icyblog v1.2.1

happy belated birthday to me

2008-02-25T21:37:00.002-05:00

[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

2007-10-15T22:45:00.000-04:00

[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

2007-10-14T22:58:00.000-04:00

[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!

2007-08-18T15:42:00.000-04:00

[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.

on beauty

2007-05-13T18:14:00.000-04:00

[distracted]

It was a glorious day, cool and sunny. It was a perfect day to watch people, when everyone comes out from wintery shadows to bask in the sun. I stopped by Starbucks, a pause on my way to drop off a DVD at the video store, a break from being sick at home. Upstairs at a table overlooking all who enters and leaves, I saw a beautiful profile, across the sofa, against the wall. Closely shaved head and beard, and with a tan-coloured face that blends in contrast to the boring beige walls, I watched him type on his laptop. When he got up, I saw yellow birds on his t-shirt flew by, breaking his profile with the imperfection of his brow. I watched him passing the student, who sat in another corner with a large black binder, furiously scribbling, with a blue highlighter in his ear. His nervous shaking leg made me look at him, and admire the casual neglect of his body, imperfect but driven by a naive immortality of youth. His t-shirt screamed out red letters, “save your soul”, and I was reminded how young he is. My gaze dropped to the floor below, and I saw tousled, unconcerned hair, the slim silver rim of sunglasses wrapped around a head, around the wires protruding from his ears, playing music to his soul. A large knapsack rested upon his broad shoulders and wide chest. He looked like he could carry me and I wondered what he looked like, face to face.

I don't always know what moves me, and sometimes it seems like nothing does. In the past months, Y has been acquiring art, pieces that move him in a way I don't always understand. From scouring websites, I see photos of artwork I am not quite sure I like. And then they arrive, and then I see that simple Yoshitomo Nara drawing is actually exquisite and note that the Barry McGee piece separated from its original cluster is screaming orange at me. They are beautiful in a way I cannot explain, and I didn't see looking at the website. They speak to Y in an incomprehensible language, which I only vaguely understand when my eyes look at our walls contemplating what the artists may be thinking.

Since we've painted the living and dining rooms, we have been searching for art to cover the barren walls. Y has been pretty decisive about what he wants, whereas I know what I could like, but cannot find something worth acquiring. It's pretty hard for me to commit to something that seems both permanent and ephemeral to me, a piece of art that I want to see all the time, to live with, to spend my time on, to not grow bored of. I could fill the walls like Heipel, who's home is like a brilliant salon of paintings and drawings that captured his interest. I realize his walls tell me more about him than his caustic wit and barbs. I feel just a little bit closer to him when I admire what he has put together and collected. I don't know how to fill my walls (or at least my sections of the walls). Perhaps I am afraid to tell the world who I can be, perhaps I am afraid that I won't have enough space to show all the pieces I'd get, or perhaps I just simply don't know who I am and so cannot find something that moves me. But if that was the case, then I wouldn't have thought Rodolfo's aria in the second act of Luisa Miller was sung so touchingly, beautifully, the other night at the opera or the last shot of Tony Leung in Happy Together on the train in HK was so achingly beautiful in its nostalgia or how coldly beautiful it was, skiing dangerously across a frozen lake on a bright sunny winter day. And certainly wouldn't have thought how hot that Chinese guy in Accounting looks in his tight dress pants, riding with me in the elevator one Friday afternoon. (Yes, I have a new crush at work.)

Of the paintings I have been admiring lately, the $2.5 million Rioplle abstract makes me want to be a millionaire, or be married to one. For those things in reach, I am not moved enough to buy the pieces, the beauty escapes me, while the prices do not. How do you invest in art, in the beauty of a canvas, in someone else's imagination? My gaze won't stop moving in a different direction, seeing a different profile, being distracted by a subtle movement, obscured by a different angle. Nothing moves me, everything moves me. I can't have it all, but I want to.

air for life

2007-04-01T18:39:00.000-04:00

[silence, hope]

When he awoke, he felt her back pressed against him, warm and smooth against his chest. He kissed her neck and then reached under it and around her, and placed his hands gently, almost caressing, on her firm breasts. His finger tips danced on the nipples, lightly gliding over the points and he whispered into her ears her name, over and over again. But she didn’t move, her breath calm and rhythmic in tight beats, and her body was stiff, and then tense, when he nudged her buttocks with his hardness.

Sighing, he moved away from her, and lay on his back, looking at the low ceiling, tracing with his eyes, the brittle peeling white curls. He felt her move closer to the wall and the sheets pulled and wrapped more tightly around her, and then angrily, the wet stain of his limpness, pushed coldly against his groin.

He peeled back the sheets and rolled off the bed. Naked and cold, he walked to the only window in their room to close it, but didn’t and stood there, listening to the hard static of the mid-October rain, falling sharply on the sidewalk. Outside, the wind blew through the half-bare maples and the leaves fell, spiraling down to carpet the street in a mosaic of reds and yellows and browns. He could almost taste the cool fresh scent of wet leaves, as the rain sliced into the room. The cold numbed him.

She felt the chill as the winds picked up, and she wrapped the sheets round even tighter. She swore to herself and felt the anger rise up in her. She wanted to scream at him to shut the window, but she couldn’t even make a noise. She felt too empty, too cold in the bed, so she pressed herself against the wall, almost trying to hug it, squeezing herself with her arms. She could smell the coarseness of old paint and she could feel the smooth coldness of the wall with her face. On impulse, her tongue shot out and licked it, tasting the bitter, blandness.

I wrote this a long time ago for a class. It's the opening of a story about a Chinese/English Canadian couple who was going to be married and move away from their respective families. This beginning is nothing like the rest of the story, which focuses on two 10 course Thanksgiving meals and stilted dialogue. I fondly remember this bit as the beginning of a style that a classmate/friend (and now my lawyer) called joe's hyper-realism. I was trying to describe as closely as possible the things and feelings in the scene, without layers of interpretation suffocating it. I don't think I succeeded, really, but it was the beginning of a change to how I approached writing fiction.

I am reminded of this piece a few evenings ago with mark. As usual, we ended up talking about fiction and writing (even though neither of us had written much of anything lately). This time we talked about the genuineness of writing, or to write from one's heart and not from one's head. mark will clarify if I'm mistaken or wrong, but we weren't drinking, so I assume this is an accurate recollection.

