New England Song
presenting Smalrus Abstracts Folio 4... The Hope Seed/From the Vine vols. 1 and 2
31/01/04(150am)- i cant help but think of the cake song, "never there." french lit test went alright actually. but it was written out in french, so i hope i did okay. i expressed all the ideas i needed to get out... *shrug* docs was okay. discussed various topics of importance- well importance to me, i guess. still no solutions though... and then had a talk with a blond katie (or katherine, as she goes by these days :-p). um, edboard was iffy on my insides again and i wrote yet another poem (seemingly what i do most these days). then was some ups and downs with the actual work aspect of edboard, followed by a long talk with kim about some of our trib concerns. he and i seem to be in agreement on a bunch of stuff. anyways, then came home and needed a little downtime and then lauren and i just finished watching school of rock (i love that movie). i dunno, i need less ups and downs. maybe shut off less on the outside and more on the inside, rather than the reverse like im doing now. *shrug* i suppose happiness breeds contentment, but who is happy? on another subject, corporal punishment is upheld. more later.
30/01/04(125pm)- I've fallen from the sky
I've fallen from grace
I've fallen from the heavens
Angle by angle
The light refracts
A thousand points,
A thousand fractal rays
I speak in patterns of infinite chaos
Of infinite regression
I melt
Snowflake, I
29/01/04(900pm)- after another weak day of class, went skating at parc lafontaine with david and rachel. nice to slap the puck around a bit. but it got me thinking... and the word that david used that kinda best described the feeling these days is 'bittersweet.' its like im skating at night with lights on trees and its so beautiful and im downtown yet, its so pristine. and all i can do is wish she was there and miss her. or theres the fact that the roommates or watching bend it like beckham. david and i talked a lot on the way home... theres a lot of nostalgia and introspection coming out of our last semester here. david and i have been friends since almost the beginning of our first year. weve been through relationships, exams, life, all those kinds of things together. even lived together for a year and after all that time, we know each other pretty well. know each others strengths, know each others weaknesses. its weird how, sometimes, it takes only a short while to feel like youve known a person your entire life. it was a talk over some poutine at lafleurs and a nice walk home. i started to formulate a poem in my head on the way to class this morning. but i didnt write it down. it had to do with snowflakes, individuality, ephemeralism, stuff like that. ive been called whitmanesque, but id rather have the love than the talent. i guess it's only fitting that todays abstract is representing the rambler. thats what i have to say for now.
28/01/04(625pm)- another chilling habs defeat. no good. i have a head cold, its kinda shitty. 24 was good. 2 oscar nominations for les invasions barbares. more randomness, more randomness. seth's back. this red and white shit is getting fucked up. drew the hope seed. random random.
27/01/04(535pm)- 
shaping up to be a week seeking guidance on life. cooking dinner tonight. all new 24 finally. graduation stuff. red and whitE? new peter gabriel, st. germain, and stereolab. no poems yet today, but its early still. feel like im coming down with a cold. less talking is not healthY? done another picture for my new folio for from the vine. will be up tomorrow. randomness. randomness. hope seths doing okay with dean in NH?
(1225am)- started a new folio but its a work in progress. concepts a little different. and on another matter, the prolific poetry writing continues. dont blink, you might miss one. or two or three. the rate they're coming, i cant keep up with my head fast enough. id like to think of the following quote more as applied to life, poetry, and most of all--love:
"You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere."
~sol robeson, p, (1998).
26/01/04(1110pm)- i suppose it makes sense to an extent. you have this jar. and in it contains all these butterflies. they bounce around and around, just waiting to get out. but you know that the only way youll be able to save them all from the elements is by letting them out one by one- making sure each one is nurtured before letting the next one out. and so it goes until all the butterflies are gone...
say the butterflies grow larger in number in that jar, and the elements become harsher. you want to make sure all those butterflies grow strong but all of a sudden, it feels like the jar will burst under the force of the butterflies. the elements grow stronger and harnassing the elements becomes tougher because there is only so much you yourself can stand. imagine that one strike of lightning or earthquake jolt will free all the butterflies from the jar into unsafe conditions. now imagine you are mother nature and that jar of butterflies is yours, ready to burst from that jar before the calm. welcome to my life.
