winter in st. john's

These craggy cliffs and rocky shores and battered winding roads
the screaming gulls and screaming winds and harsh atlantic prose
the wistful frozen bleakness of this lonely island town
the icy mournful waves reaching for what will not be found



reflects too accurately the part of my soul i want to leave behind.

i wont miss this gorgeous haunting place.

spspspspspring

i think i've narrowed the trigger down to the sound of water dripping from rooftops, running through the streetside gutters, the sweet scent of dirt and gravel and dried grass released finally to seep into the mutating chilly air. the perilous ice is gone and we regain the feel of our footing on the hard dry earth again.

i missed that friction between me and worldly things, hot and rough and tangible. spring is like a stimulant drug in me; it makes my brain buzz around like a bee in a jar, makes me feel like the world is mine.

and why shouldn't it be mine?

RIP objective meaning

Sometimes when I'm alone I make tea and I read philosophy excerpts out loud. I pretend I am in an 18th century coffee shop in europe speaking passionately in mixed tongues at a table filled with great minds. Yesterday Spinoza told me that there was no such thing as contingencies and that everything existed only out of necessity. God is everything and he exists only because existence is his essence, and everything that had ever occurred and ever will occur only happens because that's the only way it can happen. Our will is not free. I loved the simplicity of this idea, but Francis Bacon then cautioned me to be most wary of what I found most appealing. The human mind loves ideas that are easy to imagine and understand, and truth to many people is a means to be able to live contently, and not an end in itself.

Philosophy murdered my sense of objective meaning cruelly and thoughtlessly and now I'm trapped deep in this existentialist pitfall where nothing is more meaningful than anything else and everything is ultimately pointless and there's no higher power and no rythm and no reason and no pattern behind the chaos, just chance and madness and hangnails.

it's not so bad though. it just means that instead of searching the world for the true meaning of life i thought i knew i was sure i believed existed, i make my own meaning. i make it from scratch, with my sheer character, with ideas that i find lying around my head under couch cushions, with paperclips and odd buttons and elastic bands, i will make something great with what i have, like how McGuiver does it.




reading philosophy is like chasing wild geese
that are invisible and can throw smoke bombs.

understanding the universe is like licking your elbow
neither of which I have stopped trying to do

engineering

enthusiasm and hazelnut cream coffee are rushing around in me, quickening my heartbeat and warming up my blood. it feels like my blood is thickening these days, rising from the status of the nauseating diluted red koolaid my cheap babysitter used to give us to a nice raspberry syrup flowing rich and good through veins that have been dormant for a long time.

I sit on the steps of my uncles house, kicking my feet against the pavement and watching him clearing his driveway. the baby spring sun is still small and shy, peeking bashfully through the grey of the clouds but never straying too far, a child gripping her mother's skirt. soon she's going to eat up all this ice and hardened dirt-stained snow and grow nice and strong. in a couple of months she'll excrete it all out again on us in the form of summer and our hemisphere will be happy again for a little while. I babel to my uncle rambunctiously and incoherently regarding our excreting sun, and about space travel and sequencing genomes and medicine and poverty and most importantly, how I'm going to change the world. I expect people to be delighted when I inform them of this but they rarely are. Instead he looks at me for the first time today, my naivety reflecting from his hardened eyes and he says "you know, there's money in engineering."

i stare at him. and he continues moving portions of snow from his driveway to the gutter, one shovel at a time.

The day I met Azazel on the Las Vegas Strip

Azazel was one of the leaders of the rebellious angels that had strayed from God's law according to the Book of Enoch in the time preceding the great flood. He taught men the art of warfare, of making swords, knives, shields, and coats of mail, and women the art of deception by ornamenting the body, dyeing the hair, and painting the face and the eyebrows. He had also been popularized by the Rabbis as a great seducer of women. Eventually God sent Gabriel to punish him, and under Lucifer he became one of the fallen angels.



I met him one day a couple of years ago when I was walking past the Venetian hotel, very hot and moderately angry and slightly lost. When he first approached me it was as a salesman trying to convince me to rent a car which was very tempting at that point except for the fact that I had no license and no money, so I politely declined. The second time I met him was when I was backtracking down the same sidewalk about ten minutes later looking very obviously disoriented and he asked me if I was going somewhere in particular and I said no because I wasn't, except for maybe some shade.

