JOURNAL 2001

2001 . JUN

I ran into a friend who I haven't talked to in a while. We have little in common and probably would not have become friends if it weren't for our curiously-timed break-ups. Naturally, she asked, "You like anyone right now?" When I'm not dating, I always say no. When I am dating, nobody asks me that question. The truth is I have not not liked someone since I was twelve. Usually, when I say no, I feel as if someone is tickling me inside. Not today.

A few things happened this summer, nothing consequential. After having had lots of guy friends for years, there isn't a guy around to really talk to. They're still around and we pass volleyballs back and forth on the beach. But we've all changed since we knew each other. Summer is too brief to try to know someone, to really know someone.

2001 . APR

Eight months later, Black Friday, a room, a computer and nine bags packed to go. What have I learnt? Mathematics and computer science? Perhaps. How to deal with annoying people? Not really. Only that life is complicated and this is no more than the beginning.

I have always had a problem with the past. It can be sweet as a mottled album of photographs or sting like bluebottles on a windy beach. Yet I can choose to dwell upon it with a cup of hazelnut vanilla coffee or forget about it amidst a sea of strangers.

The present is much more terrifying. What if world lines converge in this next second? What if this instant repeats itself for eternity? Will I acquire a new consciousness or be consumed by this sky of acrimony that I paint each day? Impossible, you say.

So life goes on, day after day, fickle as the moon, rising and falling with the tides. Then what if someone gives me a chance at happiness? Do I have enough faith to stare at it in the eye? What if joy arrives at my door in a gift box? Would I throw it away?

Don’t you laugh at me. You do it everyday. In time, I have predictably lost touch with some, unexpectedly gained confidence in others. I am not climbing a mountain. I am falling off a cliff, attempting to capture the splendor of the rock face and the forest below while I dive into the deep.

2001 . MAR

Recently, I have experienced what I believe to be a desire to be alone. I have been telling myself that it is an attempt to avoid certain people. Yet the joy of pacing up and down wintry sidewalks, alone!

Usually, when I glimpse what I do not wish to see in people, I dismiss it as being part of that particular person. He is just like that ... She is just like that ... Yet in the end, what any given human being has in common with another is more than what we are willing to accept.

We are all just like that ... The world is cruel, is evil, is meaningless. I thought that as long as there is good in people, there is meaning to life. Good, however, fluctuates.

2001 . FEB

I was waiting for music to set in, something poignant yet understated and absolutely ironic, something with piano accompaniment in E flat minor, for this was harder than sight-reading six sharps or cutting with a plastic knife. I was waiting for my footsteps to echo around the empty subway station, to inadvertently yet inevitably vibrate his eardrums. I was waiting for a voice, a rush of footsteps ...

The sound of my sole was instantly absorbed by the Saturday night crowd and the music missed its cue as if this were a high school production of Romeo and Juliet. I stared accusingly at the fingers on the keyboard. They weren't even moving to the beat. Pre-recorded sham. Drop token. Look for it. Find it. Crash through turnstiles. Skip down two flights of stairs. Leap into train just as doors close. Survey platform.

Not there.

Stations appeared from the edge of my vision and disappeared at the focal point. Names glided by unregistered until ... Why was I in the other end of the city? Why did I ride a westbound train? Why couldn't I read signs? Why ... never mind. Never, never mind. When the heart fails and stars implode, I can still count on two legs and gravity, I can still find my way home. So that's how I found myself on Danforth at Main one February morning at 6:55 with alien fluid bleeding blue into the sky.

2000 . DEC

I always believed that I will eventually meet people more like myself, people who truly understand every aspect of me.

Now I know. I misconceived. In the end, the people who know you are not the ones who acquire the same degree and earn the same income but the ones with whom you grew and suffered life.

Great expectations lead only to great disappointments. I regret everything I did during previous friendships and relationships because of that single misconception. Or should I say, everything I failed to do. What was I waiting for?

&

Fluorescent digits metamorphose
12 am transpire
I sit on my bed hugging my knees
Watching you
Running along the horizon of my mind
A mere shadow
Stark against the midnight sun
    Inadvertently
    I smile that smile
    Not because I love you (I used to)
I said let me go
Yet every time I try
To chase you off that horizon
    Inevitably
    I fall and shatter
    While you remain unbreakable

&

End of day, your voice is cracking
After a day of endless searing
You are limp with acquiescence
A box of silence with frayed edges
You rest lonely in your glass coffin
Holding back a breath of air, a tear
Playing the hero of a modern tragedy
While your courage seeps away
Sometime somewhere somebody heard
And cried back in the same stifled tone
Somebody shed for those would be ions
And the strange depleted ocean within
If the lens of your eyes were not frosted
You'd see movements imitating your own
Don't scream, whisper
Don't blink back, overcome
And finally, break through

&

Yesterday's angel has fallen with the leaves
Like smoke on the clouds, acid in the rain

An absent voice, she rises from the dust
Particles vibrating on her translucent wings

She wonders, ponders and treads the surface
In search of the next tacit agreement

As truth collapse and lies integrate
She grasps the spinning transience of creation

On this side of the window, or is it a mirror
There is no heaven, no hell, only life to live

&

Dream in paint, write on paper
Infuse by colors, confuse with words

A messenger of origami wings
Traversing the preposterous skies

A vessel of hope and distress
Equivocating elation and tears

Under the shadow of the rainbow
We wait for that letter gone astray