. I'll hold them before your giant eyes, and you'll lick them clean off, and swallow whole the history of everything that once was.
A broken tree is cut down; the sons of farmers turned to a lifetime of being lumbermen, a tree grows alone in a forest, and over hundreds of years it has made millions of friends. A son loses his arm but gains a family. The axe is put on a plank and raised to live over the family couch where it collects the dust of a daughter, of a son, of a father, and of a mother for what would be a decades and a half before the son of a son is old enough to fit his father's shoes on.
Outside, just feet from the house; upon the first strike the son's arm withholds a quake that rocks his shoulders and jolt the roots his teeth. The axe drops and the son of a son never holds an axe again in his life. Through the window a mother looks to her one-armed spouse who cuts wood humbly off only few feet from his offspring. The father sees his son walk away from his fallen axe, and looks down to the axe and see visions of blood and bone, and a tear forms in the crest of his eye; this one is for my dead arm his wet eye says (drop). The father comes around, grabs his old axe for the first time since his accident, holds it firm in his good hand, his only hand, and takes a swing at that tree with a cat scratch from the previous axe attack, and strikes not once, but a second, third, fourth, and etcetera until the tree has lost the fight. With a sudden release the tree falls, crushes the man, and runs a line to destroy everything this man loves. The house falls, the son, fresh from his attempt at his father's shoes, cries in his room before the ceiling gives. From her kitchen window, the mother witnesses her spouse be destroy and decides to watch her demise as well. And of the daughter, we don't know, she was off in the woods too far from this narrator's eyes.

Years pass.

More years pass.

...

The house falls to legend, and told over campfire for years to come, but those days are no longer. The house has been taken by trees, and until a year ago hasn't see a human in what could be ages of Aquarius', and all the discoverers see is a lone oak that is cut perfectly and ready to be processed. The discoverers call their truck over, use rope to secure their bounty, and off they go to a plant where the tree will undergo a complex system of formatting only to be put into separate trucks and delivered to several lumber yards (four to be exact).

Where we bring you back into this story is when you are walking through a warehouse and spot a piece of wood that, in your eyes, is perfect. The piece is taken into your hands, and it's curse is cooled to your touch. In the next few days, what you end up doing to that piece of wood is rather graphic, so I'll omit the details, leaving you with splinters, and those splinters I end up having to pull from your hands, under a magnifying glass, the same glass I used on my father's splinters, and now your hands bring me joy in the act I call smoothing your hands once more.
The licked and consumed splinters travel through your body, and eventually they are disposed in means I would like to not mention, and that your unmentionables travel through a complex system of plumbing before they end up in some plant where they are filtered, and another complex system occurs, and a few more vastly interesting and complex things happen before we end up at the conclusion to this story.
Three, four splinters after what-could-be-the-worst-way-go-to, are reunited with the earth again. They make sweet-sweet love to the earth and as a result for their act, they form life, and this narrator comes to his conclusion by quoting Elton John.

From the day we arrive on the planet
And blinking, step into the sun 
There's more to see than can ever be seen 
More to do than can ever be done 
There's far too much to take in here 
More to find than can ever be found 
But the sun rolling high 
Through the sapphire sky 
Keeps great and small on the endless round

It's the Circle of Life 
And it moves us all 
Through despair and hope 
Through faith and love 
Till we find our place 
On the path unwinding 
In the Circle 
The Circle of Life

RE: Questions Dealing With People

(The White Knight, 2007)

Open Letter In Response to:

Open Dialogue: Questions Dealing With People by Christopher Heller

Dear Mr. Heller,

(How do I say this without sounding like I am delivering advice)

As humans, we are given too much choice, even for how we breathe. We can choose to fill our lungs through the mouth, or through the nose, and recently, I have been noticing when walking down the street of how my face would appear to strangers around me when my lips are slightly parted when gently breathing via my mouth. I have since switched to breathing from the nose, in the same sense of eating with my mouth closed, something I have grown accustom to since childhood. I ponder the act of being closed-mouth, and ask of you, how different being physically closed-mouth on a daily basis, whether in eating or breathing, from being closed-mouth in the sense of being reserved of opinion and verbal response.
In terms of appearance, the modern human has come a long way from the cavepeople lion cloth, or ropes of Paganism, but what does the modern human trend to wear? Falling into category, the choice is what feels best, and what is best is often socially adapted. On some days I'll put something on, take it off, and put something else on, and sometimes even further, I'll lift my flesh from the muscle and replace it with another, until I find the right appearance to embrace the day. But I ask why; why must I carry out these laborious measures to please viewers of I? Does my demographic determines who I am, and what social grouping I feel like I belong to.
Can we scratch off all this sociology and just talk lamesman for a moment? I am adequate to say I am an honest person. For example I correct myself, I tell others of my own corrections to their ways, or at least advocate it. And more often than not, I experience awkward and frustration from my honesty to myself and to others. But as I talk of self-benefit in a complex matter, I see open-honesty as a challenge; to say what you mean, and to stand by your words. I guess we all have our goals and admiration, and to be honest, to be well-spoken, even to the point where you reveal your flaws to perfect strangers, is something I see as the only way to live with myself. I mean, we're all in the same boat here, we're adrift, and as those sad and lonely existentialists would say, we're all lost causes (or perhaps I got the wrong message out of Existentialist 101). I guess what I am trying to get at here, after all the bullshit has been spoken for is, you. are. not. alone. and. we. are. all. in. the. dung. together. getting. dirty. being dirty. and some are having fun, and others not, but what's the difference really. There is no reward in living, only in surviving. At the end of the day, it's all about living with yourself, are you satisfied (I hope not, because if you aren't satisfied that means you're still thirsty, you still got fight, you still got kick, and goshdarnit, people like you)?
For some humans, freedom of speech is the climax on the tit (pronounced in this case as, teet, for the sake of rhyme), for others is about simply say what is, and that's about it.