He said he was going to take a break so we sat down against a wall and he told me about a dream he'd had that to him had seemed very real. The earth had split open somewhere not too far away, and he gestured vaguely outward into the heat of the desert. He said the ground began to come apart slowly at first, and then faster, moving towards the city. He emphasized the intensity of the blood curdling cracking sound it had made as it went, and said that in the dream he felt like he was witnessing a portion of the end of the world.

I have always felt very attracted to the idea of the end of the world and how it had a romantic and exciting notion about it and I told him so. He seemed interested by this and we talked about why the world might end and if it might be due to the sinful nature of man and how engaging that would be, and we talked about reincarnation and the collective consciousness and the kaballah and god. He was very intelligent and articulate and insightful and charming and I was quite impressed.

I must have said the right things because he said he was going to let me in on a secret. He told me to read Memnoch the Devil, because most of the things in it were true and it was the most reliable account of what had really gone on between God and the devil, and the reason he knew this was because he had recently realized he was Azazel himself, and was slowly recalling his memories of being an angel after a few thousand years.



I was very enthralled by this because I'd never met a real angel before, so this whole thing was just delightful and I told him so. He was pleased that I believed him. Apparently most people didn't.

He proceeded to tell me all about how within the next decade a great war would be waged between God and the Devil and all the angels, and many humans too. At first it would be silent, and then there would be things like cracks in the earth that cities fall into and domestic animals devouring their own kind and spontaneous fires and mass hysteria. As stakes became greater for god and his angels, the world would transform into a battleground for an all out celestial war. Most people would not understand but some people would play a part in it. He said that i would be one of them because I knew the right things and asked the right questions, and that he had to go because we'd been talking for two hours but he was looking forward to seeing me again in a few years. He shook my hand, expressed gratitude for our conversation, and walked off into the las vegas sunset and palm trees through the fake grass and cockroaches to sell people cars.



So now you guys know how the world is gonig to end. I wish I'd asked him whose side I would be on.

Fukuoka, Japan

lately I've been thinking of that trip we took. it was one of the biggest things i ever did with my life because it changed my perception of everything. i never really believed it was possible, that we could cross an ocean that big and come out safe in a different world like that. i always listened longingly to stories of travellers and i said that i would be one of them one day but the whole concept seemed like something intangible you'd find under a rock at the end of a rainbow, until ashley said why not. and even then i didn't believe it was really happening. it was totally a step by step thing and i was totally skeptical the whole way. raise my credit card limit, wire some money, buy a plane ticket, learn some basic hirigana, quit my job, tell my mom, pack some clothes, buy some yen, get on a plane, cookies or pretzals? cookies please, get off the plane... and then i realized we'd done it and i was totally bewildered. how did it even happen? we kept repeating 'we're in japan' every so often the whole time we were there, as if trying to convince or reassure or remind each other like a couple of kids playing make believe - "we're princesess! we're princesses!"



the feeling was surreal. what was that feeling? i remember thinking, we did it! achievement, potential, oppurtunity. we crossed to the other side of the world and we did it on an airplane and a job at the zoo and ambition and intense curiosity and utter, utter directionlessness. For a while I'd believed people when they said what we were doing was crazy. I guess it was. But sometimes I thought about them in the mornings when I opened my curtains while I was lying in bed and watched the sun melt over the orange mountains in the distance and slide down the speckled hatched roofs onto my beanbag pillow. i listened to the chirping of the birds and the bugs and the rattle of the train on the tracks and I knew I'd rather be crazy than be in any of their shoes.

Images and instances keep coming back to me and I think about them all the time. i think about the alleyways behind the dorm and how they were like a maze in an alternate universe densely filled with stray cats and pretty trees and something else i couldn't place. it's amazing how a place can be so modern but feel so ancient.



the heat coming up through the soles of our shoes from the pavement and our intense love-hate relationship with the overwhelming warmth. hidden shrines scattered around the city that jumped out at us from behind corners like mischevious children. watching clumps of pink and blue flowers sway along the side of the tracks as the train sped by. pretty girls riding bicycles in the morning on quiet streets with white lacy umbrellas in their hands.

