It's Cool, We Can Still Be Friends

Montreal at night.

Montreal at dawn.

I guess that your truth is just a ghost of your lies.

I guess your kind of truth is just the ghost of your lies.

Yeah, your kind of truth, darling, is just the ghost of your lies.

I see through them all the time.

So I'm pouring some whiskey, I'm gonna get drunk.

I'm pouring myself some whiskey, I'm gonna get real fucking drunk!

I'm pouring some whiskey right now, I'm gonna get so, so drunk

that I pass out and forget your face... by the time I wake up.

- Bright Eyes

If You Want it to be Real Come Over For One Night and We Can Really, Really Climb

No attempt is made to explain away
the things that really, really, really, really, really are behind.
You can't hide.
- Okkervil River "For Real"

++

I found out on the metro, I mean -- I realized what I already knew -- that you're never going to call again. I figure that's okay, I guess. I tried/didn't try/didn't know what I was doing. But this is what I want you to know: no one knows what they're doing. It was my first time being born, my first time being 6, and 7, and 8, and feeling death -- my first time having a dead mother -- I don't know how to react -- does anyone? -- my first time in high school, first time learning the history of quebec, the geography of other people's bodies and mouths and hearts. It's my first time being 18, my first time living this day -- october 14th 2009 -- I'm never going to see this day again -- but how do I know what to do with it? So when I walked past you in the hall, so when I gave her that note, so when I avoided him on the way home; I was just living in my own weird way. I don't know if I'm doing it right. There's no instruction manual. I don't know if I should've said something else, or if this gets easier or more vivid. I don't think living gets easier, it just gets stranger. If I'm confusing it's because I'm confused.

I started reading the first couple of pages of this book and on page two I was told "love and ideals are not actually real". Oh, okay. I see it now.

Maybe it's because I have neither that I think this is untrue. Maybe I've read too many books, seen too many hollywood movies with romantic endings. Maybe I've been listening to too many songs that tell me love is the best sensation hiding in the lion's mane. I want love to be real, I need love to be real. I need ideals to be real because I idealize love in the worst way.

I slipped her a note in class, sat back and thought My life is a joke. After class she turned around, "Was this you who wrote this?"
Yes.
"Is this real?"

++

I'm just using you so I'll have a story to tell. So do your worst and I'll write my best. That's all I could ever hope for -- an experience so brilliant it will lift the words off the page. I'm running low on gas and I've kind of given up on you -- you, you'll never call. But now I'm asking you, come on, make it hurt! You're not killing me the way I want you to.

Come on, idealized love. I know you're real, I've felt you moving in me before.

And now I'm a walking contradiction. I wrote some days before -- notes in my phone -- But you're like, a real person. And I'm not. You're the kind of person who won't call back. And I'm not. I'll make you larger than you are. I'll write you into fiction, make you beautiful and smooth. But you're still real, you're just somebody else. I'm real too, but to other people. Maybe I passed you once before, before I knew you, and we slid by each other -- our worlds so close to touching -- your eyes straight, my head turned -- I didn't know you'd be real to me one day. Am I still outside your line?

++

I spend my days learning. I learn the curve of the hallways -- where the A wing is, the elusive F -- which bathrooms to use and when -- where to go when I'm alone -- and where to get on the metro so the doors open right in front of the stairs.

And when someone asks you if this is real, the answer is "Yes. Yes, of course it is." Because if this isn't real then I have nothing. If love isn't real then I -- we -- truly have nothing. You may call, or not. We might brush so close to each other again someday, maybe tomorrow. But I'll never have this day back, or that note, or this particular feeling walking home in a frustrated sorrow. I'll never be 6 again, or 7, or 8, my mom will never die again, I'll never be in high school for the first time. I'll learn new curves -- elbows and shoulders, lips -- meet other 'you''s and write other stories -- but I still won't know what I'm doing. It will still be the first time, it will still count, it will still be real. And I'll be here, taking notes.

Yes, this is real. This is very, very real.

