100 WORDS:

shuffling sideways along the narrow space between two stone buildings, I inhale the dry dust of a wall that’s millimetres from my face… metres ahead at the passage’s entrance a mangled weed, oft-stepped-on but defiant, looks to me in that moment like a demented banzai tree… it’s obscured by shadows, dimly lit by hyper-flickering lamp post light… I step over it and into the yellow-gray openness of an alley I’ve passed through many times and I see a baseball bat sink into the flesh of neck and shoulder and a body break like a shattered windshield and I can’t forget

100 WORDS:

I played golf today.
I hit a five iron on the eighteenth hole the way a five iron is supposed to be hit.
I didn’t feel the club strike the ball.
The ball went far.
It felt easy.
It felt right.
It was effortless.

Someone might ask me why I play these silly games… golf, tennis, etc.

I might answer by saying life rarely feels effortless.
It is hard and imperfect and constantly challenging.
And yet there are moments when it just feels right.
When thought meets action.
When purpose meets execution.

Like when you hit a perfect five iron.

Not that I view myself as unhealthy, but, you know, I'm just not one of those really healthy people..., although I guess it's kinda unhealthy to feel a need to qualify what I've previously written, I mean, why can't I just let it go... then again this is a mental health thing, which is kind of different from the kind of healthy I was writing about... I could just not post this, but...

Also...

On my day off Friday, to my own astonishment (and Michelle's) I got up at seven AM and found myself running along the seawall by seven fourty-five. I felt like an imposter. I kept thinking as organised, healthy people passed me with eager smiles and enthusiastic hellos (as organised, healthy people tend to do), "These people actually believe I am one of them!" At first I just smiled and nodded meekly to each in response, almost as if I felt ashamed, but eventually I began to give as good as I was getting... when in Rome, right? I have tomorrow off. Will the transformation into organised, healthy person continue? Tune in to find out...

I also discovered tonight that I am now officially a coffee drinker. Between four o'clock and six I checked in numerous people in a polite, but fairly subdued manner with little enthusiasm. At six-fifteen I had a coffee and over the next three hours I was mister friendly. "How are you tonight? What brings you to the city? So is Ann Arbour an auto town? Ah, the University of Michigan, right, the Wolverines... you folks really take your college sports seriously down there don't you?" And so on.... I do think, though, that my caffeine addiction may be a little different from most people's in that I benefit most from coffee in the afternoon. I'm not a morning coffee drinker. Enjoyed my first Americano the other day, further evidence of the progression of my addiction.

I checked in a celebrity tonight at the hotel, an opera singer who is performing in Aida here in our lovely city. He was very friendly and interesting and answered some questions that betrayed my ignorance about his art form. But that's not the coolest part. I then mentioned that Porgy and Bess was going to be performed soon here in the city and that I was hoping to see it. He replied that he loved Porgy and Bess and he then proceeded to sing a few bars of "It Ain't Necessarily So" right there in the lobby in a lovely, rich baritone voice. I felt quite honoured that he would share his gift so freely with an absolute stranger. It was very thrilling and I told everyone I was working with who missed it how very thrilling I thought it was.

I really love things like that, unexpected events that can completely change your mood in an instant.

100 WORDS:

100 WORDS:

a hundred words is a tall order at this time of night when the weight of the days events has set into the bones and bed calls so soothingly and tonight maybe I really don’t have much to say and this stream of consciousness exercise (I call it that to provide an excuse for it – it wasn’t me, it was my unconscious) is proving fruitless but I’m committed and I’ll be damned if I go to bed without pumping out my daily one hundred words so please excuse this entry it’s really just the result of me being stubborn and

One more quick thing before bed...

had story time tonight. Michelle read from Stuart Maclean's "The Vinyl Cafe." Oral storytelling is wonderful, and I just wanted to document that it occured here tonight because one day in the near or distant future I might re-read this entry and say to myself, you know, I should really read someone a story, or ask someone to read one to me. We need reminding sometimes to enjoy the simpler pleasures, the things we used to enjoy as children, before we started saying, I would, but I just don't seem to have the time anymore...