The obscene english/japanese/french/german hybrid sound that pervaded genkijacs as we all sat on the straw mats and ate cheap sushi and exotic pastries. green tea and random assortments of crazy fruit drinks from obscurely placed but plentiful vending machines being our main source of hydration. The doughnuts... the 500 yen breakfasts of rice and miso soup and things that we mostly couldn't identify but were so insanely delicious.

the maniacal obsession with EVERYTHINg being irrationally cute.



Playing cards in the dorm late at night listening to music on ari's laptop and watching the olympics in japanese. those guys were all so cool and they were from everywhere. we were from canada. do you think we were as exotic to them as they were to us?

the rain on the beach beneath fukuoka tower, the neon lights over the river at night time, the fireworks over the ocean celebrating the return of the souls of ancestors to the spirit world, and running down the street amidst an onslaught of hot rain in skirts and tiny japanese shoes and continuously forgetting umbrellas and laughing and loving it.



One of the first day's we were there ashley and i were walking down a back street exploring, and a little boy carrying a basket was looking at us from behind a corner, and i waved at him and he smiled bashfully and waved back. it was like something connected then that was so much bigger than me. i dont even knkow how to describe it.

for us the world was simultanously so much smaller and so much bigger than it had ever been before. i want to feel that again.

do I exist? yes

sometimes when i try to walk across the street, cars don't stop for me. this naturally leads me to deeply question my existence. they may not be stopping because they are unobservant or in a hurry, or it could be because im not really here. sometimes for days at a time i dont talk to anyone at all, and i fall into my head. inside there its kind of grey and clammy and foggy and smells like oriental cooking. it's soft though, like its covered in moss and i can feel things watching me from behind shadows so im never lonely when im there. the shadows are dark and twist and turn like water in a storm. they fight and become hot and scream and make noises like papers rustling and glass shattering and sometimes eat each other. i hear voices too. at times they are crisp and clear and at others they're faint enough to have travelled across centuries. they discuss the purpose of my life and ask if i forgot to lock the door that morning. many times they're voices i recognize but sometimes they're not, and they talk to me about things that have happened and things that will never happen and things that could happen if i learn how to find out what i want. there are lights that float around, changing colours and becoming harsher and softer and bigger and fuller, and ill follow them sometimes for a long time until they become too dim or until the shadows get too dense or until i get too frustrated with the meandering path or until someone tells me the coffee shop is closing or that im blocking a stairway. and that's when i look up and smile and say 'thanks' and then in my head i say 'for confirming my existence'. someone always does that for me eventually, i guess im just waiting for someone who will do it in a meaningful way.

I came back to something familiar after being in an unfamiliar place for a long time. I was afraid I would come home to something different than I remembered, but it is the same. Home has one quality that makes it home to me, and that's safety. I don't have to defend my right to be here, it's a place that I belong to.I like being in far away places very much, but it's important for me to know home is still here. It helps me to be bold, and stable. When it disappears it's going to change me. I know that and I'm afraid of it. It's not exactly a sanctuary, but it's here for me.

People change though, always. Things with people aren't the same anymore, which I guess I should always expect. Relationships start and stop and grow and shrink and drink too much red wine sometimes and dance through displays of christmas lights and do 180s on snowy suburban highways at 3am. And there are always secrets everywhere from everyone, and they surface sometimes like lake monsters and then disappear again, leaving me wondering whether I really glimpsed them at all or if my imagination was just making things out of ripples and driftwood.

And I met someone kind of unexpectedly and wonderfully and perplexingly. And I spent time with him and I talked to him, and he talked to me and we talked to each other and we ate sushi and smoked sheesha and sat on the top of a snowy hill on some crazy carpets to watch the frozen sky turn purple and the street lights turn on. He talks about the economy and he likes Waking life and the tragically hip, and discussing nietzsche and he has a dog named holly and he picks up her poop in a little plastic bag when he takes her for a walk. And he laughs a lot - he has a wonderful laugh and when I hear it it makes me happy and excited. I've felt so betrayed and jaded in the last few months, and when he put his arm around me and rubbed my elbow I think it healed something important.

