Lost Mail

Dear Dan,

I don't really know if this bothers you at all, but you're kind of a hero. I mean, more than once, I've opened my mouth to say something really important, something goddamn crucial, and nobody listens. Not a damn one. And yet you've got this awesome superpower that allows you say more in silence than I could ever try to put into stuttering, awkward speech.

Oh well. I think there was a poet once who spoke of the world as the struggle of gods and men. Some are destined for great things. Some are destined to die trying in futility. I have no idea which I'll be, and in the end, maybe it won't even matter.

In any event, my writing projects are coming along. At the front of my mind, I'm excited. At the back, I'm afraid. I'm always afraid that I'm attacking something too audacious, and in attempting to write something too grand, somebody will leap out and call me a fool. Someone always does. I don't know if you face the same problem, but I hardly doubt it'd bother you. I try not to let it bother me, but I'm nothing if not half anxiety. I think that's what killed me in the press, and now whenever I put pen to paper, so to speak, I just remember that year. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say you and the guys were about the only saving grace in that miserable, drunken stupor of a year. I don't think I ever got to properly thank you - all of you - for helping me keep my sanity during that time. Sanity, and maybe even a little hope.

Anyway. I've written and rewritten this entry about three times, trying very hard not to sound like I'm coming on to you. Consider this a written man-pat on the back. Now, let's go shoot/cut something.

-G

An Unadorned Envelope

Dear Mélissa:

It's warm here. I think spring is on the way. While I was out walking the dog today, I thought about taking a picture to show you. All the grass and wild plants are bare now, they're practically seas of beige and brown, all rippling in the wind.

I understand there's a lot of snow in the East right now. It's going to be an inverse from my last trip. When I left last, this city was cold and dead, yet not quite tucked under winter's white blanket. Yours instead was just colouring up for the season, as if autumn was fashionably late. Late to bed, early to rise. So it goes.

I know things are probably pretty tense right now for you. It's kind of a strange time. But in the big picture, this is a blink of an eye. All these bad things, they'll pass, if we let them. I know it sounds strange coming from me. You imagine me a pessimist, but perhaps I'm a determined one. Or maybe I'm not one at all. That all depends where you're coming from. I've never been one for fancy imaginings of reality, but in the same breath, nothing is ever as hopeless as it seems.

I won't lie. I've seen a lot of wretched things. I've seen friends and lovers stab each other in the back. I don't know why. I don't know if I even really care why. We don't go anywhere by making excuses, and I've got none for them. I've witnessed, and I'm careful. So are you, although where I hide and lie quiet, you step forward with boldness and assertion. Subtlety and boldness. Opposite extremes.

Each of us has a power in our own right. Each of use has equal and opposite talents. As I sit here writing this, you probably have in your mind's eye your next painting, reality bending into colours on canvas, and yet its even better than reality, for our time is fleeting, but your art is not. It's a universal portrayal. My writing pales in comparison. Whereas yours can reach to even the most basic understanding, my art requires years of exposure to our language and culture, such as it is, to be understood. Is it art, when you have to be groomed to understand it? I prefer to think that answer is in the eye of the beholder. I write because I can, and because I must. There are those who say this is not art. Maybe they're right. I don't really care.

And you see, this is the root of whatever apathy you imagine in me. As life goes on, you learn to prune what doesn't matter, and focus only on what does. I think you know this. I think a lot of people know this. But even wise people get stuck in pits of circular thought every now and again. I know I do. Maybe one day you'll see it, and you'll be afraid. You might freak out. I don't blame you. I try real hard to keep this from people. That's just how I am.

But anyway. It won't be long now. We'll be sitting down and enjoying some sushi, and maybe a bit of tea. Hopefully, for once, it won't be fucking cold out when we go. Hopefully, things will work out sooner rather than later. I think those involved have had enough misery for now, and I wish I could help. But maybe it's best left out of my hands.

Faith. Faith in people. That's what I lack. But since I met you, it's been a tiny trickle. An exemption at first, and now it's a slowly trickling stream. Maybe one day, it'll feed into all of humanity, and purify what's been a poisoned well. It's a grace I'm not sure I'm worthy of. I'm not religious by any means, but there are times when the universe closes in and it just seems like I can feel it from end to end, and everything is really quite nice.

Anyway. I'm sure you're probably tired after reading all this. I will see you again soon.
Love,

-G

A handsome face, if but for the slips of the chisel

Despite all that we had tried, everything we had attempted, we lost. As I sit here, my thoughts turning inwards, the bathroom floor is growing warm. Perhaps even comfortable.

The empty medication bottle in front of me reminds me what I'm doing here. It's a little orange trench, emptied of its troops. They made one last brave charge, but they couldn't take any ground against this beast. This raging voice in my head. It started a few months ago. Unbidden whisperings. Uncontrollably violent urges. The doctors said it was a severe case of schizophrenia. That I was developing a second personality that was cutting me off from reality. They sold me up the creek, a lost cause.

This voice, this... interminable, bloodthirsty being, is not me. It's not who I am. It finds no root in my history or my thoughts, and yet it's still there. An ancient and violent god, trapped within the stubborn confines of a mortal's mind. A mind that's quickly crumbling.