I often find it easier to write something with set parameters, an exercise of some kind, rather than trying to write about what I want to say, free form without any boundaries. What I mean to say is that it's easier to be told what to write and then write, than it is to write something that reveals something, that's from the heart or from passion, led by no one but your mind. I've struggled with this notion for a very long time, staring at blank screens and wondering if it's just that I can't write at all because I have nothing to say, nor passion to say anything. So, I haven't written in awhile, and I don't consider myself a writer anymore.

I think I understand what mark is saying, although I'm not sure if I can feel it now. I know there's that moment when you create something from a deep passion, that what you produce, be it a painting, a dance, a piece of music, or a poem, becomes this new life, and the emotion that spills forth is elating, ecstatic. I know that because I felt it when I wrote before. Now, I just don't know anymore. In order for something to be genuinely good, it needs to be genuine, from the heart. Without this, it is like reading/watching/listening technically good artists, pieces without soul, works that are cold. All day at work, I write technically good documents, communication, memos, diplomatic entreaties, deflective announcements, blameless PR. I don't write from passion anymore. I wonder now if it's because I don't have passion, and not because I have nothing to say. Y thinks I've got no passion, that I'm this calm, phlegmatic, “amorph”. He thinks I've always been this way. There's some truth in that, I know.

When I re-read this bit of an old short story I wrote, I think that it does capture that cold, passion-suppressed disconnect between two people who can't be together for whatever reasons. At that time in my life, I was naive and the world was just an open book, waiting to be filled. I wrote those characters, describing them in my mind from people I had known in my youth, yet I don't think I really knew those two people. But now, I really know what it is to hold back passion, and lose yourself in a cold, small room. I am afraid I won't be able to find that passion again and remain mute, silent in the noise of day-to-day living, the mundane, the minor grind of life.

And yet, my short story does end happily.

The window was opened, the night wind blew in gently. The rains had ended, but the cold was sharper. Outside, the street was quiet, the moonlight casting dark shadows over the string of cars beneath their window. She could feel the heat from his body. His back was to her, and she could see in the dimness his long smooth back and the ridges of his spine. She kissed his back and then slid her arm around him, hugging him closely. She could feel his breathing, slow and deep and she knew he hadn’t fallen asleep yet. She slipped her leg between his, and stroked his stomach lightly.

He turned around and smiled. He pressed up against her and then tickled her back. She whispered into his ear his Chinese name over and over again, laughing.

I think there is always hope, nothing stays the same, nothing that should stop you from hoping for more, for better.

out of the blue

2007-03-25T22:50:00.000-04:00

[reunion]

A few weeks ago, M. surprised me and emailed to say that he could visit. After a few emails later, I found myself excited to see him, memories flooding back into my mind. But quite coincidentally, I had also thought of him too, though not particularly about him, just my mind touching a memory that I had thought I'd lost over the years. beingboring had mentioned Ann Arbor (I forget why), and I was reminded of M. mentioning that he had wanted to go there.

I haven't seen M. in just over 11 years. The last time I saw him was in March of 1996, when I had went to visit Sammi's mom (my cousin) and dad in San Francisco. It was before I met Y, before I became this icy joe. We hung out a couple of times and I saw a side of SF that forever made me fond of the city. We kept in touch, sometimes actively, most times sporadically, but I tried never to let him go out of my life.

M. would be flying standby, so there wasn't a guarantee that I would be seeing him that weekend. Even so, Y and I cleaned house quickly in preparations for his visit. On Friday night, he called to say he was heading onto the plane and I had begun to feel a little nervous, wondering if we'd change enough that we'd forget who we were 11 years ago. There was still some more tidying to do, and so about an hour before he'd be downtown at our doorstep, I was in the bathroom swiffering. I accidentally tapped the doorknob with my elbow, gently hitting the door, which closed with an odd click, like a button snapped into place. I tried to open the door, but it wouldn't open, and so suddenly I found myself locked in the bathroom. I cried for help and Y came bounding over.

“It won't open!” I yelled.

“Try turning it some more. Try moving it from side to side.” Y advised.

“It's not doing anything.” Y began trying to force the door open. “Stop! All you're doing is pushing the door frame!”

“Is there anything in there you can use? Something to take apart the doorknob?”

I looked around and found some tiny screwdrivers, nail clippers, a small pair of safety scissors and tweezers. I tried to unscrew the doorknob apart. “Don't you have any screws on your side?”

“Nope. You'll have to do it on your side.”

“Fuck.” The phone rang.

“The phone is ringing!” Y yelled. "The phone is ringing!"

“Answer it!”

“Hi! It's Y. Joe locked himself in the bathroom.”

M. was going to be over in 30 minutes. I was beginning to sweat and feel claustrophobic. Nothing was working. I even tried the phone card Y slipped under the door, like they do in the movies. (I guess my life isn't like the movies.) Y even managed to pass a screw bit under the door with the right shape. It was useless, because I couldn't use a 1.5 cm screw bit to unscrew the doorknob. It's impossible.

Minutes ticked away, the bathroom still unswept, and then bang! Y smashed the doorknob with his geology hammer. I escaped! (and we're left with a nice hole in the door.) and then M. was here, at another door. He looked a little older, a little wiser, but practically the same as I remembered him... except I forgot how tall he was.

After the initial misadventure, the rest of his stay was wonderful. It was really weird to see someone you haven't seen in such a long time, and it was really comforting to find how easy it was to spend time with him, almost like it was 11 years ago again, except maybe I had more of his attention. We had breakfast at Le Petit Dejeunner, went to see the Emily Carr exhibit at the AGO, coffee at Moonbeam in Kensington Market and dinner at Café la Gaffe. It was sweet to hold his hand again.

By the next morning we awoke, thinking he had a little time for breakfast before trying to catch the 2 PM standby flight out of Toronto. And then it hit me that daylight saving time began, and I had forgotten to turn the clocks forward. We packed, we cleaned up and we got him out to a taxi to the airport. Relieved that he made it out on time, I went back inside and relaxed a little, waiting for Y and K-chan to get ready for coffee with brucebruce and the gang. An hour later, we were all at the door, and ready to go. I looked over to the kitchen counter and saw M.'s cellphone and car and house keys. Shit.

After trying to find a live person on his airline's automated client service system, and then being put on hold for 10 minutes, I realized that it wasn't likely that I could get some phone centre drone to either transfer my call to the airport or get the telephone number of the lounge where M. was possibly waiting for his flight home. I ran out the door and flagged down a taxi. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do at the airport, but I thought there might be a chance to get his cell and keys to him.