And, miraculously, I think he likes me too. I throw people off somehow. Often times people are unsure how to react to me, no matter how desperately hard I try to be transparent. But I think he likes that. I am unintentionally unconventional and awkward and he interprets it as mysteriousness, which is just fine by me. Perfect, really. And the inevitable catch? I am getting on a plane tomorrow and not returning for a long time. In his words - "what unfortunate fortune."

All of this has been so fleeting.

perspective

There is this place where there’s a rock in front of a big pond and one evening I sat on the rock. It was moist and slippery because it was drizzly out but it was one of those days where it didn’t really matter much to me if the seat of my jeans got wet or if my hair was frizzier than usual or if the world was crashing in upon itself like a slow motion video of an unwanted skyscraper with its crevices filled strategically with dynamite. Sometimes stuff like that doesn’t seem important and maybe that’s the way it should be.

Dusk was creeping over the lake and a billowing cloud of blue-gray mist trailed along in its footsteps like an admiring little brother. Mist wishes it could be as cool as dusk but it will always be stuck in its shadow. It’s the darkness that people fear. Mist muffles the light but its connotations will never surpass anything beyond eerie mystery. Dusk signals the approach of something much more terrible, like a trumpet heralding the beginning of a long, bloody battle. It doubts the sun and light and hope like water doubts the flame on a match.

There’s something about a still, smooth surface of a lake on a quiet, starless night. There’s almost never an absence of wind in Newfoundland and when there is it’s because something out there is trying to tell you something and to understand it you have to sit on a wet rock in the dusk and the mist and the hushed enigmatic serenity and listen.

A few times in your life everything will fall wonderfully into perspective. It might be the wrong perspective. You might change your mind some day. You might decide to follow a different path. You might lose your way. You might get trapped in some horrible abyss of obscurity and spend the remainder of your life talking to daisy’s or planting mittens to grow mitten trees or breeding termites or something. Or it all might come to an abrupt end that will give no respect to your perspective. But when it does all come together in that one moment and everything ahead of you and behind you and inside you begins to become meaningful in some new and real way, it feels so impossibly perfect.

History

Family

Blood is a strange thing. Family bonds aren't like the ones of friendship or lovers. They can't be shattered by drama, or anger, or distance, or time, or even years silence. They're unbreakable, and they stretch over quarrels and oceans and generations. Maybe this explains why, being here in a place I've never lived with people I've never really known, I somehow still feel at home. I've never come face to face with my heritage in any significant way before, and the names of the people who made it up had always seemed distant and superfluous to me. Maybe that's why it's a remote concept to my mind that I'm being accepted here not because of who I am or where I'm going, but because of where I come from.

When I was a child and my parents would speak to me vaguely of the past, I always thought of the people they mentioned as I thought of the characters they invented in their bed-time stories. They were as real to me back then as the people in the books I read. It occurs to me now that that notion of thinking followed me right into my teens. Over the past week I've been compelled to change that outlook. My relatives are no longer these intangible leaves on some distant branch of a metaphorical family tree. They're real people who are right in front of me playing a harmonica, cooking up fish cakes, reminiscing with each other in loud voices about swimming spots and long gone pets, and complaining about gas prices. People who's faces I look into and see my mother's nose, my sisters grin and the color of my eyes. I am part of a thousand stories I didn't know existed.

My dad told me once that one of the most important things in the world is knowing where you come from. I think I'm closer to that now than I ever have been.

St. John's, Newfoundland

There's an honest ruggedness to Newfoundland that I've never seen anywhere else. The air of delightful pretention and cultural grandeur of Victoria have not followed me here. This island was settled by some of the first people to ever leave the comfort of Europe. Breaking free of the roots of their lineage that had grown into the soil of that continent for thousands of years, they came to North America to capture a land that was as tough and unconquerable as they were.


The whole place retains that atmosphere from so long ago, that kind of innovative, chaotic, disorderly "do with what we have" philosophy from the people who made it what it was. Rows of houses of all different colors built side by side up hills steep enough to fall down. The city's roads are paved conveniently from the horse carriage trails of 200 years ago; seven way intersections and streets that wind away into nothing. The close-knit, friendly, small town, lay down your life for your neighbor ideal is prominent throughout the province, even in a big city like St. John's. As a Calgarian, I'm not at all accustomed the idea of smiling and waving at the people you pass on the streets, but it's sure something I could get used to.


