End of the World

[study]

My bedroom window faces west. When you look out, you can see the giant warehouse, the old Sears building converted into condo lofts. You can see the big glowing red Metro signs, beckoning you with the promise of store-bought bakery smells, 24 hours of bright fluorescent lighting, a once fresh-obsessed supermarket cozily sitting under the lofts. Sometimes, the homeless man stands outside in front, with a few blackened copies of a newspaper in hand, and chants, “Support the homeless, buy a paper.” Sometimes in the heat of summer, he would whistle a one line tune, over and over again, and you can hear it slicing through the humidity, into my room.

There used to be a dog across away in the mixed government housing, and he'd bark into the night and early morning, keeping you from falling asleep and waking you from your dreams. It's probably black, big like a German Shepherd, and chained to a fence of one of the garden units facing into the inner courtyard. You might have thought at first that he was just trying to get inside, but after one hot and sweaty July, you realize that maybe he was just lonely.

The street is not a long street, it just goes from nearly my building, over several large city blocks, cutting through Ryerson University, to end at Yonge St., a street that was once the longest street in the world. You can't see it from my window, but the street passes a small concrete pond, where ducks would swim and seagulls would hang out. When it becomes cold enough, the water freezes to become an ice rink, tended by the city Zamboni, and kids and students would descend upon the ice, sometimes a late night hockey game or usually early morning couples on an outing. In the spring, in between when it's a rink and a pond, the water is completely drained. Skateboarders would take the two or three day drought to practise their aerials, attempts to float in the air, or slides on the coping of the pool, their decks leaving dark grey scars on the concrete. You don't know how they know when's the drought, and you only realize it when you can hear their scratches and bumps and grinds as you approach the pond.

Around the block at the end of the street, soaring billboards and jumbo video screens flash their lights, pictures and movable type, electronic sentinels watching over you, as you travel across the pedestrian scramble. Fleets of cars move slowly in all directions, tourists loiter at the fountains in the square, buskers sing and dance amongst you and me. There is always a light hum in the air, constantly surrounding you, faintly following you, fading in the scent of waffles being made at the waffle stand. When turning back up the street, it's gone, disappearing into the trees that line the street, perhaps camouflaged by the rustle of leaves falling and the quiet footsteps of students criss crossing to their classes.

Once you pass the concrete pond, the clock tower overlooking the statue of the university founder, pass the student centre, you can see the glow of Metro signs approach. Sometimes, the neighbourhood firemen park their fire truck in front, waiting for the one inside to finish picking up their dinner groceries. In a couple of hundred metres, you will pass them, and you will be at the end of the street. From there you can see my bedroom window.

I forgot I might see, so many beautiful things

[letter]

I haven't received a letter in the mail in a long time. I receive emails everyday, but not physical letters, where someone has taken the time to write by longhand and post it in the mail. Not to denigrate emails -- because I know writing emails take time, maybe not as much time, but time it does take, and can be more multi-media friendly, and often easier on the hand, well, for touch typists anyway -- but a letter in the mail seems magical, as if a piece of paper after having travelled kilometres suddenly have the power to connect me physically to the writer. Handwriting is unique, you can't mistaken someone's dotted i's with circles or loopy descenders, just as you can't forget someone's extremely long eyebrows or mole on his nose. Even a typed letter evokes a certain magical quality, perhaps from the stamps that may have been licked by the sender. When I come home after work, I always, excitedly, check if I got mail. Opening up my mac Mail or google mail doesn't quite compare. Perhaps it's because I read email every day at work, and during a stressful project, receiving another email fills me with dread. And while I almost always get junk mail or bills, and the occasional postcard (because I collect them and cajole friends and acquaintances to mail them to me), I still hope to get a letter in the mail.

I haven't received a letter in a long time. But I haven't written one in a long time too. It kinda goes both ways. While writing Christmas cards (do they count as letters? I'm not sure why, but I don't think so.) I found an old unfinished letter stuck in an old notebook amongst the stacks of note cards, Christmas cards, stationery. It was dated June 19, 1996, on yellowed, lined, three hole punched paper, and addressed to shib. It was a beginning of a letter, written just before the beginning of a class I was taking that summer (19th century lit, if I recall correctly). I don't remember writing the letter, which isn't surprising since I never finished nor mailed it to shib. Even though it wasn't addressed to me, and even though it was I who had wrote the letter, reading it made me feel as if I had received a letter from someone I had known for a long time, but with whom I had lost touch. The words and tone of the letter were familiar, the voice was mine, but it didn't really feel like it was me.