The day I discovered I loved my brother…

We were playing in the tool shed, my brother and I. He was seven or eight. I was ten. We were probably competing somehow, acting out the routine of our sibling rivalry as we almost always had. And then the jug tipped. The motor oil covered his hair, his eyes, then his desperately sealed lips, and began to make its way down the front of his chest and into the fibres of his T-shirt. He began to cry hysterically and I was frozen by a fear I never knew I could feel. In my ten year old world motor oil was a hot liquid; in those moments, I believed my brother was going to die. I quickly snapped out of it and ran inside. I don’t remember what I said, but I do remember being inconsolable, tears streaming down my face. But within minutes, the crisis was over. The motor oil was at room temperature, not boiling hot; the experience was messy and unpleasant, not fatal.

That day I learned that to love is to suffer. Death makes love possible. Does this mean Heaven is a place where love does not exist?

154 WORDS:

the love in this room this evening has been flyin’ around like crazy… a night of spontaneous gift giving… I think, before heading home from work, “I feel kinda bad for not doing the dishes yesterday, and I really do appreciate everything they’ve done for me… I’m gonna get’m a bottle of wine (Gray Monk – Pinot Gris –VQA Michelle!) and some flowers (a nice little pot o’ mums, yellow in colour)”… I beat’m both home… Michelle shows up with a bag o’ candy, “Here Rick, thought you might like this”… and then just before bedtime… Steph returns home from UBC… “Close your eyes,” she says, “I got you something.” I open my eyes and find before me a print of a funky jazz painting… a trio… piano, bass and trumpet, like Monk, Mingus and Miles… “I couldn’t stop looking at this one. It’s my favourite,” she says. The love in this room this evening…

The last hundred words entry comes from thoughts I have been mulling over for a few weeks. I recently watched “The Big Lebowski” and on that same day I listened to The Counting Crows song, “Mr. Jones.” Two unrelated events, but some parallels emerged in my mind…

From “The Big Lebowski”…

Bunny: I’ll suck your dick for a thousand bucks.

The Dude: Won’t he be upset about that?

Bunny: He won’t care. He’s a nihilist.

The Dude: Hmmm. That must be very exhausting.


And from “Mr. Jones”…

“Mr. Jones and me staring at the video
When I look at the television, I want to see me staring
Right back at me
We all want to be big stars, but we don’t know why
And we don’t know how
But when everybody loves me, I’m going to be just
About as happy as can be”

And…

“Believe in me because I don’t believe in anything
And I want to be someone to believe.”


The Dude’s comment about nihilism is sharp, witty, clever, quick, etc. I laughed out loud when I heard it because it’s true. To believe in nothing flies against every human impulse… to believe in nothing, I imagine, would indeed be exhausting, as well as pathetic.

This need to believe in something, to feel like a necessary widget in the universe’s machinery—to feel essential—is fulfilled for many by religion. For many others it is fulfilled by scientific theories. Agnostics avoid the problem in the metaphysical sense, but still address many of the same questions in the here and now. And of course there are very many other ways of addressing the need to feel essential. I realize I’m not covering new territory here.

However, the Counting Crows song touches on celebrity culture, and how we’ve begun to see achieving fame or notoriety as a means for feeling essential in our society. The song portrays this desire for fame as being derived from an unrecognised, unconscious process, the result of a slow, subtle, steady indoctrination into the cult of TV—“We all want to be big stars, but we don’t know why and we don’t know how.” More importantly, the speaker in the song says “Believe in me because I don’t believe in anything/and I want to be someone to believe.” I always thought when I heard this line that he was singing “I want to be someone who believes”, but no… in a culture where fame brings meaning and purpose to ones life, being believed in is more important than believing in something. To believe in something is an active process, one that takes commitment and effort. To be believed in, or famous, can be the result of effort and commitment as well, but if the desired result is the fame itself, one ends up depending on the whims of others for the source of meaning in their life, a situation that is obviously fraught with many dangers. Fifteen minutes of fame don’t help you when you’re lying in bed at night questioning your existence.

