pg 48

i don’t know why i feel so old when i know i’m so young. i think it’s the way the world works and the way it works so that i don’t know as well the people i used to never be able to live without. i miss all of you.

i run with reason. with the memory of chicago in my ears and heart and wonder how the ten of us will fare now that we’ve been split apart for years. there were ten of us on that trip. there are a milliion ways that the 10 of us could go and how it doesn’t seem sad until i think about the 10 of us as a whole and the years that have passed and how much fun we all had together. i slept in the closet for a few hours and then i slept in a fort for the final night. two of those people are in korea. two of those people are in vancouver. one is in toronto. another in waterloo. another in stratford. another in simcoe. the other maybe in hamilton. the other in alymer. that’s ten. that’s it. and there are other examples of a group that was once together so tight but life intervened. as it will and will continue to. we don’t know where the truth of it all is but i do, deep inside the connection that comes with a group of people, some almost strangers brought together in a moment by chicago chili dogs. we’ll never know each other again but we will find similar energy in the most surprising of places.

the world looks different when my friends get older. tonight out and one of them gets a stomach ache that won’t be solved by the tea she orders and so leaves early. it leaves the two of us. the three of us have a history that doesn’t have a place for talking about. it could be talked about but what’s the point, we’re so much older now. it hurts a little bit when the conversation dies with these people. how can it when i know them so well or used to and how talk never dies these days with the people in my life. the national soothes things on the subway ride home. the three of us know it’s dying and it makes me sad. i know so clearly the memories of having everything to say to these people and now years later it feels forced and i’m empty. how we grow and change and how i can balance the feelings of knowing these are the people i think are closest to me and yet the nature of our encounters now tell a different story. do, will, these people understand me. i’m going forward and meeting and learning from new people that put these people in the past when my heart says this shouldn’t be the case. or maybe this is what happens to us who have known each other for years. what do they think of me i wonder when i know what i think of them and question if that’s actually who they are. the world is lonely and the big and i don’t know that i’m not alone.

“don’t worry about your mother come live with me.”
-one guy to another guy walking by the front porch

i’d like to know the streetcar tonight, cut off the subway early and make up the time from walking east. this night is not what i thought it would be and that’s okay. there isn’t a pressure to be at home and move and dance and push and split the world. why would we need to think collectively when two of us are going to the movies and the rest will be staying home and to themselves. the type while holding a cigarette, the intoxication of knowing this woman more and deeper and seeing her more often. the world looks alive and there are more choices when there are none, the grass greener the people friendlier. night doesn’t have to be a bad thing and a night spent quickly, unto itself but with a friend. a movie that could turn out to be the beginning of a new way of looking at the world. this could be it. i could be two hours, three hours away from being a completely different person and all because of this movie. what it will tell me about life and what i will be inspired to do afterwards. everything will smell of success at first before returning to way exactly like we have now, ups and downs, patient moments and frantic ones. i don’t know this city by car as i do by foot and by bike, by transit. will i come to have one. will this come to be the city in which i live. for the rest of my life or will we move. will we take off, further, to the mountains and the truth. i don’t know what it would be to know this person. i’ve known someone before. i appreciate sarcasm as i do an assured sense of self. it’s intoxicating. it’s, well, where does it come from when it seems so rare most of the time. it’s sexy. it’s the beginning and the past. it’s getting stoned and writing on your front porch while a bunch of folks sit in your kitchen waiting for the one to wake up, come out of their room and disperse what they think their brains want. and i’m not welcome. it’s okay but it’s not when i start from an emotional place and not a rational one. what’s wrong with me when that happens? or rather, how does that happen when at the same time rationally the point is clear and understood. the mind and the body are ridiculous things. and how, though i feel them, the words and the ‘insights’ can read as though i am fifteen with dreads and stoned for the first time, having my blind blown by simple life. but then again that is a window into that idea of feeling one way and knowing the other way is actually true. that i can feel okay with making me statements but knowing these statements read like obvious stoneries. not completely the same because it’s not a one or the other example. okay writing that now i know that this isn’t making sense outside of myself as it won’t make sense when i come back to it tomorrow. it’s fleeting already gone. changing the way i think about punctuation and commas, reading like we’d speak. learning. teaching. growing. loving. or to liz: living, loving, learning that’s what it’s all about. look and learn.

i return home from my night and appreciate the city of toronto. how big it is. how there are people i know in this town and wonder at all the things they’re doing. i like riding the streetcar as i like looking at people who board it when i’m in a secure mood, knowing where i am and knowing where i’ve come from. a whole world out there that sounds cliche but doesn’t feel it when in this city i think back to the world and the places in it i’ve lived. to feel old and young at the same time. in class, for the readings this week, and hearing about the power of a story told orally, framed in a way that seems to resent the written word. yes there are folks who can’t read as there are things that can’t be conveyed as well when written but at the same time how there are subtlies in the written word that get lost when told orally and not written down. as i write this i’m listening to swamp rock, a compilation of southern usa rock from the 60s and 70s and so i wonder if lynard skynard is racist but how i won’t know until i look to the internet or take to the library in the same way that i someone readign what i write won’t get the full picture and things will be lost. i understood the pleasure of the written word from a young age which has led to that perfect feeling, but isn’t perfect because whatever is happening whatever framework is decided upon is subject to the context, cut down and raised up at the same time by specificity. i got an english lit degree for my undergrad, a wholly selfish endeavor for the pleasure i took from reading but the roots of that initial decision came from the moment when a novel or a similarly gripping piece of fiction is finished and though the characters of the work are trapped within, you sit on the couch and wonder what happens to them once the final page has been written. the first time i was in new york i half expected to run into all the characters i’d read about, where was woody allen’s alfie singer or etc etc. nobody experiences what i have until i ask them about their life and we find mutual understanding on something like the loneliness that can creep up on a street car ride home. i’d like to tell you a story from my life and in doing so i hope to understand myself a little better. why is stream of consciousness writing denigrated as it is when writing it and then re-reading it later feels like i’ve struck on the current of my soul. that is heavy pressure to put on what is to be written so i recommend being mindful that not every experience is worthwhile, that sometimes there are things that are meant to be forgotten and that the worth of life is only found when true connection si made, whether between my brain and myself or my words and your experiences. i don’t know when i’m going to die and i don’t know what i will think about just before that happens. i do know that i have felt feelings and that those feelings can be shared and built upon with you or with others and that life is truly a neat and blessed thing. to feel like you’re moving when you’re standing still is a gift that i don’t know how to share.

i couldn’t try further as our skin and touch would seep deeper and further and how i know the way your touch soothes me but i don’t knwo what to do.