i feel like there’s something living, breathing, scrambling inside my chest, suffocated and terrified and desperate, and beyond any hope of escape.

now i know what you’re all thinking: what an awful clich�, jesus, if i’m gonna be melodramatic i could at least make an effort to incorporate some sort of originality. but let me tell you, guys, i’m a little past shooting for original, right now i’m just going for any kind of accurate description.

this thing inside me is everything. it is my panic, my depression, my passion, my will to achieve. it’s my inability to do so, to even express myself in any kind of adequate or satisfactory manner, or draw up any remotely useful amount of will-power. it’s my fear of death, and life, and loss. it is huge, and hugely overpowering.

nothing like a night with an old friend to throw your perspectives all out of whack. forty minutes of staring at this screen, and that’s all i’m capable of saying.

another ten and i manage to come up with this: i miss montreal, jamie, jer, niko… i feel like there’s a lot missing from my life right now.

my grandfather is dead. i certainly will not miss him, he was not a good man. he lived much longer than he deserved.

but my father, on the other hand, i’m sure is taking it much harder than i. so i’m very sorry for him, and for his pain.

i’m stuck. my brother is stuck. my mother is stuck. my father is stuck, and he is watching his father die.

we are exhausted. we cry.

it’s hard to be optimistic in a place like this. but we try, we look at the futur like it may bring some miraculous change of fortune, of scenery. we know that we are what needs changing most of all, but that it’ll never happen under these circumstances.

not to sound like jer is the only thing on my mind these days, but it just so happens that while i was busy sleeping in till three in the afternoon and missing my class today i had a really weird dream about him. some red-eyed, soul-sucking demon woman was hunting me (she floated around killed all my make-believe dream friends or made them jump out of windows to escape her, it was damn creepy) and she tracked me down, and i had the choice between giving her my clothes (no, not the ones i was wearing) or my soul. so natrually i chose to sacrifice my clothing, and jer was the freaky telepathic emisary sent to collect it. he came back afterwards and we sat around in my living room and had a few beers

poeple’s mouths have been bleeding… alot

james elbowed me in the face last night (i probably deserved it, i was rapping his knuckles and stealing his donair), which resulted in a bloody lip on my part, and moderate feelings of guilt on his. i’ve also been chewing up the same spot at the inside corner of my lip for three or four days (i can see you all wincing, you feel my pain!) that james also managed to mash with the back of his hand in our little skirmish. things are really good with us, it’ll be two years soon.

also, the gimp got in a bit of a brawl at school today over a can of pepsi and some salt, and things got a bit out of hand and well… sayyad ended up stabbing him in the face with a plastic fork. it was ugly. he came in through the glass doors, into the agora, dripping blood and melted snow. his friends were all shocked. then we got him cleaned up and found the gushing wound was all of one and a half millimeters wide and closed almost immediately once he stopped poking at it. he still maintains that sayyad is now on his “list”.

meh. i could go on but i’m tired of talking about blood. instead i think i’ll just sit here and meditate over my beautiful trouble. it’s funny that because of her i look at trees differently now, seeing them as giants instead of seeing her as a miniature. i also see potential for futur bonzais i want to watch grow from seeds. i think i’m addicted.

and as a total aside: jer, i miss you… alot

i realize that i haven’t updated in way longer than is reasonably justifyable. in fact, i don’t even know what is prompting me to update right now, seeing as i have nothing important or interesting to say.

it’s possible that it’s because of the classes i am now taking, and the fact that they make me happy and give me hope.

it may be because of the fun new drugs that are doing fun new things to me.

it could also be because of the hat my mother has to eat.

but what i really think is responsible for this return to my long rejected blog is the absolutely exhilarating round of walking tag (all the fun, one eighth the cardio) i just watched my friends and fellow students play in the agora and halls of my wonderful heritage college. i say this with not even the tiniest hint of sarcasm, people: it is as much a spectator sport as any i have ever seen, and it is very possibly my new favorite.

right now, at one fifty-nine pm on january nineteenth, 2004, i am happy.

my cat phoebe is like seven years old.

i am, as i type this, watching her chase her own tail.

i learned something important this evening, completely out of the blue.

i had a six-and-a-half hour shift at music world, which is normally fairly short. but the mood i was in (not bad, just strange) and the various reasons for which i was in it (amazing concert by hawksley workman last night, thoughts of art and passion and medication, autumn’s here, etc.) made the time go by excrutiatingly slowly. so naturally i was taking things slightly less seriously than professionalism dictates; joking around with my manager and the customers, doing my job just a little half-assedly.

a woman about my mother’s age came in, walked by me unnoticed as my co-workers and i stood watching the two towers on three tv screens, adding our own dialogue to the silent film. when she came to ask for my help, she came from the back of the store.

she was looking for the star wars soundtrack; not the “phantom menace” or whatever, but the original one by john williams. that’s what her little brother liked. she told me she’d looked in section and found only the new one. i said i thought we kept john williams in classical or something, i’d take a look around. of the two classical sections, i checked only the one in which it was most likely to be. i walked her back up to the cash, checked the catalogue and asked her if she wanted to maybe take a look at some cds by john williams that could be ordered, since we apparently had none in stock. before the woman could answer marie-france overheard and said that we probably had john williams in stock, that i had probably just checked the wrong section. she took the woman back to the classical section, and i was glad my responsibility had been passed off.

marie came back alone, and we struck up a conversation about madonna, and flirted with a hot guy buying a stupid rap cd. the cd set off the alarms as the guy was leaving so i hopped around the counter and smilingly escorted him out. as i came back up to the register, i saw the woman holding a cd in her hand, waiting to pay for it, and i said cheerfully “oh great, vous l’avez trouv�!”

she told me she was really happy she had found it, that her little brother loved star wars. she told he he had just died, and they had all been asking themselves what to play at his funeral when someone had suggested it, because he was always such a huge fan. she looked straight ahead at the wall and said again how happy she was to have found it, cause she had looked in several other stores with no luck. i looked at her face – at the bloodshot eyes i hadn’t noticed, at the frizzy hair i had – and from her expression i could almost feel her heart beat faster with relief at having found her brother’s cd, feel how monumental this purchase was for her.

she smiled as she held the cd out to me, pointed out that it wasn’t even just star wars but all kinds of film scores he used to love like e.t. and jaws.

she smiled as she accepted the condolences i offered.

as i escorted her out of the store, i asked if she minded telling me how he died. it looked like she was going to cry, going to break down right there in the store, but instead she leaned in really close to me, looked me in the eyes and whispered “il s’est suicid�.” then she lowered her eyes to the bag in her hands and repeated slightly more loudly, “il s’est suicid�.”

i didn’t cry in front of her, or in front of my boss or marie. but now i just can’t stop, because i can’t stop thinking about how close i came to never knowing any of this. and she would have left the store more disappointed and distraught than i could ever have imagined, and then possibly another store, and another, possibly never finding the cd she needed for a million and a half reasons. and though she would never have resented me for a job she didn’t know i did half-assedly, and i would never have felt bad about not helping her find something so important to her; that still could never, ever ever make it right.

so the moral of the story (in case you hadn’t picked it up already) is this: give everyone you come in contact with your absolute, one hundred percent best, because you never know who really deserves it.

my mum told me, “i don’t think he knows how close he came to losing you. honestly, i don’t think you even know it yourself.”