If I Murdered A Senior Citizen Would It Still Be The Same

I had a few ideas for tonight's post, the first being Authority capital A and really just an excuse for me to rip into my boss at whose hands I've had two really crappy days at work because he both infuriated and humiliated me two days in a row. The second being the irony that someone whose friendship I once sought 5 years ago is now requesting my friendship on facebook. The third is that I almost caught the dreaded swine flu.

None of these topics are really suitable for a whole blog post; I don't want to publically ("publically" - who reads this?) bash my boss (though I'm trying really hard not to write some swear words right now nannyfucking motherfucker oops) because it's something private, and while the irony of this facebook request is interesting to me I would probably be so vague about it no one would understand anyway (though I do have the distinct pleasure in saying that I have so far not responded to it...). I don't have anything to say about the swine flu except that I almost thought I almost had it and then I didn't.

Instead I've decided to do a post about things that have almost happened to me or things that I almost did -- which is a bit uncharacteristic considering that I hate dwelling on the past because it only serves to confuse me and I am already very confused (why? I don't know). I actually find it kind of fascinating to think about how different my life would be if things had gone the other way. Fascinating, but if I think about it too much I would probably kill myself because there's no way to find out and that would drive me mad. Unless someone figured out how to time travel, etc., where's Albus Dumbledore? No wait he's dead, like MJ and Farrah Fawcett about whom everyone forgot. Harry Potter the movie is coming out soon. What am I talking about? Oh yeah.

5 Things That Almost Happened To Me But Didn't
(in no real order, numbering is just because I feel like they need to be numbered)

5. I almost didn't make the Dawson hockey team

See, this would've most certainly have changed my first year in CEGEP quite a bit. For one thing, I probably would've been happier but I never would have met up with Katrina in DC. I also probably would never have seen a "councellor" who looks like Sandra Bernhard or that other therapist I saw twice but stopped because she was terrible/TERRIBLE and swallowed weirdly, which you may think trivial but you never met her, so.

4. I almost didn't switch programs in grade 9

The only reason I switched was because my schedule on the first day of grade 9 was so scary and crappy that I didn't want to stay. I probably would have been happier had I not switched programs -- the last 3 years of high school were the worst of my life. However I wouldn't have met That Person Who Moved to Iowa nor that other person whose name I am also too embarassed to put here. I probably wouldn't have felt as alienated, depressed, stupid, confused, or rejected as I did but I guess it's a good thing (what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, y'know, whatever).

3. I almost did something that one night at that one party

zomg life would have been so different wouldn't it. No point in explaining this one; I like to be vague and mysterious, keep people on their toes.... jk.

2. I almost didn't go to New York

I had to work like 15 days in a row so I could go to New York but it was soo worth it. Best decision ever. Canadian border security people thought I was crazy (they're obvs wrong) and searched my bag (#1 is I almost got arrested for smuggling the marijuana over the border. jk again. see? not crazy).

1. I almost murdered a senior citizen at a bank

JK that was Riese Michael Jackson Someone Else. Er... I mean there are lots of other things that Almost Happened but like really, I can't dwell on them/think about them it sucks too much. I could say I Almost Didn't Punch A Hole In My Wall but that would be a lie. Oh I know! When I was little I almost mailed an envelope of about $10 in change (my life's savings) to scholastic so I could be part of the Mary-Kate and Ashley fanclub or whatevs.

There Isn't a Pension for Second Best

Synapse to synapse... the possibility's thin...

I'm dressed up for free drinks and family greetings on your wedding, your wedding, your wedding date...

[death cab for cutie - company calls epilogue]

Sometimes a song finds you at just the right time. I mean sometimes you can hear a song a hundred times and never get it, until one day when you're in a certain moment, a certain mood, and it comes on shuffle.. and suddenly everything makes sense.


polaroid

Crashing through the parlor doors, what was your first reaction? Screaming, drunk, disorderly, I'll tell you mine...

you were the one but I can't spit it out...