more from perks

this poem is on page seventy of the copy i have

once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines

he wrote a poem

and he called it "chops"

because that was the name of his dog

and that's what it was all about

and his teacher gave him an A

and a gold star

and his mother hung it on the kitchen door

and read it to his aunts

that was the year Father Tracy

took all the kids to the zoo

and he let them sing on the bus

and his little sister was born

with tiny toenails and no hair

and his mother and father kissed a lot

and the girl around the corner sent him a

Valentine signed with a row of X's

and he had to ask his father what the X's meant

and his father always tucked him into bed at night

and was always there to do it

once on a piece of white paper with blue lines

he wrote a poem 

and he called it "autumn"

because that was the name of the season

and that's what it was all about

and his teacher gave him an A

and asked him to write more clearly

and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door

because of its new paint

and the kids told him

that Father Tracy smoked cigars

and left butts on the pews

and sometimes they would burn holes

that was the year his sister got glasses

with thick lenses and black frames

and the girl around the corner laugh

when he asked her to go see santa claus

and the kids told him why

his mother and father kissed a lot

and his father never tucked him in bed at night

and his father got mad

when he cried for him to do it

once on a piece of paper torn from his notebook

he wrote a poem

and he called it "innocence: a question"

because that was the question about his girl

and that's what it was all about

and his professor gave him an A

and a strange steady look

and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door

because he never showed her

that was the year that Father Tracy died

and he forgot how the end 

of the apostle's creed went

and he caught his sister 

making out on the back porch 

and his mother and father never kissed

or even talked

and the girl around the corner

wore too much makeup

that made him cough when he kissed her

but he kissed her anyway

because that was the thing to do 

and at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed

his father snoring soundly

that's why on the back of a brown paper bag

he tried another poem

and he called it "absolutely nothing"

because that's what it was really all about

and he gave himself an A

and a slash on each damned wrist

and he hung it on the bathroom door

because this time he didn't think

he could reach the kitchen.

the perks of being a wallflower

"So this is my life.  And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."

"I have finished To Kill A Mockingbird.  It is now my favourite book of all time, but then again, I always think that until I read another book."

"I thought that in those movies and television shows when they talk about having a coffee break that they should have a masturbation break.  But then again, I think this would decrease productivity."

"And I wonder if anyone is really happy.  I hope they are.  I really hope they are."

"We accept the love we think we deserve."

"I feel infinite."

"He's a wallflower."

"You see things.  You keep quiet about them.  And you understand."

"Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder."

"Sam sat down and started laughing.  Patrick started laughing.  I started laughing.  And in that moment, I swear we were infinite." 

"I just listened to the music, and breathed in the day, and remembered things.  Things like walking around the neighborhood and looking at the houses and the lawns and the colourful trees and having that be enough."

"Patrick actually used to be popular before Sam bought him some good music."

"I have decided that maybe I want to write when I grow up.  I just don't know what I would write."

"I am really in love with Sam, and it hurts very much."

"I just hope I remember to tell my kids that they are as happy as I look in my old photographs.  And I hope that they believe me."

"I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy.  I hope that they feel it's enough.  I really do because they've made me happy  And I'm only one person."

"And she kissed me.  It was the kind of kiss that I could never tell my friends about out loud.  It was the kind of kiss that made me know that I was never so happy in my whole life."

"I also called pizza crust 'pizza bones'.  I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"It's like when you are excited about a girl and you see a couple holding hands, and you feel so happy for them.  And other times you see the same couple, and they make you so mad.  And all you want is to always feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means that you're happy, too."

"I just remembered what made me think of all this.  I'm going to write it down because maybe if I do I won't have to think about it.  And I won't get upset.  But the thing is that I can hear Sam and Craig having sex, and for the first time in my life, I understand the end of that poem."

"And I never wanted to.  You have to believe me."

more to be added sometime...

nanna

sassy

today at work there was an old lady who was trying to pay for something, and she was using her debit card, and she kept putting her pin in wrong, so i had to swipe it like, 8 times.  before i swiped it the final time (she said it would be the last time), she said, "it makes you wonder why it's not working.  there's probably someone on the other end trying to steal my pin."

i thought i was going to die.  but i couldn't laugh in her face... but i wanted to so badly.  bahaha.

extras

i think i have one more thing to say about death and spirit and all that. 

and love. 

i think it's a true and natural phenomenon of life when a couple has been married or together for a really long time, and one of them dies, and shortly after (days or weeks), the other one dies too.  it's so weird but incredible that love can potentially be that strong that they couldn't live to be apart from one another.  that makes me hopeful for the future, and i hope that i find someone whose love for me and my love for him is that strong.  

"next door there's an old man / who lived to his nineties / and one day passed away in his sleep / and his wife, she stayed / for a couple of days and passed away / i'm sorry i know that's a / strange way to tell you / that i know we belong" 

"and when you're gone / i wanna go too / like johnny and june"

passion is powerful.

we are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams

love is all you need.