I remember reading Jung. Reading the theories about our collective unconscious. This... thing could perhaps be a construct from such collective empathy. Not everything humanity has accumulated has been good, but even as I ponder it, the voice rages. Men. Women. Children. Villages. Cities. Countries. WORLDS. All fell to its indomitable rage, it's endless thirst for innocent blood.

All fell, except one. Whatever this thing is, it cries to be released, but I will hold, until there is nothing left of me. It can claim a thousand lives, but it will not have this one. I can't see out of one eye now. I don't know whether it's my head or the pills working. The voice is dulling slightly now. Maybe I was just crazy after all. Maybe.

But even now... so many pills, and the voice is still there. Reality is still here, pressing against my aching ribs. These... tears running down my face. God above, I'm afraid. Perhaps not of death, but of defeat. What horrors will this thing unleash, while I look on from behind my own eyes, terrified and helpless? Whose faces will swim through the red haze towards me, only to be grasped and broken?

Both my eyes are dark now. The voice seems subdued but yet still clear. Images now. I see images. Worlds engulfed with flames. Worlds upon worlds. Mountains of dead. Heaps of flesh and rivers of blood. By the rivers of hell, what is this thing that I harbour?

My arms and legs are going numb. Maybe this is death's embrace. Maybe this will be my victory of this monster. My end, and his eternal prison within a rotting corpse. Maybe...

Days pass. Weeks even. I'm dreaming now. Or perhaps remembering. A sweet kiss. A child. My child. I had a family. I had a life. Had.

I can feel my hands and my toes wiggle gingerly. I'm alive. I think. But something feels strange. I look about myself. Hospital attire. Fit for the dead. Hands and feet, twenty fingers and toes. A wretched itch on the back of my scalp. Reaching to scratch it, I pause. Stitches. The ragged feeling of not-yet-mended bone. The off-balance feeling of missing a piece of brain.

A doctor paces into the lab, and looks down at me languidly. No bed side manners. Not even a conversation.
"Tumour," he says nonchalantly.
I smile and nod, and turn over and go back to sleep.

387.5 km later

It's been an extremely strange series of days. I suppose I should work my way backwards through them so they make more sense.

Yesterday, Trevor and Tracy came to the city, I guess to see one of their friends off to Amsterdam. We hung out a bit in the evening, and it was pretty swell to see part of the gang again. Hopefully things weren't too awkward.

The day before, one of my best friends was admitted to hospital for an unknown reason. He and I work at the same place, so work was thrown into chaos. He's alright. Whatever affected him was short-lived and not harmful. My relief was palpable.

I've reorganized my room. Every time I change something, I walk in and think I'm in the wrong place. It doesn't have my telltale clutter anymore - although by comparison, most would call my clutter clean.

Anyway, I don't have a lot else to report. I'll be leaving for Montreal again in April. Expect photos, and perhaps a few stories about poutines and Montreal smoked meat.

The photo: the sunset drive, which we've all seen sometime.

Impaled perhaps, if not for the knives in my back

I was out early last night. Or perhaps late this morning. It's a sign that spring is coming, because as I burnt a path through frosty morning fog, the first gray rays of sunlight crept over the horizon.

And as well, here I am yet again, seeing the same sun rise this morning. Nocturnal? Perhaps. Truth is, I haven't been sleeping well. I don't know what I'm doing, and it feels like I've just left a whole bunch of really important stuff behind, but I can't remember what it was, or if it was really all that important to me in the first place.

There have been so many things lately, that I should be reacting to. If even slightly. But it just seems lately that there's so little that gets to me. Car crashes, murder, war, death, destruction on an untold scale. So what? Who cares?

You might sit back from your computer monitor, slightly aghast at such a notion. Lives, you might ponder, are valuable. And yet, for years, when I brought up such topics in robust conversation, I was told that it didn't matter, and it wasn't worth worrying over.
So what? I guess it's not. To believe there's any notion of justice in the world is a naive thought indeed, when every person who calls for justice themselves squirm when even so much as a policeman pulls them over for speeding. Justice, it can be said, is what happens when vested interests are trampled upon. It's less about righting a wrong and more about making sure everyone who lost something gets paid. If not in money than in equal pints of blood. Such is the death penalty. Such is war.

For me, my days often consist of sleeping in, reading, writing, and sometimes playing video games. I could, as I did when I was away, take up the mantle for a cause, and fight for something. Attempt to affect some change. But now, I question any such action. Who am I doing this for? Not myself. Not for you. I'm doing this for some notion of a noble human being, a dying concept that lies, pierced through the heart to rotten loam.

Every night, before sleep, I ask myself when the last time my heart ached for a stranger. A completely uncontrolled outpouring of compassion and empathy. It's been a long time indeed, because such feelings are regarded as weak.

And even as I think about it... while it was greed and self-absorption that's launched a hundred wars, it's never been self-concern that's propelled men up beach heads, or forced the stay of arms. It's never been the driving force behind acts of singular courage or outstanding efforts of undeniable good. The very thing pictured as weak - as unmanly - is nothing more than the root for all our courage. And I suppose that makes us a population of cowards, to turn such a thing away.