25/01/04(1205pm)- well its been about a week. i guess nows as good a time as any to reflect on whats been going on in the last 7 days. couple of weird dreams- two nights ago it involved allison, last night it involved orlando florida... thats like the second dream ive had in the last month or two that involved me going to warm climate. whats weird is that i dont know what any of it means. i guess its good that im dreaming again? sometimes ive had gaps in timespans in remembering dreams. means i havent made it to REM sleep and means that somewhere im not getting real sleep? sometimes its hard though when you have dreams because you cant shake them. its like you arent sure what they mean. i dont know how much stock i put in dream interpretation so much as i think dreams manifest some kind of reality we wish would happen. i remember the best dream i had involved jen and being a bigtime a&r guy and living in vancouver, its a reality i still wish would happen.
last week started out with a pleasant time in the office reading sets. actually it wasnt so bad even if sward wasnt there to copy edit. but yeah. i ended up leaving sometime to go to the starsailor show. dave from emi got me into the sold out show, so i went with lauren- whod never heard of them before. she kinda got hooked. after fanagling around the entire show (which was better than i expected, and the little we heard of the opener, johnathan rice was really good), i finally weaseled my way backstage to see the guys. i brought with me a copy of the article from sets, so it wasnt finished, but anyways. the bouncer was taking in "my angle" and finally after i called his bluff on the lady from greenland, he knew i wasnt lying and let me and lauren in. nice couple of british lads, although the lead singer definitely suffers from "lead singers syndrome." they read my article, shook our hands, called lauren by name. anyways, it was a fairly nice night with lauren to go see the show and watch her get googly-eyed over getting backstage cause starsailor's like the number 2 band in the uk. their new album i have to admit is really good- better than the first, and ive been listening to it a lot.
monday was another fun day of classes followed by a somewhat painful edboard and the likes. cant remember what significantly happened though, so we'll flashfoward to tuesday. the third state of the union speech by bush. i cant say it was different from his other ones. it wasnt. the shock value of his stupidity is gone these days...however, he made some shockingly right-wing points that couldnt have pulled his agenda farther from centre. i noted a couple of them.
1. forget national security, thats a crock and we know that bush has not made the country safer- hes only begun to instill mass xenophobia in people. that said, he did an excellent job in discussing the state of the union in countries such as iraq and afghanistan. first off on iraq, i love how before the war, we had proof that wmd existed. now that all the shit is over, we're searching for the wmd. well if we had the proof, then why arent we going to the source and getting the wmd? if you had proof before, then why havent you brought back results after, fuckbag? suffice to say.... this part of his speech had more to do with other countries than with the us. who really cares that the conservative media outlets have managed to secure television contracts in afghanistan to infiltrate them with american programming? well, atleast other than the fact that we couldnt possibly americanise the rest of the world anymore, oh no....
2. by the time his hour something long speech was done, it took him 45 minutes to get off of his weak national security/foreign policy schpeil (dont even get me started on the "we dont need a permission slip" line. ill go off the handle). but when he did, he was brave enough to assert such an agenda so right wing it was nauseating. lets start with the no child left behind act. he's still pushing that 3 years later, even though any educator will tell you that the act is ridiculous. namely, i derive this from my mom. fact of the mattter is, educating kids to the next standardised test from year to year is a crock. kids learn nothing but how to take tests. and it shoots the whole pedagogery system to shit. teachers cant teach shit anymore because no child is supposed to be left. well whatever happened to homogeneous grouping? i dunno, that strategy seemed to work for years. if youre going to get a kid to be literate though, it really only makes a difference if he uses the skill. getting kids to take tests isnt teaching, its babysitting.
3. another instance of "what the fuck does this have to do with the state of the american union" was the speech about the sports stars using performance enhancing drugs. now, i know the state of the union is the stage on which, not only the americans watch, but the entire world watches the president and his views on everything, but he called on sports players, team owners, managers, coaches, etc etc... to stop using the drugs and be better role models. quite frankly if an athlete is stupid enough to use the drugs, hes not a role model. but thats another topic all together. my point on this one was that julian was right. they should have had him be baseball commissioner rather than president. atleast then some shit would get done... and i dont even really like baseball...
4. i had a hard time believing that he mentioned this point: spending the already trillion dollar deficited tax dollars on abstinence programs. i have no problems with moral choice, i have no problems with sex education programs in school. however, i can see a government sponsored abstinence program as the worst thing that could happen since prohibition (which reminds me, how long until bush starts hitting the bottle again?). if anything that could blow up in bushes face, its a whole bunch of underage kids having sex til their hearts content because he said "no." it'll join reefer madness on the list of bad mistakes by conservatives and temperance movements.