The taxi drove pretty fast for a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon. I got to the airport just an hour before his flight. I ran up to the first class check-in and asked the woman with the funny eastern european accent if M. had already passed through customs and immigration. Of course, I figured he had. I explained the situation and she shook her head. For security reasons, I could not (of course!) expect them to pass anything over to him. I asked if I could pass a message to the boarding gate. She looked at me and then picked up the phone and asked for M. to be paged.

M. was surprised that I was at the airport. He had just realized a few minutes before that he had forgotten his cell and keys. Since he wasn't able to come back out, we agreed to have things shipped. I was so close, yet so far. I wished him a good flight and then hung up. The airline worker kindly said that the flight was full, and M. might not be able to board on standby. I should wait for an hour to see if he might be coming back out.

30 minutes later or so, he called, I missed his call, we left messages and then he came back out. (He had another work cellphone on him, which could've come in handy if I had known.) I wanted to run up and hug him, but instead walked over relieved. Before we forget again, I handed him his cell and keys. We then made our way to Terminal 1 where he got another flight out with Air Canada. After a coffee and a doughnut, and another hug and goodbye, I sent him on his way through customs and immigration. It's always hard to see someone leave at the airport, there's something so finite and permanent about watching people go off to giant airplanes.

I took the bus home and pondered what a crazy day it was. I fell asleep wondering if M. was ever going to come visit again after this silliness.

joe wonders how red the lips, while M. smiles on.

In the evening, M. called. “You're home!” I said happily.

“You won't believe this, but I'm still in Toronto,” M. said almost laughing, but also annoyed.

“No way!”

“Yeah, we were up in the air for about an hour and then the pilot came on and said that some of us passengers might have noticed we took a big turn around back to Toronto. Some mechanical problem.”

“Get of here! You're pulling my leg!” I said incredulously.

“Nope, you can't get rid of me.”

I laughed, sort of, and out of frustration said, “Well, I guess I didn't have to rush to the airport to find you. You're still here!!”

They put him up in a pretty terrible hotel, and eventually M. got home the following day in the afternoon. It was one of the oddest weekends ever.

Despite the unexpected adventures, it was fun and funny. It was good to see someone I had fallen in love with so many years ago, to see how things have changed and if I felt a little of what I had felt before. I wasn't sure what to expect, and I was surprised instead to see how rational I felt about him. I could easily fall crazily in love with him again, let that iciness drop for a moment, but instead, I felt this complex bond with him, like something that is a little close to being crazily in love again, but not at all irrational nor blindingly impossible. I love him for what he was then 11 years ago, and I love him now for what he could be. The last memory I have of him from so many years ago, is me, sitting in the plane, looking out the window and seeing the tarmac, suddenly sensing his scent, feeling as if he was sitting next to me on the plane. I had fallen in love with his scent, and for a brief few seconds, didn't want to let him go. It's strange what you remember of someone, what you take away, what he might have left behind.

There is only one other person for whom I had felt his scent, while being somewhere else. He's someone I met recently, almost out of the blue. He, too, is so close literally, yet so far in every other way. I don't know if I can reach out to him, to touch his heart. Perhaps I'm not the one who can do that. Perhaps it's just me, emotional, irrational, feeling all the things that makes me what to be icy, so that I won't hurt, be hurt. I'm in love with his scent, and I hope I won't have to wait 11 years before seeing him again.

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

2007-02-22T23:22:00.000-05:00

[more cheer]

It's my birthday! And this year, unlike the last two, I am not sick in bed. Woohoo! I didn't do a lot to celebrate, yet. It's a Thursday after all. So maybe on the weekend, or when eL comes back from her trip.

My colleagues at work, though, took me out to lunch at Milestones (passable generic corporate food). A selected few came out with me for a bit and it was fun. After work, a few more of us went out for beers at Boston Pizza (expensive bland generic food). Gawd, I hate working in North York. It's like being in a suburb. I miss working downtown. Anyway, it was super nice to hang out with people at work, whom I actually like. This is much different than my previous department, where I tried not to socialize outside of work with them. Nothing wrong with my ex-teammates, but the guys in my current department are way more fun.

So, Chinese New Year and my birthday, during my golden pig year! All I wish for is for some romance, good health and prosperity. Is that too much too ask?

新年快樂!

2007-02-18T00:19:00.000-05:00

[cheer]

Happy Chinese New Year!! 恭喜發財! It's the year of the pig, so I wish everyone a wonderful year of love and luxury!

Now, I wonder what is in store for me, in my year of the pig? Will there be any fun and exciting surprises? Will I fiind love? Will I find a new career? Will there be more blog posts? Who knows? Let's just hope that at the very least, it'll be full of love and good health with my friends and family. That includes you too!

in slow motion, I run

2007-02-14T00:00:00.001-05:00

[tagged]

Oh, a long while back in January I was tagged by mark. So, after a few too many weeks, I finally finish the list. It took me awhile, because I can't pick just one thing. I'm also a bit of a dilettante, an expert in nothing, but curious about many things. Unlike mark, who's quite talented. Check out his piece at eye weekly.

1. Name a book that you want to share so much that you keep giving away copies.
I don't often give the same book as gifts to different people. If it's good, I usually lend it. However, I did try to give "Beyond Bok Choy" but Indigo book store ran out of copies. I always recommend JD Salinger’s “Nine Stories” and Ian McEwan’s “The Comfort of Strangers”.

2. Name a piece of music that changed the way you listen to music.
Ayumi Hamasaki - "Whatever" (Ferry "System F" Corsten vocal extended mix)
New Order - "True Faith"
The Sisters of Mercy - "More" and "Temple of Love" (1983)

3. Name a film you can watch again and again without fatigue.
Blade Runner
Legally Blonde
Happy Together

4. Name a performer for whom you suspend all disbelief.
Keanu Reeves (because if I don't, I'd have to poke my eyes out)
Tony Leung
Maggie Cheung
Takeshi Kaneshiro (because he's cute!)

5. Name a work of art you'd like to live with.
classic to late Mark Rothko
Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Le déjeuner des canotiers
Alfred Sisley - one of the Neige à Louveciennes
Jean-Paul Riopelle abstracts

6. Name a work of fiction that has penetrated your real life.
W. Somerset Maugham - "Of Human Bondage"

7. Name a punch line that always makes you laugh.
"I believe in America. I believe it exists." - Stephen Colbert
Not exactly a punch line, but it makes me laugh and cry.

I'll tag Matty, Hot Lunch!, Clayboy and Joel. But you don't have to, if you don't want.