Still, it was a hand written letter, and seeing my handwriting made me connect to the younger (and I like to pretend, more innocent) joe that lived over a decade ago. That time in 1996, I would have just met Y a month earlier, and had fallen unexpectedly in love. Y would've been driving through the Rockies that summer, working with some researcher on rock slides, sending me letters from small towns, his somewhat girlish handwriting triggering many daydreams of seeing him again, while my mind focused in class, and my heart in BC. I think shib would've been in Atlanta, at Emory, and it wasn't that long ago, then, that she left Toronto. I asked her about people I had nearly forgotten, and I had talked about friends whom I've not seen in a long while. The letter was happy, excited, and felt like it was written on the cusp of a whole new life not yet revealed to that joe in 1996. He had so much optimism, (perhaps, that's the by product of young love?), he had so much to look forward to, and he had so little experience in life, full of unearned wisdom he could not understand.

Reading the letter was both strangely enlightening and unnerving. A part of me wonders if I ever knew this joe, and wonder who is this joe in 2008? They are like two different persons. Over 12 years later, shib is now just beginning a whole new life with a whole new family, Y and I are good friends, family even, but we haven't been a couple for several years now. My optimism has been replaced with a tempered hope that life goes on without too much pain and sorrow, that will inevitably find us all. I still believe that I have a lot to look forward to, and while I have been very quiet this past year on this blog, I am excited and feel that my passion had been re-ignited from last autumn in 2007, pushing me forward this past year. But this year has also been full of sorrow, as well as lots of changes, and I am still heartbroken over a brief moment I was in love again.

At some point I might finish that post about my past year, but for now, I finished a new letter to shib, In that short letter, I pondered over us, then and now, in the yellowed light of the years past. I sent her both letters, and a home made Christmas card (which Y and I silkscreened on the floor of our kitchen!), and I wonder now, what she thinks of the joe and shib of 1996? Does it matter what we think? We shouldn't forget who we were, but we must always move forward. Perhaps I'll just wish that we all continue to grow and learn and look forward to wonderful new experiences in 2009.

Hope everyone's Christmas and festivities (for those who don't celebrate Christmas) were very merry, full of food and good drink, as well as good company. Ours were! And if I don't post again before the new year, Happy New Year to everyone, and may 2009 greet you with good fortune, happiness and most of all, lots of love!

Write some letters, send some postcards, and I'll try to post more often too!

you can make believe when we're apart

[edits]

In my head I think I'm 25. Well, the voice in my head is 25. (No, I'm not hearing voices.) He hasn't aged, he just gets wiser, more experienced, he's still 25. But after staring at the new blogger html code and trying to figure out why Haloscan doesn't load properly in the new blogger version, I think he just aged a few more years. Unlike a good cheese, he's just stinky at learning something new. Like life, things get more complicated as you become older. Maybe I should actually learn html properly and maybe go take a class. That would knock off a few years, hanging out with cute young guys?

happy belated birthday to me

[celebrate]

It was my birthday last Friday! It was a quiet birthday, just dinner with Y, sunshine and Brucebruce at the old standby, John's Italian Cafe. Unlike previous years, I was not sick. But unlike previous years, Y was very busy and went off to Ottawa for a few days for work, so he didn't get a chance to get me and K-chan (who's birthday was also on Saturday) a birthday cake. K-chan and beingboring (who's birthday was on the previous Tuesday) couldn't make it to the impromptu dinner on Friday, too.

But it was a lovely birthday, low key and quiet. Just like the blog, the past few months.

Now where to begin? Or not? There have been some changes since my love may be invisible. And it has been invisible, my love for the blog. I needed a break, since it seemed then that things needed to change.

I'm at a new job, away from the old craziness, having started on Dec. 31, which I explained to one of the managers that it was both the end and the beginning. I miss my old team terribly, but not the people who made me realize that they were never going to support me in the way I wanted to be supported. My old teammates and other workmates, however, were the most supportive people I've met. It's like leaving a family, and that, that I feel sad about.

But now, I'm off on a new journey, not just work, but a whole new journey. It may not seem like much for people looking in, they might just see me, and see not much change at all. But there is. My senses are still afire, and I feel like my spirit is soaring some days. I look forward to moving forward. And I look forward to sharing that all with you.

My birthday weekend was the best birthday in the longest time. I got the best birthday present ever. I hope there are more celebrations to come.

my love may be invisible

[readings]

It has been an odd week, where so many paths converged. They're imaginary paths, tangible paths, paths planned and dreamt. They have been swirling in my head, pushing at the edges of my thoughts, revealing old paths etched in dreams and vividly reanimating faint memories buried in sleep. I can taste them, touch them, and some make me cry while I sleep.