5. following the abstinence speech, i couldnt believe what came next: ban gay marriages. okay, maybe this is where living in canada has greatly liberalised my thought progression, but even your run of the mill american (save for biblebelt) had to have been shocked and appalled by this statement. i damn well could not believe that he proposed that if "activist judges" do not fall in line, he would propose a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages. homosexuality's not my thing, but thats fine. for some, heterosexuality's not their thing. so on that note, how can you possibly deny two people who love each other the right to marry? not only that, but make it illegal. on this matter, the canadian charter of rights and freedoms is a hell of a lot better than the american constitution- namely because now the constitution could be amended to make it illegal. i cant think of any other way for the man who wanted to be "a uniter, not a divider" to split an already far-right agenda even farther from the right.
we played a drinking game in the beginning of the speech. but after 4 shots in 15 min, no one could play anymore. i cant remember what happened wednesday, but it was soso. i believe i went to the doctors. or that was tuesday. i cant remember. then thursday was okay. went to see big fish (3.5/5 stars). reminded me of les invasions barbares. not bad, had me thinking the whole movie about important things in life and feelings and all of that. after that was chinese new years, so we all went out to kam fung in chinatown in the evening. ordered 9 dishes on the lazy susan and managed to pack all of it away. it was very good food and fun to have like, a 10 person dinner. and a good way to celebrate the second lunar new year.
friday was friday and saturday was saturday. friday i saw the butterfly effect (3/5 stars). it bases itself off of time travel and chaos theory, which states that even the flapping of a butterfly's wings can cause a typhoon off the coast of japan. the plot was nothing new- in fact it reminded me of h.g. wells' time machine. but it based itself more in the psychology/philosophy part of the science fiction concepts. would you go back in time to change it? can we be content with the present? yet another movie that had me correlating it to my own life and then walking out thinking about things. yes, aston kutcher can act, but sometimes its still a little goofier than should be. and some of the plot is a little contrived, but it actually was worth sitting through the worst heartburn of my life to see it. and then walking into another kinda crappy edboard. edboards hard these days. the office is hard these days...
saturday yes was saturday and most of the day was uninteresting (with the exception of a really nice conversation with seths girlfriend andrea) until me and allison went to le swimming to see psychedelic breakfast and nero. PB didnt make it across the border, so nero played for like, 3 hours. and the guys, as always, remember my name. they're coming out with a new album of their own in like end of march early april, so thatll be really cool. um, they played a good couple sets, david and noah came too, and then lauren showed up and we were all playing pool. finally about 130, us old farts decided to head home and i was kinda drunk anyways. that was about that.
things going a little better. some conversations are getting more and more pleasant, other conversations arent even happening. still writing some prolific poetry. this week is some career hunting so i can get in order for reading week. seth put in my resume to do campaign stuff permanently for the CT democrats. and who knows whatll go on with music. but im reaching those big decisions and find myself turning inwards to my heart. cant help the way you feel. especially when you see someone else in and being part of everything you do. and after taking this hour to update, its time for me to unfortunately start heading towards the office. more later...
23/01/04(1055am)- alot more to talk about... like going out for chinese new years. and other stuff i talked about before. thinking about valentines day. i like valentines day, i like doing something special for someone i like. and id rather be with that person. im thinking about last years "dateless valentines day date" with jessica when we dressed nice and went to l'academie for dinner and i gave her a rose and then we just had a really nice evening even though her boyfriend was in new orleans and jen was back in ct. that was a good date. good date.... elise will be up here this year. maybe we'll go skiing. *sigh* im gonna start a folio 4 soon. this one is going to be one that fits rane's hope seed and from the vine 1 and 2.
20/01/04(1015pm)- so many things to say... about starsailor, about state of the union, about feelings, about edboards, about everything... seth and david are great. im happy for them. its hard to see them though and feel good about whats happened to me. only serves to make me miss more and more what could be but isnt.
18/01/04(435am)- two new opus movements online to the right (i finally posted december). im tired. need to finish this tea to help me get better and go to sleep. have to stop at the office tomorrow to do sets. oh what shitty week tomorrow will start....
17/01/04(1055pm)- i was right. today couldnt have ended this week on even a small high note. just now as i was in subway, the guy put regular mustard on my sub instead of honey mustard and he was going nuts with it so i couldnt even get it changed. the game was a good game, especially in overtime, but i for obvious reasons, had a hard time mentally focusing on it. im not sure why i went just to make her happy. hard to appreciate the thought of a gift thats just not what youre feeling. not like my head wasnt preoccupied or anything of the sorts during the game... i just wish this upcoming week would be better. but if my run of luck has anything to do with it, i dont know what i can take before screaming. :-/ im just gonna go to depot now to write my opus...