(me c. january 2008)

i don't think i have anything overly intelligent to say right now but i feel like writing and i'm going crazy i think so i guess this is a good start off the path of insanity.  i don't know if anybody cares.  but i do. 

my grampy died in february and i miss him every day and i love him so much.  he was amazing.  he was so full of life and love and passion for everything.  in my eyes he could do anything, and he probably could and would if it was in his power to do so.  he was always there if i needed to talk, or if i just wanted to sit and watch jeopardy that was fine too.  i remember everything about him perfectly.  his eyes were light, light blue.  he was tall and wide and a teddy bear... theoretically speaking.  he wasn't actually a bear.  haha.  he'd laugh at that.  he wore dentures and when me and daniel were little he would like, do tricks with them.  i can't explain it.  and he always had his hair perfectly styled.  that's how i was able to know he was sick... his hair was a mess and his face was scruffy.  

i think he knew he was going to die and i don't think he was scared.  i think he didn't want us to know that he knew because when i went to see him the night he died, as i was leaving he said, "you're coming back tomorrow right?" and i said, "of course i'm coming back tomorrow grampy!"  and he just smiled and said he loved me.  and i said i loved him too.  

i don't fear death - i welcome it.  not that i want to die, i don't (not yet anyway), but i think that if there was a way to know when i was going to die, i would want to know.  today i learned about epicureans and their view of death.  epicurus says, "death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved, is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us."  and that's so true.  once you're gone, you don't have to worry about anything, you feel nothing.  but sometimes i wonder what the spirit goes through once the body is gone.  the spirit has to watch everyone the body loves collapse into heartbreak and mourning.  that would be hard, i think, if spirits feel the same way that humans do.  i don't know, and i won't know until i'm dead and gone.  it's so weird.  

"don't fear god, 

don't worry about death; 

what is good is easy to get, and

what is terrible is easy to endure."

happiness

i've been thinking about happiness a lot lately.  i think i'm generally a happy person.  if i had to place myself in a category of happiness, i think i fit best within the hedonist perspective.  i don't just constantly seek pleasures just for the sake of it.  i take life as it comes.  but it's not like if i saw an opportunity for me to be happy i would just sit idly by and see if it fell through.  i like being happy.  and for me everything i do and achieve in my life is for the end result of being happy in the future... maybe a day from now, a week from now, a month from now, or ten years from now.  

when people ask me, "what do you want to be when you're older," i always say happy.  i don't think it's a strange answer... it may not have been the answer they wanted to hear, they probably wanted me to say what i want to be professionally.  but even still, i want to be professionally happy.  if i hate my job, i'll be unhappy.  if i love my job, i'll be happy.  everything is correlated.  i need to be happy in order to do well with anything in my life - whether it's schoolwork, my job, my friendships and my relationship.  if i'm not happy, generally at least, everything in my life suffers... and i suffer. 

i don't really know what else 'smart sounding' to say.  

i guess i'll talk about something else. 

i think ken kesey is a brilliant man and he understand happiness... even if a large majority of his happiness was induced by acid.  

he says, "people think love is an emotion.  love is pure sense."  he's right.  love isn't just another emotion like happy or sad, love is inside your soul and it just is.  think about how depressing your life would be without love.  i wonder if there's people out there who don't have any love in their lives.  it doesn't have to be like, relationship love, but any love.  that would be awful.  but i imagine it happens.  

he has a lot of good quotes.  one of my favourites is, "sparks fly upward."  i don't even know why.  it just makes me think of being happy and sparks are like excitement, and i guess it's general consensus that good things go upward.  or maybe i'm making that up, but for me good things are always upwards thoughts.  i don't know. 

"nothing lasts."  that's true.  except rocks.  but even they erode.  but i think love lasts.  kesey said this when he found out he was basically dying.  he had complications from diabetes and from a surgery to remove a tumor.  people can't last but their words and ideas and thoughts can last.  

"loved.  you can't use it in the past tense.  death does not stop that love at all."  the truest thing.  you don't stop loving someone, or start loving them less because they're gone forever.  if anything, death would make love stronger because you have to use your mind and the love you have to remember that person.  love grows.  it doesn't die.  

i just started thinking about john lennon and how he got shot and died.  i used to think, geez that sucks, he could have made so much more music.  but then i think... what if he lived, and ended up being a sellout like everyone else.  maybe it's a good thing it happened so that what we remember is good things.  well besides yoko... but that's for another time and place. 

But all my words come back to me/ In shades of mediocrity

I wrote all of this stuff during the summer and I was too scared to show anyone other than a few close friends.  What do I have to be afraid of?  It's all opinion anyway.