I've been on vacation since Thanksgiving. Coach(e)girl and 7-11 from work came over last weekend for pre-Thanksgiving dinner with Y, K-chan and I. For many months, I've been jokingly prodding 7-11 to take Coach(e)girl out to dinner, and then suddenly, without anyone knowing, they are together. At work, I never see them any more close than they are with me or other colleagues. But that evening, seeing them together on our couch, I saw two futures come together, maybe not forever, but together happily and it made me smile, touching off a week of oddness.

-s- is back, threateningly for a short time, to attend to family. (see past post here and here, about -s- who stole my heart for just one small, temporary moment.) He is so exuberant, just as I remembered him 3 years ago, but looks better, a bit of that sadness has faded from his eyes.

We had coffee at Moonbean and he talked about his friends in remote countries, meeting his friends in Cairo, London, Seoul, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, and many more... There was a story about bundles of new crisp $50 bills, sequentially numbered, stuffed down his underwear, bribes to a 12 year old looking border guard with a giant Russian fur hat and machine gun bigger than him, a gay bar in some remote part of Asia where patrons danced with themselves in the mirrors that lined the walls. “Gay men are narcissists everywhere,” he says.

He is still running and will leave again and I am reminded how much I wish it were I who could run, fly across the ocean, across mountains, chasing a dream, running away from phantoms. It seems like my spirit has been asleep these years since I last saw -s-.

Last Tuesday, I had my Tarot cards read or attempted to be read by a new found friend, Phael. I had them read before years ago, but avoided Tarot cards for many years after, for fear of knowing too much, for fear of asking for too much from spirits that wanted something in return. He made me ask him for a reading, he never reads without being specifically asked. I read his palm and in return I asked for my cards read.

I don't normally like people asking me to read their palms. Once people know, inevitably, it spreads, and people ask to have their palms read. When I offer, it's because there is something I want to know about their lives, something about them that strikes my curiosity, and if I can share something with them I would. (Or he is incredibly hot, and I want to touch his hands.) I don't know if Tarot cards evoke the same response.

As the cards were revealed, I felt them telling me something, almost like mad images screaming to me from the table. Phael said he felt these cards were not meant for him to read, and a part of me realized that, half way through. I don't really believe enough of this stuff, my rational side explaining away the symbols, the story wove together to tell of a future, unrealized. And yet these stories seem so true, that I awoke the next morning with an epiphany that helped me piece together the images, the symbols, to bring some meaning to me, about myself that I had consciously ignored. Perhaps the cards were for me to read.

It's all intertwined, my love, my spirit, my writing, my future, and I saw that I have to disentangle these separate things, in order to move forward and to let go. There are other things, other paths, other happenings, I've not mentioned here. I am not who I was, and now, I feel that I can become me again. This week all these things converged, my senses afire, I am not sure which paths to take, but I do wish that now my spirit awakes again from the deep slumber where I left it.

-s- will fly again and I want to follow him. But it could mean to chase phantoms and run away from dreams.

When he smiles, I will remember him telling me about leaving New Zealand and watching the mountains recede in the rear window of the car. He never looks back, always running forward, but that day he cried at the beauty, the ethereal serenity he was leaving behind.

I am tempted, to throw my senses in

[paradise found]

It was beautiful, the south of France. We stayed in Marvivo, a little community south of Toulon. I didn't want to return.

beingboring has more photos, but here are two for now. We hiked and climbed the hills, and braved the Mistral, led by Y's family friends. We got to see a magnificent view, ate wonderful sandwiches stuffed with a Nicoise-like salad, and practised my French.

joe stops to ponder Les Deux Frères (the two rocks in the sea). G & Y hike ahead.

We hiked from near the top of this photo to get to this view, and we still had further to climb.

More photos to come, and an actual post too!

je vous aimes... de Paris!

[hiatus]

well, after this unexpected hiatus, I will be blogging again... right after I get back from France!

Yep, icy joe is going to France tonight, arriving in Paris tomorrow morning, and then onward to Toulon, and specifically to Marvivo, where beingboring, Y and I will be basking in the French sun on the beach, hanging around locals. We'll be staying at Y's family friend Mme J's place while she's here staying at ours.

We'll also be in Paris for 5 days and then back to Canada!

I won't miss the work (it's been super busy and crazy these few weeks) but I will miss meeting Matty from SF (his blog rocks!) who's in TO while I'm gone, and Gerry, who is here from Germany, but won't be meeting us in Paris like we did last time.

beingboring is taking photos, and I will endeavour to blog. :)

lots of love to you all!

icyblog will return.