I come in piece

2007-01-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

[toys, missed]

When I was a kid, my favourite toy was lego. I didn’t have many toys, and those that we had mostly belonged to my brother. Lego was my toy, and it was a versatile toy, letting me build other toys. I built starships and tanks, I built homes and restaurants, I built whole other worlds with these lego blocks, a whole new life in my head. Lego was tactile too, my fingers pushing down onto the blocks or slipping as I pulled them hard apart. I can still feel the interlocking studs, feel them rubbing against my pencil callus on my finger.

I was a shy kid, didn’t talk much to strangers. I always observed, sized them up before saying anything, before giving anything away that I might not be able to take back. It wasn’t that I didn’t like talking or had nothing to say. On the contrary, I couldn’t shut up when you got me started, if you got to me, got to my heart. In school, I remember my grade 1 teacher, possibly in frustration, made me read my stories in front of the class. Miss Auckland had hoped that it would make me open up, and break out of my shell. I remember writing stories about pirates, spaceships and soldiers. I remember building these worlds, with words I couldn’t say to my classmates, and writing them out on giant flipchart paper. I read these words aloud to the class and remember vaguely feeling that they listened, felt the words forming pictures in their minds, feeling what I had felt. Even today, when I write, I can feel the words, feel just like those tactile blocks, taste them in my mouth, the sounds of the words tickling my tongue, making me hungry, making me feel like my mouth is full, so full that words cannot help spilling out, onto the page, my notebook, the computer.

I still feel like that kid in Miss Auckland’s class. I’m not sure how to come out of my shell, when I can stop feeling reserved and holding back. I have this smile at work, that smile that looks so bright and so happy, and so alien. It’s not really me.

Sometimes I feel like I’m falling apart. I’m not sure how I can keep it together, my smile just holding back a torrent of emotions, mixed up teardrops of happiness, waves of sadness. Maybe it’s because I haven’t built a new world, play with my words in a very long time. Except for my blog, I have not written much of anything. My spaceship is in pieces, the lego was given away a long time ago to the kids of some old family friends. Now, I wonder if I can fly somewhere faraway, dream that new life, write those words down, and read them aloud to you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Holidays are over, but I still haven’t got the photos of our Christmas dinner uploaded from Y’s camera. There’s a blog post in there somewhere, in that Christmas dinner. Instead, Y found Kino's photos of our trip to Québec for Thanksgiving. He tossed the disk to me before he went off to Japan for a couple of weeks to meet up with Y2. So, enjoy these photos for now. Maybe by Valentine’s, I’ll have the Christmas post completed… if I don’t get swept up in some crazy romance. (well, I can dream, can’t I?)

This photo, I believe, was taken by some Japanese tourist for us, when we were walking in Old Québec. Unfortunately, our feet are cut off. I think she was really short, that Japanese lady. Or was it the husband who took our photo? It was a glorious day, cool and sunny. Autumn is my favourite season, and so Thanksgiving is always a favourite too.

Kino took this photo of the Chute Montmorency. It’s only 5 minutes away from momo’s house. I envy Y growing up so close to such a beautiful falls. I can never get bored of visiting the park and walking along the suspension bridge, looking out onto Québec and the St-Lawrence.

wishing you all an amazingly joyous and prosperous new year!

2007-01-01T23:38:00.000-05:00

[wish]

Happy New Year! Let's make it a good one! All of us, you and me, and everyone we know, together we can make this a fabulous 2007. Or at least as fabulous as our Christmas dinner!

I'm still burping from the food, booze and merriment. Nothing better than spending time and celebrating with friends and family! How can the new year not be joyous? :)

No new year resolutions, just a couple of wishes. If they come true, I'll let you know.

Let me know if you had a good time. Drop me an icicle!

take my hand, take my whole life too

2006-12-20T13:06:00.000-05:00

[melting, freezing]

For a single guy, I don’t date a lot, and I think it’s mostly because I haven’t really been looking too hard. I mean, I have gone out many times over the last few years, but I haven’t really asked anyone out for a real, bona fide date, like “Do you want to go out to dinner this Saturday night?” Usually, they ask me, or I go for a small outing with triple escape routes, i.e. the coffee date.

The coffee date is so perfect for someone as non-committal and paranoid of crazy people as myself. You’re in public, in a place where people will people-watch. Crazy date guy will not try to touch you, when you look left and right to your coffee neighbours with a repulsed look on your face at his attempt. He won’t talk too loudly about his comic book collecting obsession for fear of eavesdroppers. And if he does, you just look at him in a puzzled, amused sort of way, like you would when a child says something inappropriate but cute. If crazy date guy turns out to be, well, crazy, then you can easily cut it short by taking your coffee to go. If he appears to be psycho crazy, then you call one of your friends to pick up you at the coffee shop. Or better yet, you start flirting like mad with the hot guy next to you, and hope your psycho crazy date guy leaves.

I confess, I’m really a lousy date. I’m shy and reserved around guys I’m not sure about but do like and possibly want another date. I’m sarcastic, argumentative and bitchy around dates I’m not interested in and find contemptible. I’m charming and witty, and just the best of Joe when around guys who turn out to be either attached or recently single/on the way to rebound. I flirt happily with cute salesmen. I think I’m quite funny around my friends and colleagues at work. But I’m totally inaccessible around guys I actually want to date, which leaves me quite single, and a horrible date.

But after a few glasses of wine at mark’s party, and remembering to not let fear make the wrong decisions for me, I asked someone out. I didn’t come out and say dinner, but I did a bit more than I usually do, and actually went on a date with someone who I actually like. I like him and I wasn’t too reserved and too shy.

So, after two weeks of being tortured by colds, B* and I went on a date. We went out to John’s Italian café for Italian. (I had their osso buco special, yum!) Dinner conversation was pretty good. We talked about school and work, about coming out in Chinese families, about how we felt being gay and asian in Canada. We joked, we laughed and it was like talking to someone with whom you’re beginning to be friends. I was mesmerized by his voice and his smile, and I just wanted to reach over and kiss him. After dinner, we went over for dessert at Just Dessert. He had (alas!) bananas and waffles, which made me not want to kiss him. I loathe the taste of bananas. (Hmm, there’s so much said in that statement that is so wrong.) It was still early, so we then went out for martinis at Lüb, where the waiter was cute, but stupid in that bitchy way gay guys get when they’ve applied so much gel to their hair that it slowly seeps into and pass the follicles and stunt brain cell activity. After a brief interlude walking his dogs (so cute!), we went over to George’s Play for a beer and some remarkably sexy dancing from B* and hopelessly embarrassing dancing from icy joe. I wanted to kiss him, and very briefly we did.