16/01/04(1045pm)- yesterday was no good either. today was no good either. number two guy gets two second chances blown away, interviews number two band in the uk (starsailor). jesus, cant i be number one at anything or for anyone? when will this week stop shitting on me? i think i figured out one problem... maybe if she wasnt so goddamned obsessed with the paper she could have a guy in her life. but i guess i should just be content with living in the shadows of being number two. no one remembers a number two. on that note, theres one day left this week. and i have yet to decide on this hockey game. one day left... might as well shit on me too so i can finish off this weeklong load of nihilistic bullshit...
15/01/04(1105am)- following the my emotional collapse last night, i had the worst series of dreams ive ever had. in these dreams, people that said they werent interested in me decided to become interested in other guys instead and decided to bring said guys around in front of me. the proverbial waving it in my face- rubbing it in my nose. the hurt dont stop, even in my dreams. im going to take the pictures down...
(130am)- i wouldnt talk this evening. when i refused to talk, seth put my feelings in order: "today was your one year anniversary, and you got dumped twice today. let it out." and so it goes. even after sitting at this keyboard or my phone crying at various times through my 3 years in this apartment (and the extra one in molson), i dont think i ever let out like i just did this evening. and that summary of events today seemed to be fitting to launch me into it all.
interestingly, laura set up a website of her own. she was to keep a journal private and a livejournal. and she wanted to see how the two differed when one was being put out to the world and one was just to herself. me? i told her that my webjournal is more of catharsis for me. in the metaphysical sense, catharsis as an expulsion of thought and feeling is the result of that total expulsion. to keep a journal private, would be an expulsion of my feelings to myself, thus denigrating the point of catharsis. in order for me to cathart, it has to be released. thus you'll have to bear this in mind. this is not personal attacks, this is my release.
seth is right. ive been dumped twice in the same day- by people i was not in actual relationships with, but with expressed interest in me. by dumped, i dont mean "never want to see you again," i mean "i dont want a relationship with you anymore- lets be friends" sense. when you gain feelings for a person, how do you retain those feelings while socially reverting back to before your relationship started? and if they gained those feelings for you, how do they possibly want to revert to before the relationship started?
so here i am, trying to figure out where these feelings came from, and bawling my eyes into the pillow on my bed. well not now, but about the last hour. but the biggest question for me is where the limits are pushed. when does it become easy to say that rather than fear facing you down to friendship reversion, you gamble on making something work? when does it become easy for your feelings in life to pass you by? when does it become easy to have loved but to deal out the losing? and when is it easier to have loved and to have lost than to have never loved at all?
i think- i wish- that i cared less about other people. it makes getting close to someone harder and getting hurt harder as well. i dont know why its so easy for me to gain interest in someone else. i dont know why its easy for me to care about someone else. and i dont know why its so easy to let myself get wrapped up in feelings for people and read into life too much the way i often do. but i do, its who i am. so instead, it would have been a year and ive loved and lost all around. and as much as its nice to have roommates poking you in the side until you fall down in your chair and finally breakdown, what would be nicer is if i managed to eliminate the hurt. the summation of the four noble truths of mahayana buddhism is that, life is suffering, suffering is caused by attaching, detaching is attainable, attaining this will end suffering. therefore: life is about ending the suffering within life. if only detachment were so easy, then maybe suffering would be gone. unfortunately, buddhism relies on heavily disciplined thought and feeling- two things i lack.
its been a year now; lots of ups, lots of downs... but if you had to take a temperature of my heart at this time last year, it'd have been 35. this year? -40. maybe its the weather, maybe its dreams... i cant change the way others feel about me or about what they want from me, but i guess its me that lives with the consequences. silly silly boy...
14/01/04(950am)- it would have been a year ago today....
I always hoped I'd build my world around you
And it's a miracle I ever found you
Do the colours of the rainbow radiate to everyone
Now I don't know how I could live without you
But certainly I know I'm not about to
I don't believe in anything I see unless I can feel it too
~badly drawn boy
12/01/04(635pm)- i am having a horrible day. lets start with the fact that i had to go to french lit class. which was somewhat interesting, but after 1/2 hr, i started to fade. then, i went into the office where i was daunted with the task of figuring out what my section was doing. had to make the hard decision of taking dany's french piece out. he put in good effort, but it still wasnt good for printing. anyways. after spending a lot of time trying to fix that, it was time for edboard. which went alright, but im feeling out of it again. then was edboard and trying to figure out this francophone column shit. im honestly preturbed by lack of support because, quite frankly, there is no good reason for us not to include french into our paper. our ssmu paper. now here i am. back home again. and im preturbed about general feeling. comme, j'ai écrit à jen hier soir. actuellement, je l'ai répondu. pas encore de réponse d'elle. et toutes les messages à jenn, pas de réponse. j'sais po pourquoi. tous que j'aime me n'aiment pas. pourquoi est-ce qu'il n'y a qq'un qui s'en interesse en même façon? n'en aime pas? je comprends po. j'comprends mes sentiments mais rien d'autre.