I hope it's something.

when we live in a world when people kill strangers to prove that they are more powerful and their country is superior, there's no such thing as waking up on the wrong side of the bed because one side brings starving babies and people dying from diseases they don't understand, and the other is a bet between six teenage girls for who can have a baby first. 

and the changes that are happening can't be fixed.  this is a forever kind of hell, and it's my future, my hell.

everyone around me is dying, this planet is dying.  is life here so bad that we have to search for it on other planets?  it must be.  there's nothing but more poison there.  maybe there was civilization there at one time but they died out like we are - slowly.  we'll never know.  and if we did it's not like that would stop us.

an unstoppable generation.  we know that's what we are, but the choices are endless to make change happen now.

you're letting me down.  you're a let down.

people keep dying.  people who could have made an impact.  but maybe not.  maybe they'd of just turned into the next degenerate who just sits and stares, who walks on the side of the highway carrying a beatup backpack waiting for a ride that will never come.  maybe he's the happiest person in the world.

"i go to the trouble to learn your language, you should learn mine."  shut up.  no i shouldn't, because you're disrespectful and unworthy of my time and effort.  and guess what?  je parle francais!

'all i can do is love you to pieces' 'we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.'  nothing is forever and everything is constant and i know where up and down are but i don't know where i am.  i know where you are.  

there's so many sad souls.  i see old people mowing their lawns and i wonder what they're thinking.  do they ever have fun?  i guess i can't say what is fun or not.  when people have their living room curtains open, i have to look in because it's like seeing into their souls and seeing what their lives are really life because they don't know i'm looking.  i wonder what people would think if they saw into mine.

i don't believe in god.  it's not because i want to be different or make people angry with me, i just have no reason to believe there is a god because of the way things are in my life and the lives of others.  the christian god is a jealous and spiteful god.  it's not right to make people suffer the way they are.  sure it makes people like me appreciate what i have, but what does it make those who are suffering feel?  why would i want to believe in something so terrible?  i've got better things to be depressed about than some all-powerful being using people as puppets.  and if there is a devil, and god is all powerful, why can't he just get rid of him?  nothing about it makes sense.

sometimes i get really worked up when a song ends or i read the last page of a good book.  i just want things to keep going and not end.  but i guess the point of things ending is to let me make up the real end of those things.  sometimes it's easier to let other people figure out the end.

it's time to move on and grow up.  and it's scary as hell.  the real world.  that's what everyone keeps calling it.  there's only one world - sometimes you just get different perspectives.  there are things i can't wait to leave behind - arguing, insanity (although i imagine i will still have to deal with that, just in a different sense), rules... but other things i don't want to think about leaving.

i think you know you love someone when you kiss them and it feels right.  you melt into them and they melt into you and you're not just two people anymore.  i wish i knew when it was time to say 'i love you'.  i think it should be said when you feel it, and i feel it.  there's not a schedule.  it's spontaneous.  it's that feeling when you get the tingles when you touch and you want to be with them all the time.  and you can fall asleep together. =)

Fresh

This is nothing new.  Well, new to you maybe.  I don't really know what this is going to become, it's just a spot for me to write so that my mind doesn't explode.  I guess I'll start with some basics about me.

I was born and raised in Moncton, NB, Canada, which is a good city but when you live there for 18 years, you learn to hate it.  But I guess that's like anywhere.  I live in Halifax, NS, Canada, now for University.  I go to the University of King's College/Dalhousie University.  I'm going to major in Journalism, but this year I'm just taking electives (International Development Studies, Ethics and the Good Life, Myth into Film, German, and Reporting Techniques).  I love school.  I love learning, even though I don't understand a lot of stuff at first.

That's enough of that.  Now I want to get to the real reason I want to write all of this.  All I want is to discuss what I think and what I see and silly little things that I think I'm the only one who notices them.

Passion is, to me, one of the vital parts of our existence.  Without passion we would become nothing.  The problem is knowing where your passion lies because so many people don't know what truly makes them happy about life.  Some people have passion for music, actually most people do.  Some people think they have passion for music when really they just like music and that's it.  Passion is easily confused with just liking something.  

My passions are endless.  I love little things like seeing a dog roll around in the grass, and seeing the way someone looks from the side.  I love having my hair touched.  I like hearing an old song I haven't heard in years.  I love wishing there was a way to vocalize and spell out instrumental music.  I like smelling bread in the air.  All these insignificant things add up and make life feel good.  They add up to a bigger passion, and I don't even know what it is yet.  Maybe my passion is life.

Yesterday in IDS we watched a 60-minute film about the people of Ladakh, a small region in the Himalayan Mountains in India.  These people are so high up in the mountains that their agriculture is difficult but for the longest time they managed, were self-sufficient, and didn't rely on material things or money to make them happy.  You should have seen their faces.  They were dirty and didn't have anything and they were happier than half of the people I know.  And you know why?  We think iPods and TV and nice clothes make us happy - and maybe they do but it's not real happiness, it's temporary - but really, those things just make us more unhappy and worse off because of their results.  We have to work to make money, then we spend our money on these things we don't need.  And then when we actually do need something, we don't have the money for it.  It's a vicious circle.  I don't even know what else to say.  Oh yeah.  Anyways, so these people were perfectly happy, and then influences from the Western World came in and they started building roads, and importing goods instead of supporting local farmers.  Garbage started collecting in the streets, in the fields, and in the water.  So-called 'modern' civilization ruined them.

It's heartbreaking and I don't know what to do.