It was probably one of the nicest dates I’ve had in the longest, longest time. After all the coffee dates, dinner dates, drinks dates since being single, I’ve finally met (and spent time with) someone who gave me butterflies and transported me back to those hopelessly innocent high school crushes, infatuations. But I’m pretty sure I’m more into him than he’s into me. At that moment after he walked me home, standing in the lobby waiting for the elevator, I knew I wanted more. And I also knew how all the other guys who liked me, but I didn’t like back enough, felt.

Perhaps I’m over-interpreting every thing he has subsequently said or did. Maybe when he said that he wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, he really didn’t mean it. I could be mistaking his desire to be friends as more possibility than there really is. I should give this more time, or at least don’t let my unspoken desire get in the way of a friendship. Should I just stop flirting with him so much? Am I jinxing this because I’m blogging about him? Perhaps I’m just not thinking clearly because I’m in love. Perhaps I’m not in love at all.

It doesn’t matter, really. I’m just happy that for two weeks my icy heart melted, that I had discovered that I’m not numb and especially that there are people I can love.

anyone wants to date icy?

2006-12-11T00:17:00.000-05:00

[second date]

“Cosmetic-guy!”

“Make-up-Girl-cum-security-guard!”

I looked at the group of walkie-talkie equipped ROM employees, from where I heard his name called. It must be a break, I thought, because they didn’t look like they were doing anything and there wasn’t a crowd to control at the Italian Design Exhibition.

“How are you, Cosmetic-guy?” she asked. Tall and pretty, I wasn’t quite sure if she really liked him or she was networking.

“I’m doing fine! We haven’t seen each other in, what? Three years?” he said, shuffling a little closer to me. He introduced me and I mumbled something about visiting the Italian design exhibition.

“Oh you’ll love it!” she predicted. Comestic-guy and Make-up-Girl-cum-security-guard went on about where they were working now, doing what shows and about moisturizer. Or at least that is what I recall, since my mind was starting to space out from the cold I was fighting and the desire to go into the exhibition.

Comestic-guy finally handed her his card and they promised to meet up, catch up and exchange eyeliner tips.

“Well, it’s a small world, isn’t it?” I cheerily said as we entered the exhibition.

“Mmmm,” he said and it appeared that if the world wasn’t small, the exhibition certainly wasn’t small enough. While I was trying to admire a 1902 wood-carved cantilever chair, which was a precursor to the plastic injection single mould cantilever chairs of Verner Panton’s time, Comestic-guy was several displays ahead. He barely could stand still long enough to read anything or admire anything. I tried sharing the foreboding fear from the Mussolini statue, his profile seen from every angle, shaped like a bomb or bullet. He shrugged and ran off to the next display. I thought at that moment for sure, there wasn’t anything in common at all that we shared, and possibly neither of us have the patience to learn about each other’s interests.

At the East Asian gallery, I was tired, so I sat down in the room with these giant murals of Daoist gods and Buddhist icons. They were huge and reminded me of temples in Asia and another gallery in my travels from years ago. I looked over to Comestic-guy and wondered aloud what it would’ve been like if we were in a real Daoist or Buddhist temple and how amazing it must be to see these gods look over you. Comestic-guy looked at me and said, “Are you okay? Feeling better?” He pawed at my hands and wished aloud that we were alone.

We had lunch later and being slightly refueled, I tried talking about cooking and how much I like food. He quickly said he liked to cook too, but didn’t elaborate. Silence punctuated our meal.

When we left and before he could kiss me, I said truthfully that I wasn’t feeling too well and should be going home for a nap. He looked sad, disappointed and for a moment I felt guilty for not trying harder to make the date more fun for him.

Then he said, “I wish we could cuddle.”

I snorted snot, and replied, “But I would just fall asleep and be terrible company.”

We parted at Dundas Square, said our good-byes and “I’ll call yous” and I didn’t look back.

Now, I’m dreading making that call and telling him that this isn’t going to work. I don’t think he likes me as much as he thinks he does. Rationally, I think he just wants someone to sweeten his loneliness and to momentarily take him away from his world. I can understand that and in some way, I feel the same, that if there was just someone I could like just enough to make this empty feeling go away. Even if it was only for a moment, nothing real, nothing everlasting, but to dull the edge of being alone.

come fly with me

2006-11-30T23:01:00.000-05:00

[home]

Here’s a photo of my new table and chairs. The walnut grain is beautiful and the chairs are super comfy. I have the leaf stored in the closet, which we will use to extend the table for our Christmas dinner. We’ll also take out Y’s orange Verner Panton chairs. We’ll bring out the best china. Well actually, we don’t have any good china, but if someone is generous enough, I like something colourful, but modern.

After dinner, we’ll retire to Y’s living room, have some more wine and scotch, maybe a bit more dessert. We’ll sing carols by the tiny fiber optic Christmas tree and open presents. Okay, I’d have to be pissed drunk to sing carols. But can you imagine me pissed drunk on the Eames lounger in this photo?

maybe I didn't treat you quite as good as I should

2006-11-29T12:28:00.000-05:00

[reboot]

The blog is always on my mind. I’m thinking I’ve got to find some time to update it, talk about the fun things I’ve been doing and the people I’ve been meeting. But the longer I procrastinate, the harder it is to put fingers to keyboard and write a post. It’s always on my mind, and stupidly, the procrastination becomes the block that prevents me from writing. And that’s just completely delusional.

There’s nothing to stop me from writing, except perhaps the long hours at work. Even then, on the Saturday morning I could write a quick post, nothing fancy, and skip idling on the net. So, the blog is always on my mind. So is my dwindling readership. I hope I am on your minds!

This impending second date is also on my mind. In about 2 hours, I will be meeting up with Cosmetic-guy for an afternoon of getting to know each other. He’s tall, blond, blue-eyed, sweet and sincere. He’s just a month older than me, and he kisses quite well. He’s also a cosmetician, which I assume means he knows a lot about how to apply make-up and when is the next Clinique Bonus Time. He doesn’t watch tv, which could be a good thing, but he reads true crime fiction, biographies and horror. So far, I have determined that we have nothing in common.

He thinks I’m sweet and cute. Beyond that, I’m not entirely sure what he thinks. He doesn’t know me, because if he did, he wouldn’t be thinking that I’m sweet for blogging about him. I am taking mark's one-time relationship advice to heart and am going on a second date to really try to see if I’m just being icy because I’m letting my self-defense kick in or it’s because we truly are generating naturally occuring long awkward silences. The keen reader will note that I’m blogging about him, which in itself tells you what I’m already feeling.