The landscape itself is spectacular. There's beauty everywhere you look. Windswept forests and wave-pounded cliffs, craggy hills and rocky shores; no such thing as prairies here. The thing I found most enchanting was standing on a grassy drop off overlooking the ocean, watching the sailboats and the humpback whales mingle with the horizon. Looking down at the rock face rizing with a heart stopping abruptness out from under a navy ocean blanket that sets its foamy curl crashing against it as if trying to suck it back in, it's not hard to imagine why the locals call this island simply "The Rock." It's a strange feeling you get when you follow the shoreline with your gaze and watch it curve backwards through the mist to eventually enclose itself against the sea. It's a refuge, a sanctuary in a flowing, heaving, chaotic mass. Substance surrounded by an irregular nothing. It makes you feel like this is the only place in the world, and the only place there needs to be.


I guess this is the quintessence of an island.

Plane Trip

Here I am again at this familiar thirty thousand feet, staring at an empty azure blue abyss and a shuddering plane wing. The guy in front of me has decided to take full advantage of the fact that yes, these airplane chairs can move back pretty far and you're crushing my flimsy food tray into my ribs thanks. Everyone seems to feel it necessary to make their bathroom trips last as long as humanly possible. Any kind of actual food they sell is frighteningly overpriced. Ham sandwich? No thanks, I would rather eat my fingers, the medical bills will probably cost less. And there's a baby crying. Why is there always a baby crying?

It's an interesting location, a plane. A hundred people smushed together in an enclosed space, suspended unnaturally in a giant metal box with wings, at a place in the globe's atmosphere a human body was never meant to experience, sharing no common connection or interest except for an ultimate geographical destination.

I like plane rides. I like the fact that most everybody here knows exactly what they're in for. I like knowing that for the next six hours, expensive sandwiches and crying babies are the worst problems I'll have to face in my life. I like the calm obscurity of knowing that in this place, "Cookies or pretzals, miss?" is the most important question I'll have to answer.

The only thing to do is sit here and stare out the vaccuum sealed window, looking down at the sun bouncing off the clouds and imagine they really are as soft and fluffy as you used to think they were when you were a kid.

Soon the plane will start to descend into the clouds, slicing through them like butter, and on the other side I'll be in a whole new world.

These cookies taste like soap.

that dance

What was it that flitted between us
like some disoriented humming bird
transferring pollen and tragedies and comedies
through a breathless swirl of late nights,
dark bedrooms and perplexing glances.
That winter night had a bite to it that
turned our flesh and doubts to ice and you
explained to me how in this cold there was no need
to stand apart and would I like to dance?

Now summer's swallowed winter whole and washed it down
with an antacid and some heartache, leaving
nothing but a whistful blur of bus-stop goodbyes,
placements of fingertips and destinationless conversations.
Tonight we sit on the dock dangling our feet and hearts
above the harbour water, which in the dark
looks very much like molasses and we watch
the shimmering reflections upon it of lights from
buildings and ships a thousand worlds away.

My arm is brushing yours and somehow all
that comes to mind with any clarity
is how you keep a step ahead of me when we walk down the streets
and of the way you always get angry when
I try to open the curtains to the morning,
and an image of a hummingbird, burried,
frozen
beneath a mountain of yesterdays, because,
you know, we never did dance.

The Ocean

When I was a kid, back in Newfoundland on some nameless rocky shore, my Uncle told me to look into the sea and count the waves as they washed up onto the beach. He said that no matter what, the seventh wave I counted would always be the largest. When I asked in disbelief how this could be possible, he mumbled something about moons and hemispheres and turned to walk away. I followed him, gazing behind me, and noting silently that as far as I could see, all the waves looked exactly the same.

I found myself standing today on the same rocky shore, staring at those same waves, on the opposite side of the continent, the mountains of the mainland miles in the distance rising like gigantic sapphire gaurdians above the shimmering ocean. Taking a seat on a pile of driftwood I watch the water heave and rise and fall in an uncanny pattern that wasn't quite monotony and wasn't quite chaos; as if it was a living thing waiting for the right moment to break free of some mysterious bondage.