10/01/04(145am)- oh la la, c'était tellement drôle. j'étais à le swimming et mon animatrice de chicoutimi était là aussi. mais, le chose le plus drôle était quand elle m'a parlé en anglais. parce que quand j'étais à chicoutimi, je pouvais parler seulement français. et elle aussi. donc, nous y étions pour voir Addison Groove Project et elle était là avec sa chum, ben (qui a passé l'immersion à chicoutimi aussi). alors, elle a commencé de me parler en anglais et c'était drôle parce qu'je ne l'ai jamais entendu parler en anglais.
j'ai pas le perdu, mais j'en ai beaucoup des choses de parler... beaucoup des sentiments. peut-être, je vais commencer d'écrire mes pensés privées en français, parce qu'j'en ai beaucoup. et la plupart de mes amis ne comprend pas de français. tantôt....
06/01/04(1050pm)- i dont fucking get my life sometimes. too honest with people, too emotional with people, and expressed said honesty and emotions too much with people. it always bites me in the ass more than i can chew. sometimes i think id just be better off a mute stuck in a box. no wait, id probably write something while in that box, sharing it and regretting it. that episode of blossom lied. the quote "if you never say anything, it never gets said at all" is a farce. because nine times out of ten, when youve said it, you spend the rest of the time living to regret it. more at some other point in time...
04/01/04(1205pm)-written on the plane back to montreal...
somewhere in 75 minutes i become
and i also shed
leave behind the earth and my heart
wrap a new chrysalis
squeeze my soul onto bright lights and big stars
somewhere in 75 minutes
i'll switch my keys.
03/01/04(430pm)- another day, another problem... im surprised, im back in bradley airport (flight leaves an hour from now) and theres no wireless internet here in the terminal either. lot of people at this gate including one older lady who keeps staring at me and my computer. but hopefully shes on the 445 flight to toronto although, it doesnt appear that the plane is here to toronto. so im wondering if its delayed. apparently theres been massive delays all around. allison called me in the car on the way over and apparently her flight out of jfk was delayed too. um... security was heightened here. so much so, that the TSA agent didnt even bother to check my shoes, she just asked if theyve ever set off the metal detector. then, she wanted to know when i turned my laptop on, why i did it. so i told her that some places (like the us and canada) would make you turn your computer on to know that it actually works. apparently, "heightened/stepped up security" doesnt even teach you that. im still of the lewis black mind that if a person can take over a plane with nail clippers or a tennis racket (both items that you cannot travel on the plane with), then he or she deserves to take it over. if they can outsmart you with a tennis racket, then darwin was right and you probably deserved it. on a side note, the girl across from is kinda cute and the guy next to me, hes got a russian passport flying to TO.
what else is doing? went to the bank this morning, which was okay and that old lady in the wheelchair with all those wrinkles- shes still staring at me and its creeping me out. went home and did some packing. my suitcases are way too heavy. my neck hurts from carrying them. looking forward to getting out to montreal. its about time considering the note on how this break ended. anyways, maybe ill watch school of rock since i got it on my computer now, so signing off from the states until june/graduation.....
(140am)- last day and night in the USA til june. worked til 4 with cheryl there and that went alright the first half the day. second half the day i kinda fel apart. then, i was around the house til after dinner. me, jon, mark and scott went to chilis and then to the pool factory down at burr corners. fairly nice place. thats about it. 2 weeks home and the only thing i gained out of it was 3 rane cds and a relationships talk with my parents. and yet nothing solved with anything in my life. i wish i knew i wish she knew i wish i knew....
01/01/04(525pm)- guess it wouldnt be right not to say happy new years here. however, i dunno whats going on. im not one for resolutions, i think theyre a crock. however, i guess theres a few things i need to change about myself. im still not a happy camper. this always happens. im always only here for like no time and then the last day im here, everyone wants to do something. so i overload and end up not doing anything with anyone. i already see it tomorrow.