I’m not being kind, and kindness is something I adore in someone. But it has to be coming from someone with whom I have some spark. Some kind of chemistry. Something that keeps him always on my mind in a way that makes me smile, tickles my imagination, leaves me wanting more.

Christmas is on my mind. Y and I are hosting Christmas dinner with a few friends and family. My table and chairs finally arrived from Denmark, after a long, many-months trek by boat across the ocean, which kept me in constant excited anticipation. We’re imagining a beautiful menu of tortière, lettuce rolls, roasted tomatoes and basil soup, dessert and wine, spread across the table. Of course, the planned menu may change and some of the people we’ve invited may not be able to make it. But I imagine that this Christmas dinner will be something of a tradition, to always be on our minds during the holiday season. Next year, Y may be able to go see his family in Quebec City, and I may go because I love Christmas in Quebec with Momo and Y's family. But our Christmas dinner will just be held sooner or a little later around Y’s trip. It will be a tradition that keeps people coming.

Now, this brings to mind Christmas shopping and how much more I have to do. I don’t expect to be spending a lot or buying lots. It’s more of the thought that counts for me, and so it’s always hard to find something that means more than just a placeholder for one’s obligations (real or imagined). We made it a rule with our Christmas guests that gift exchange is limited to something consumable and around $10 for each person. No knick-knack gifts that will only be re-gifted for the next office party. No incredibly expensive bauble that will only up the stakes for the next season. We must keep in mind that love and kindness are much bigger gifts than anything we could possibly buy.

And so, love is also on my mind. Will this year-end bring some new love and new joys to our lives? A new blog perhaps, rebooted, reloaded, re-loved? Or maybe a new tradition, a new way of showing our love to friends and family? Or maybe a new piece of art to hang on our newly painted walls, given by a very hot and kind, new boyfriend? Who knows? Who knows if you're the one who's always on my mind?

don't leave a message at the sound of the tone

2006-10-15T22:28:00.000-04:00

[beeeeeeep]

My voicemail greeting on my cell used to be pretty unfriendly. I asked you to leave a message only if you were looking for me. Friends thought I was being characteristically bitchy. mark, however, thought I was being uncharacteristically drag queeny. I thought he was over-reacting, but then I listened to it again and realized he had a point. And Y has been saying that I talk more like a fag every day. Not that there’s anything wrong with talking really gay, but I wanted to ensure that I didn’t start whining like a faggy boy. Whining, straight- or gay-sounding, is just not good. Talking like a halfwit frat boy is not good either. Talking like a hot gay guy, witty and charming, but distinctively gay, that’s okay. Cos, well, I’m gay.

So I changed the voicemail greeting but left a bit of joe there. It’s still unfriendly, beingboring thinks, but I think it’s a lot less drag queen like. It also helped I didn’t snap my fingers when I said you still reached joe.

Now why the original bitchy voicemail greeting? You see, when I first got my cell phone, I quickly realized that the person who had the telephone number before was going through some credit problems. I got calls throughout the day from this creditor, from some social services agency in Brampton, from a telemarketing credit counsellor, and from a law firm declaring that the file is now before a court (what kind of court, I have no idea, because the automated lawyer machine sounded as trustworthy as an used car salesman). I tried calling back to these people to let them know the troubled previous owner no longer has the number. But of course, the creditor guy didn’t believe me, the lawyer guys ignored my message and kept calling back anyway and the social services agency had some privacy thing going on that prevented them from using common sense and actually asking their client to supply them with the updated (probably unlisted) telephone number.

My bitchy voicemail message didn’t really work, but did made me feel better. What finally got them off my case was just never ever picking their calls up and totally ignoring their messages. Somewhere in the greater Toronto area, some woman named J. Smith was defaulting on more loans, not showing up in court and completely perplexing social workers with no brains. I’m sorry about your money problems, J. Smith, but you suck.

they were playing music in the back

2006-08-20T22:58:00.000-04:00

[meeting]

Back in June, about a week before going to Québec for a wedding during St-Jean Baptiste day, I met up with Hot Lunch! After a couple(?) of years reading his blog, following him from jaded bitch to hot lunch! (what was before jaded bitch?), it seemed almost like meeting up with an old friend whom I’ve not seen in a long time. At the same time, however, it seemed like a blind date, trying to connect with someone you’ve never met. It is the new connection in the internet age.

I’ve often wondered what each blogger is like in the offline world, in “real” life. I wondered whether they spoke as well as they write, whether I can hear the same voice when they speak. I wonder too whether the life we live is any more real than the life we write online, more alive than the conversations we have through messengers or through random comments dropped here and there on posts that have for some reason touched our imagination to speak. You and I share this connection at this very moment, it is in real time, more so than just flipping open a book and reading my words immortalized, because you can leave a few words behind, to ignite a conversation and my reaction. I like to believe that ours is an extension of a social network, my hand reaching out electronically to touch yours. I like to imagine placing your hand on my heart and mine on yours, to see if we can hear the same message? Could this be a MSN messenger commercial, perhaps with a second rate Madonna song playing in the background?

Unfortunately, Hot Lunch! was suffering through the aftermath of shingles, so I could not touch his hand at all without igniting his pain. Instead, his poetry touched my heart.

je ne sais rien

2006-08-13T21:10:00.000-04:00

[Paris, France]

One of the key themes of my fiction (or shall I say fictional fiction, since I’ve not written in such a long time!) is the idea of location and geography and displacement. Like a lot of diaspora fiction, the idea of place defining who we are, who we will become or who we cannot want to be played a central part of my stories. So, when visiting a new place, I’m always cognizant of how that place affects me and what kind of voice that place may have to my ears, in my mind, and hopefully in my heart.

In Paris, I expected a whole different voice, one that I’ve never heard before. I had imagined it to be an old voice, a voice that speaks through a couple of thousand years of monuments, ruins, artifacts and art to tell us something about its history and its life. And there was something in the air, a je ne sais quoi that still lingers in my ears, a taste that still echoes in the wine I drink. Yet, it wasn’t so foreign, or wasn’t so different that it would surprise me. Instead this familiarity surprised me more. I don’t know why exactly, though on a practical level, I chalked this up to all those years of going to Québec with Y. The familiar sounds of French (albeit in a clearer French accent) were comforting, a sometimes incomprehensible babble of home. Being stunned with the sights of old architecture, and still felt oddly familiar from memories of Old Québec, that was an unexpected feeling.