As I listelessly prod the dried up sea urchins I contemplated the crumbling cement staircases that once led to a pathway on the cliffs above my head, wondering how many more times the sea would have to rise up in high tide before they were beat into oblivion. The emptiness of it all has a way of making you feel like you're the only person on earth. I started to feel the kind of self-pity that comes from being lonely before I noticed the sun beating down on my skin and smelled the salt air breeze and came to a small revelation that the times where I've been lonely are where I've felt most content.

The rushing noise as the waves swarm over the stones and makes a hypnotizing sound as the ocean draws them back in - a hush - like a mother whispering to her child to go to sleep. I begin to count the waves. One... two... three... I've noticed that it kind of has this pull on people, the idea of the sea. They gather around it and they broad upon it and paint it and write about it and sing about it, all of them trying to capture and portray some sort of essence that they can all feel but no one can really completely understand. Four... five... six... It's the concept that there's something vaster than ourselves, absolute in it's own existence, completely independent of human conceivability. I stepped back down onto the beach and watched quizzically as the seventh wave, braver than it's fellows, washed over the dry stones and onto my sneakers.

Leaving a trail of wet footprints on the rocks I went to make my way back up the cliff before the tide came in. I'd be back.

The Harbour

In the spring of 1778 Captain James Cook became the first person to set foot in what's now British Columbia, and selected the site for Fort Victoria, named after his Queen. Two hundred years later, this is what it's become.



On the Inner Harbour the sidewalk is lined with venders and street preformers, people selling their handcrafted items, musicians and artists and jewellers. Children run through the crowds with over priced hot dogs and ice creams dripping down their hands and stare in awe at the never ending array of magicians and fire jugglers. People mill about aimlessly taking in the sun and the sights: the myriad of museums, the ferry boats that sail people away across the harbour every few minutes and the totem poles on every street corner (the native influence of this place, mingling respectfully with the sometimes overbearing British one, is nevertheless inescapable and beautiful). Even the lofty rich folk venture down from their million dollar yachts to take it in. Old couples sit hand in hand under the trees, perhaps having grown up here and seeing it turn into what it is now, watching tourists from everywhere in the world point their cameras and snap at everything from the Parliament Building to the potted flowers hanging from the street lamps. Flowers, everywhere. Can't throw a rock without uprooting one.

When dusk starts to fall, and Country Joe packs up his coin filled guitar case, he's replaced by a man in dreadlocks with congo drums and wooden instruments. He sings songs with such melodies such that I can't quite place their origin, but it seems as though they've travelled across the ocean from some distant time and place and have somehow found their way here. A rythmic hush falls over the harbour as the sun sets behind the masts of the sleeping ships.



It's impossible to be sad here amongst this. It's impossible to be lonely. Even the bums have a look of contentment on their faces that says at this moment they wouldn't rather be anywhere else.

How can one not love it here.

Victoria, B.C.

A fancy hotel room smack in the middle of downtown, historical richness around every corner, a big fat wallet and sixteen days with no inhibitions and no responsibilities. There's no one relying on your presence, no one asking when you'll be back, and an entire beautiful island to explore. This is what freedom feels like.

The roads and pathways are as alive at night as they are in the afternoon. The street lights here in the early morning hours shine like a second sunlight. People here live in the shadow of the once great Victorian era. Shops and buildings and monuments all secrete a taste of the overwhemling extravagence of the British high class that came to this place so long ago, seeking to convert these wild forests and mountains into an extension of the empire they took such pride in.

This city run on a time scheme seperate from the rest of the world. They seem to have this air about them as they saunter down the streets, in sundresses or shirtless in sandles, that says there is no rush, there is no hurry, the sun is shining and the water surrounds us and there's beauty on all sides. There is nothing so important that we must hasten destinations. This is island time.

The people you meet here have a tendancy to look into your eyes instead of at your composition. Everything is layed back, everything is grand, and when things get a little antsy, hey, just smoke another joint.

This might just be the way we were meant to live.

Here it Goes

The idea of jumping in a boat or on a plane or in a car and leaving everything behind to explore a new world is something everybody fantasizes about, behind school desks and in front of data-filled computer screens. Putting as much distance as we can between ourself and our every-day problems. Filling up the spaces between ourselves and our boring realities with new experience and oppurtunity. A new place, different people and customs and sights, the excitement of contributing to an atmosphere that's different from our own. If we're lucky, many of us get to experience this a few times in our lives.