"I'M FINISHED IT!"

Sincerely,

-b

[original letter from Christopher Heller]

Why can't I look at someone and smile at them? Why can't I tell someone, "I like looking at you. I wonder how you spend the day"?

While walking down the stairs commenting on another man's shoe, why do I feel so judged? Why can't I say what I want? Tell jokes that I want? Tell people, in my humble opinion, what the right thing to do is? How come I have to try so hard to be seen as an all-right dude? Will people have the temerity to say what they feel? Or do we not have a clue as to what to feel about another person? How come I can't cum on someone's tits?

How come people don't give a shit about giving a shit? Well if not, does it really matter to all of us to be among one of us?

How in the hell can you tell me what it means to be me? Maybe I have too good a sense of who I am and not a suspicion as to who you are, is that what I'm all about? Figuring out who you are? Or am I lost completely?

I hear too often the phrase, "All I want to do is..." This limiting, narrowing, simplifying statement tries to get at the meaning of what makes us happy absurdly sacrificing the complexities of happiness. I am thrilled to ask socially noxious questions as long as their grounded from a firm stance as to who I am and what makes me happy. Why should we hesitate about getting on together? It's all within our little windows of communication to share who we are with other people. Isn't that expressive? Shouldn't it be rewarding? But really, how come I cant cum on someone's tits because who really is the embarrassed one in that scenario? Do whatever makes you happy but please, lets be happy together.

from the Ontario College of Art & Design (University) publication, CadMium (in illegible font, the title that is).

The Right To Be Wrong

(December 4th, Wake, from Nocturne, 2009)

When I was richer, I used to take my son out on long walks through the forest that surrounds my estate. The forest would eventually gave way, opening the view to a vast field of all the shades of green, I would tell my son that this is all I have to my name. Of course, he was probably too young to realize the double meaning in my words, and only I hope he still remembers moments like that, especially since I am no longer by his side.
Memories of battleships and the first submersibles, my company had made for the war efforts, flash by as I cruised down the country road. My first wife is buried somewhere out there, her ghost rides passenger for the first five miles and vanishes before my house. She knows I have a new life; our time has passed, and I haven't visited her grave since the last century. I whisper her name over the whiskey and under the stone she fades beneath.
Josephine is my last attempt at a second son, my wife could not bare another. Elisabeth cries alone, takes trips down to the lake, and imagines drowning some day in those murky waters. I hold her hand, I tell her she is all I ever needed, and then I start by kissing her; the rest follows suit in my will, and her duty as my wife, to me, to me I say. I am not fit for such decency, I have taken something once beautiful and turned it plaid and ordinary.
In the garden, my son and daughter discovery the world of insects and of small and fancy plants, unnatural to the environment. My wife reads them Darwin, and I listen from behind my pipe, the sun is swallowed by the clouds today. Timothy, seven years old, to take care of his younger sister now, as I watch from miles away. Across the ocean, in a field of stars.
Elisabeth, you have grow with our children, you have taken my body, and sank it in that lake. I wonder if you imagined my body as yours, with each scar as your own, my eyes looked to the skies above, my body limp to the touch; sinking with stones tied to both hands and feet. What fitting words should be said to a man who profited from the restless arms of war, who showed his love in abstract ways, and carried the weight of his guilt before the weight of others.
To my son, to my daughter, to my wife, and to the one from another life: the sea wakes, the storm surges; beyond this port to the field of white crests, let the world fall to your toes, and may the landscape before you now fade to your discovery of new lands.

Look upon my banks, I'll be here for a while.

Through The Night Softly

(Bastard Image from Nocturne, 2009)

March 14^th, 1988

We hit the wall. We have fallen from the grace we once knew and loved; now it was tension and between us both existed too many words unspoken. The guilt in my gut, the words on the edge of my tongue were too much. I was going to drown her as soon as I started with, “It’s the way you, it’s what you do, to me”. The night fell silent, we slept like sheep, drunk from a night on the town, I was tired and in her arms like a broken bird. The feeling of flesh knew of the words I wanted to say, and she was there, absorbing them like acid. What dreams did she have that night, again, I thought of the tiny universe that existed just beyond my touch. Tonight we’ll be one, sucked, rubbed, burnt, and toasted, moaning utter nonsense; a language of lovers.

*Excerpt from The Way You Make Me Feel (of Coyote Blues)