Still, Paris is its own place, not entirely France, but such a wonderful and beautiful place, but especially for a tourist who isn’t enough a tourist, not a native Parisien, but still feeling something a connection to me. I want to go back.

After a train ride from the airport and a switch to the metro, we emerged from the Metro station Grands Boulevards with our luggage. It felt like we were definitely in another life. That’s the one thing I do like about travelling, to feel the foreignness of other people’s life. (By the end of the trip, I realized then that a lot of the people around us were probably also tourists.)

Pondering trains.

The hotel we checked into was this weird zebra patterned, faux deco place with ever changing concierges. The room had a broken safe and was pretty tiny. I pity tall people who had to sleep in this room. By the end though, Y had complained enough that we got moved to the grand suite, which appeared to cost at least 300 Euros a night. It was quite spacious and I quite liked the suite. For that room, I’d recommend it. Next time though, I want to stay at the Marais, where we found ourselves a lot and where I found the Centre Pompidou fascinatingly alluring.

Zebra!

Y, being the ambitious overly optimistic one, planned that we could go to the Opera. We were really too tired from the travelling, and so we walked around instead and soaked in the ambiance of the beautiful city. We got our bearings by visiting Galleries Lafaytte and Printemps and admire the shopping, and we saw the Louvre, the gay neighbourhood and the Hotel de Ville.

From the Lonely Planet guide book, I learned that breakfast in Paris wasn’t a big thing. The next morning when we went for something to eat, we popped into the neighbourhood café and bakery for their petit dejeunner special of two viennoiseries, orange juice and café au lait. After wolfing down enough pastries for a family of four, I wondered how anyone could eat this stuff. Mind you it was pretty good, it was just not really breakfast. The rest of the trip, we tried to keep things simple with a café espresso and a croissant or something as insubstantial.

We tackled the Louvre because it was the one place I wanted to see for sure. Since it rained that day, it was a perfect time to be indoors. And it was the largest art gallery I’ve ever been. It would take days and days to see art in the way I normally see art. I wanted to see every piece, but it would have overwhelmed me.

In this huge place, I found myself walking up the stairs to see the Winged Victory, whereupon I heard my name called. I turned and saw an old colleague of mine, who had moved to Australia a couple of years ago. It is such a small world, of all places to meet bump into someone, at the Louvre in Paris. When you travel, it seems like being a tourist defines who you are for that moment. You are both conspicuous in a foreign city and a yet stranger. But now I had suddenly stopped being a tourist, our lives intersecting for a moment in an iconic place, at the foot of an iconic piece of art. It was jarring, but oddly heartwarming, it brought me back home for a few seconds.

Y's thinking this is not my fav photo of the Lourvre.

The rest of the day we visited the Eglise St-Eustache, walked through Tuileries, Place de la Concorde, Place des Invalides and the Eiffel tower. We had pho at the Vietnamese restaurant next door to the café where we had breakfast. Bad idea. But Paris was good. And the next days even better...

silence for the moment

2006-08-12T16:16:00.000-04:00

[mute]

I used to keep a journal from when I was a wee lad of 8 until I was in university. I never wrote anything profound or any fiction or poetry in this journal. I only wrote when the world seemed like walls crushing me from all sides. It was a way to vent, to moan on about real and perceived injustices. I wrote about people I hated, and people I yearned for. I remember writing about liking guys and knowing that I could never turn back from that realization. I wrote how despondent I was when these things seemed like issues I could never live through. When I tried to write something remotely happy, I abandoned the journal entry halfway. The journal wasn’t a happy place, it was more a receptacle to keep my teen angst and sadness.

When I started icyblog, I had consciously decided not to recreate this journal. icyblog was going to be about what my life is, what my thoughts are, what makes me happy. Sure, there might be some times when I will blog about something unhappy, like a bad date or horrible movie. But I will not vent on icyblog like I used to in my private journal.

And so, I found myself mute the last little while, since coming back from Paris. I’ve not been posting because of work. I’ve said before I wouldn’t blog about work, and it was because I did not want to vent. When work is good, then it means it stays at the office and my own life carries on. But lately it has sucked up so much of my mind that I have found it difficult to blog without descending into words of despair. While I know I could write about work like Hot Lunch! or like mark, I don’t want icyblog to be about this, because it doesn’t bring me joy to write about work. And it is work that has made me so unhappy to keep me from thinking beyond the next day at the office.

I haven’t been unhappy about life and I’ve been doing lots of things with friends and family. But I have been unhappy with the realization that I cannot deal with this unhappiness at work and that it has consumed me to this extent. My work is not my life, but it has become so, because I have let it so.

These are small things, these unhappy days at work. They are smaller than I’ve made it seem. They are smaller than how sad they make me feel. I just need to find a way to find that serenity to accept these small things the way they are and the strength to do the things that will make me happier.

If you kept visiting icyblog through my silence, thank you. Come again, please.

Est-ce que vous me comprenez?

2006-06-19T23:12:00.000-04:00

[returns]

I've been home for just over a week and I still remember the sights, the sounds, the scents of Paris. There is something wonderful about the city, the history, the culture and the people. Oh, I want to go back.

Admiring Femmes de Tahiti (Sur la plage), Paul Gauguin, 1891, at the Musée d'Orsay.

More to come.

escape from Toronto

2006-05-30T10:35:00.000-04:00

[bon voyage]

I'm off to Paris! icyblog will return. preferably with a good bottle of wine. or a hot French man. whichever fits in the carry on.

love me do

2006-05-23T21:38:00.000-04:00

[love]

I'm in love.

I'm in love with David Mitchell and his novels. I've read only two, but I think he could be the one I could love forever. Or at least his books.

I'm in love with my memories of the mountains, the ones in Vancouver. I can't say I've ever been on a mountain or that these memories are real, but I can say I loved the purple clouds hanging over the mountains as I looked up from English Bay.

I'm in love with Wong Kar Wai and his movies. I watch Happy Together and In the Mood for Love and I can savour the moments frozen on screen, the flowers on the dress, the train pulling into Hong Kong at night.

I'm in love with a stranger's voice. An English lilt and a smiling mixture of voices and sounds of many worlds and cultures colliding. I want to call out his name, but he cannot hear me.

I'm in love with the Hans Wegner elbow chair. I love the shape of the back, the way it supports the lumbar, and the legs that strangely remind me of rocket ships.

I'm in love with the americano made at Sugar. The coffee is strong, a dark espresso roast that tastes mellow, but not watered down, accompanied by a sliver of chocolate on the side.

