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.