This is what I'm doing right now. I'm ditching everything and pretty much going. Blowing smoke in the face of my previous half hearted habits and going to see something different then what I've been seeing for the past 18 years. This is what life is about, isn't it? Having the courage to shake things up when they get too stale?

Travelling is the only thing I've always known I wanted to do. In a world where society is slowly and insistently beginning to try to shove me into my destiny and duct tape me there, I think that's something to hold onto. I just hope it will be everything I've imagined it to be.

To blowing the popsicle stand!

Belief

I was walking through downtown from the library to TD Square to get something to eat, when a man about a quarter of a block ahead of me turns around, makes eye contact with me, stares me up and down, and keeps walking. I didn't think anything of it.

Since he was walking kind of slowly I quickly caught up with him, and was just about to pass him when he turned around so abruptly that I almost walked straight into him, and stared me in the face. He looked the same age as me, maybe a little older. He smiled and said, "Hi!"

I gave him a blank stare and said hi back, and tried to inch politely around him. But the lights on the other side of the street corner I was about to cross were already signalling a 'don't walk' sign.

Without missing a beat he asked me, "Have you ever heard of Jesus?"

"Uh... what?"

"Have you ever heard of Jesus?"

Restraining myself from rolling my eyes I smiled and said yes, in fact I had heard of him.

"Are you a Christian?" he asked.

I told him no, and in retrospect I probably shouldn't have laughed and grinned when I said it.

The light changed and I thanked God (or Buddha or something) and I crossed the street. I kept walking straight and he walked beside me. "You're heading this way? So am I, I'll walk with you," he said. "Do you mind if I tell you a story?"

"Go ahead," I said, now less annoyed and mildly interested.

"Well a couple years ago, I was on the street, I was into a whole bunch of stuff. Cocaine, heroine... I would puke my brains out every single morning. I used to steal from my mom and my friends, I was a horrible person. I mean, what kind of person steals from their mom? And then a little while later -"

"You found Jesus?" I interrupted cheerfully.

"Well, yeah."

"I've heard this story," I smiled at him.

I expected him to start ranting about how I should welcome Jesus into my life too if I didn't want to burn in hell, but he only looked amused.

He started talking to me about how he understood why the average person was so hostile towards Christians who preached their beliefs, because they so often present themselves as overbearing nutcases. He then said that by stopping me, a random person, on the street to talk about God, he probably seemed like he was borderline one himself. He went on to say that the only reason he had done that was because he felt such happiness and fulfillment in his life in the knowledge that he had purpose, and that he was going to heaven, and when he saw me he just wished that I would have that same happiness.

We walked for about three blocks just discussing faith and lack of faith. When he seemed confused at my explanation of why I didn't believe in God, I told him that I was just the kind of person that couldn't have faith in anything.

He said, "Sure you are! All you have to do is hear God speak to you and you can have faith."

"Well God doesn't speak to me," I laughed, "That's the problem."

His manner had been kind of humorous through our whole discussion, but at this point he said very seriously, "Have you ever really listened?"

I thought about that for a second. "No.. I guess I haven't."

He smiled brightly, and said "Listen."

"Maybe I'll try that."

Then he told me that he had to turn now, and he waved goodbye and walked away.

We hadn't even exchanged names.


I guess since the age of about 14 onward I had always looked at gung ho religious people, christians especially, with a sort of sympathetic tolerance. But the fact that they have somehow found, by digging through the dirt and grime of life, a way of seeing purpose and meaning in humanity where I can only see chaos, is a truly respectable thing, and it sort of makes me wonder who should be sympathetic to who.

They've found a way to be happy. In this sense, it almost doesn't even matter if they're delusional.

Ice

We walk on frozen ponds
And we pray to winter chills
To keep them solid long enough
To carry out our wills

We walk our watery paths
And we pray to golden Gods
That when the ice has melted
We'll still have somewhere to trod

And when the sun starts gleaming
Then we pray to looming clouds
To cover up it's sparkle
With the darkness of it's shrouds

But when the ground starts shifting
And our weight will hold no more
Then we leave our prayers behind us
As we swim towards the shore