I'm in love with winter, but only when it snows. I don't know why, but when I look out the window and see the sky blanketing the world in a soft white infinity, I feel at home.

I'm in love with my solitude. Because I'm in love with no one. Perhaps he is just around the corner, or on the other side of the world. Perhaps I can love him, if I knew who he is.

Next week, I will be in love with Paris. I will walk the old city street, admire the parks and the Eiffel tower, and perhaps fall in love with a whole new world.

why do birds suddenly appear?

2006-05-08T00:04:00.000-04:00

[zoos]

For some reason, Matt’s dead bird and shit mobile story reminded me of this.

The plan was that if I couldn’t be a medical doctor, I’d go to become a forensic toxicologist and try to work in a crime lab. This was before CSI was on the TV. (And why is it always dark in their labs?!) I always knew I’d be bored out of my mind if I had to analyze invisible chemicals, watch centrifuges spin endlessly or make gels through electrophoresis. It’s not as sexy as it’s on TV. It’s bleeping boring.

But when I put on my latex glove and worked with shaky hands, I blamed my father’s genes and decided I couldn’t ever expect to hold a scalpel properly. Or that was the story I told myself. When I realized I could never be a doctor, I decided to switch majors from toxicology to zoology. Truth is, I didn’t want to be a doctor.

I never really thought I’d care for it, but when I gave up my dream of being a sexy doctor in scrubs, I found myself actually enjoying zoology. I enjoyed studying animals and watching them do funny things in the wild or on the lab desk with their legs clamped to the table. (Just kidding, never had to do that to a poor animal.) Studying physiology was interesting enough, but I found animal behaviour endlessly fascinating. As a kid, however, I never had any pets. The goldfish we had belong to my father. I was only 2 years old in Hong Kong when we had a pet dog. We left poor Mimi behind when we moved to Canada. I wouldn’t know it existed if it hadn’t been for some old black and white photos of my brother with the dog. In the summer, I used to shoot squirrels with the hose in between watering the lawn and flowers. I’d watch them bound across the top of the backyard fence and then shoot them. They fall spectacularly, all wet. I chased after the neighbourhood cats, scaring them away. The one next door in particular, I used to follow around dropping snow on it. It was too old to run away. When fishing, I used to split the worms with my thumbs, squeezing them into two smaller bits for my hook. Sometime later, my father switched to leeches, but I refused to touch them with my hands. Instead, I used a handy set of pliers to crushed them into two.

But by the time I got to uni, my indifference changed. In first year, WTF and a few of her friends and I went up to Ottawa. I drove all the way, quietly, enjoying the wind in my hair, a breeze tickling my arm resting on the window. While listening to WTF yammering on about something, a bird suddenly flew right in front of the car. The front hit the creature immediately, and I can remember hearing a woooompf! sound. Before I could slow down, I sped up while WTF yelled at me to stop, “We got to see if it’s okay. Stop the car and turn back!”

“You got to be kidding. It’s dead.” I looked straight ahead.

“Maybe it’s still alive. We've got to check it out. Maybe we can do something.”

“We’re going over 100 kilometres/hour here. I think it’s quite dead,” I said, very rationally. “And what could we do anyway?” The longer we talked about it, the further away we got. WTF thought I was being pissy, and I just thought, please, I hope it was dead. It was better off dead than suffering.

Sometime in the next year, we found a baby bird out on the front lawn. The nest had fallen and the mother had flown away. beingboring brought it indoors and decided we had to save it.

“It might have fleas,” I feebly offered as I looked at the bird.

beingboring made a nest with an old shoe box we found. “We can’t just leave it to die!”

“But what will we do when it needs to fly? We can’t teach it to fly!”

“Let’s not worry about that now.”

“And what will we feed it with?”

The poor bird was hungry, and so we concocted a meal of water and mushed up bread. We fed the bird with a dropper, gently trying to coax it to eat. The bird responded remarkably well, and it seemed like it could be saved. Or at least we deluded ourselves enough to think it could. But then two nights later, I tried feeding it again. The meal wasn’t mushy enough and when we fed it, the bird choked. It stopped chirping for food, and instead started gasping for breath. It swung its head back and forth like those bobbing heads on those doggies you can get a the dollar store. And then after one more violent swing, it collapsed. Dead. I was mortified.

The following year I switched majors. I’d like to think it was my newfound compassion for animals and not my twitchy non-surgeon hands.

ground control to major tom

2006-05-01T23:42:00.000-04:00

[scrapbook]

Talking to mark at lunch today, he reminded me how we met. Do you ever forget how you met the people you care about? I don't think so. And if I do forget, maybe it's because I don't care about you? Well, let's see...

I met WTF when I was 10. She took pity on me and so she wanted to hire me as her bodyguard. In negative dollars. I think I owe her a few million.

I met my first best friend JK when we were 7. He called me asshole from his desk.

I met Y when he messaged me on IRC from Québec City. I thought, "Danger Will Robinson! Rice Queen alert!!"

I met shib at the Fung (short for the Howard Ferguson dining hall @ University College). I think she was eating Fung food, and I was chattering on about being a student politician. We ignored my Baptist friend who introduced us, his name I've forgotten.

I met the Baron on the subway. We both had long hair. Neither of us do now, but I think that was what drew me to him.

Based on this small sample size, I do remember. But that got me reminiscing about people I wouldn't say I care about anymore... or if at all.

I met my first girlfriend at the CNE. It was a summer job at a fish & chips outlet in the food building. I remember smelling like fish. So did she. Could explain why I'm gay.

The boy that finally convinced me that I liked boys, I met him at the library where I worked nights when I was 17. He rode the elevator with me one day, and when he exited, I smelled of his cologne that lingered. Doesn't explain why I don't like cologne much today.

I met my first campus pastor in second year. I attended a bible study out of curiosity. He said I was running away from God, when I didn't immediately agree with his points. He could've been a good cult recruiter... which reminds me, I met my first Hare Krishna when I was 18, in front of the Eaton Centre. He asked for some money to buy his religious books, and I sarcastically said I'd rather borrow them from a library. Then I called his religion a cult. He said I was defiling myself. I wished him a good day.

I met my first professor I wanted to shag after taking a year of life science courses. He was my English lit professor. He inspired me after the first class to switch one of my majors to English and to write again. Alas he was straight, and only wanted the chicks.

Funny what we do remember about our first contacts. Their memories float in my head like satellites, always connected, but too far to touch, and close enough not to forget.