This isn’t an essay. It’s a blog entry and as much as I’d like to end it as if it were an essay, with some meaningful concluding thoughts, its very late and I am tired. I heard a song, I watched a movie, I thought about some stuff and I wrote it down.

Email me if you have any thoughts about these things, or if you like the song or the movie, or whatever. I’d be interested to hear what you think.

100 WORDS:

Essential.
To feel essential is my need.

Ask me questions as if you care what I have to say in response.
Let me be famous for a day.
Give me a universal theory or a God that cares about me.
Let me save someone or be saved.
Give me my father’s name, his father’s name, his father’s name… and a son.
Have my life documented in a TV miniseries.
Give me a political cause endorsed be a celebrity I admire and respect.
Let me die for my country.
Give me a reason to cry.
Make her love me.

Steph and I went to “Melrich’s” tonight…

At the coffee shop she reads, deep in thought, the traces of a smile upon her face as if any and all manner of catastrophe could never cast away her easy grace and gentle spirit. She is kind. Her hair is golden. Curls like turbulent waves invite the soft caress of her lover’s hand. I very rarely think of her without thinking of the two of them, two peas in a pod as they often and openly declare. This love resonates strongly for me now. “All my love is gone,” the bluesman sings and I silently sing with him, too bashful to cry out in solidarity. Maybe I need to sing, to release the sins I hold captive at my chest… crushing talons upon my left ventricle that belong to a predatory beast that weighs me down. But back to her…

A chestnut table and three feet separate us. We sit in silence. Her reading. Me writing. Does she suspect that I sit here observing her, describing her, considering her fingers, her left hand that supports the front cover of her book, the nail on her middle finger and how the candlelight at certain angles makes it look like a teardrop? I imagine the feel of the green hardcover binding… dry, fibrous, slightly plush but rough to a fingertip that slides across its surface. I know she derives pleasure from the touch and smell of books as I do. I admire her love of texts, of words, of letters, print… ink on paper… a sensual experience that online texts lack… is she compelled to touch paintings as I am? I focus on what is common between us... my hands rest upon this lacquered surface as hers do; yet I concede that what is different about us is also a part of our shared experience, of our friendship.

It occurs to me that upon our ballcaps we both wear texts. Mine says “Adidas Golf.” Hers says “life is good.”

I’ll have to ask her where she buys her hats.

100 WORDS:

-Why?
-Because.
-Because why?
-Just because.
-That’s not an answer. Why?
-Sometimes there are no answers or the answers are too difficult to understand or articulate.
-That’s a cop-out. Why?
-The reasons are right there in front of you. Why do you not see them?
-Because.
-Because why?
-Just because.
-You’re kidding, right?
-That’s what I feel like asking you.
-A printed page has more white space than ink.
-How profound.
-Not really. But it’s true. We ignore most of the page.
-You’re a walking cliché.
-Don’t knock clichés. They’re friends to the inarticulate. Absolute original communication would equal confusion.

A new pop duo was born this evening. Steph and I have composed and recorded our first creation:


"Deranged Symphony" by Asthmatic (t)empo

The computer is back from repairs and thus I am back as well. Sonic Youth were great, of course. Some highlights included "Candle" and "Kissability" from Daydream Nation, and a sexy performance of "Kool Thing" from Kim to finish the show. I liked that for a few numbers she was able to get out from behind a guitar or bass and just perform for us. (Not that I don't appreciate her playing of course,...um, anyway, enough Kim Gordon worship). Thankyou Jim O'Rourke.

Don't know what else to say. I have some ideas milling around in the back of my mind, fodder for future pontifications I think (I hope).

Stay tuned.

100 WORDS

The TV here is never turned off.
I’ve been given an explanation - something about a stubborn tendency to stay turned off. A refusal to respond to remote commands.
Instead, when not in use, it exists in VIDEO ONE input mode (sans output).
At night, it glows an eerie green, a cross between the colour of young grass and a green olive (sans pimento).
Colour fluctuations do occur… bursts of red and yellow that breach my eyelids’ cover as I fall asleep.
These bursts have affected my dreams.
I’ve cast red shadows in golden caves.
What will I dream tonight?