Time.

Of tasks solitary, three quarters full.

And those with two, perhaps it is best quite near the beginning.

With a group, give me the time just before the start of the end.

Zein

After that, I couldn't look at the sunset for the longest time. Since it was winter, I'd walk home from work as the day was ending and every time I'd wish for an overcast day, or better yet, for rain. Instead of taking the shortcut across the water front, I'd hunch over and sulk through bitter alleyways littered with Starbucks and McDonalds bags and coffee cups.

These days I became more and more lost, walking circles that lead to Winnipeg heroin and lake side LSD. I let them take me away to dreams in damp clouds and sun dogs, of diamond dust and blanketing night skies.

-Frank Blanc


I like the cold because it hits me like a good punch. The rain itches as each bullet fails to break the skin. Sunshine picks at the skin hoping to peel some away. And heat is a suffocating quilt that can't be thrown off.

I don't understand credentials. I want to read John Varley. There is a list of people who won't be missed. Some buildings would float away if their sails were even bigger.

In two weeks, trees will fall. They will be replaced by quiet misunderstandings.

There is no yes or no or maybe, only I love you as I love everything else. How is that special?

(the) Metroids

I tell myself I care. I tell myself I don't.

Try to get passionate, about music, photography, writing. Composition, certainty, predictions.

I listen to the songs that remind me of my past.

There are people I will never see again. There are people I will never get to see. There are those I tell I miss under immovable fact, that perhaps I left my heart and soul in their sofa cushions, and they tell me over and over that it's not there.

I try to keep them on the line for just a bit longer, but there is someone at the door and perhaps it's the postman or perhaps it's the friend I never am and never seem to be, the friend who's actually there.

My hand reaches out to those who aren't. I grasp at flinching hands.

We look eye to eye by staring at camera lenses.

I deal with fact, I'm no where. I deal with emotion, no where again. Isolation in mind, body, and spirit. The stale air cradles and rocks me to sleep.

Justification.

Do you feel your life descending into the mediocrity of adulthood like it's that new car smell that slowly, almost unnoticeably, goes away? One day you're driving along and all of a sudden you realize that the carpet has mud on it, there's a fry on the passenger seat, it's already time for its first oil change, and it smells just like your old one. And you can't buy another decade in your teens either, not with all the money in the world. Sure, there's the new phenomenon of a middle-class mid-life crisis, but what does that get you? It doesn't get you your first kiss in the rain or dimly lit and smokey basements. You don't suddenly find yourself taking shortcuts through the park on your bike to get to that Harvey's you and your friends haunt. Nah, it's that new car you couldn't even drive for more than half your life back then, and now you feel edgy because it's a standard. But it's not the same, because the transmission works and anyone knows how to close the door on the first try.

We were carefree, we loved life, we had the future. Now it's a mortgage, a car loan, and a looming economic crisis. Well I have news for you, that property's going to be worth pennies, that cars going to break down before it's paid off, and you'll be thankful for pay-cuts because at least it means you still have that job.

I indulge my senses, a beer and cigarette in the rain, watching the planes arrive. While partaking in my own private hedonism, it makes it harder than ever to say I don't give a fuck. Yet here I am doing nothing, just letting my actions speak for me.

This isn't a battle cry shouting out, "Remember who you were! Try to recapture that!" or, "Realise who you are! Live it!" No, it's a cry of despair at the inevitability of another lonely night and years more to come.

Sara

We stood in supermarket's carpark, dimly lit with mercury. He had a twinkle in his eye as I asked what we were doing.
"Bowling."
He grinned, unshaven and darkened from the day we'd spent at the beach.
"I've always wanted to do this, but I was never sure who to share it with. And it's not an adventure if one of us has already done it."
I looked up at the stars. The stores are all closed, darkened aside from the cooler lights inside. I suppose the frozen foods get lonely at night.
On the other side between some painted lines, he'd set up cheap ikea glasses, each filled with marbles, candy-coloured water, and christmas lights dangling in and around and about them. I could imagine, with that outlet he'd found, rock shows and tailgating, under the watchful eye of neon sponsors.
In a splash of colours, he sent the glasses reeling with a cantaloupe. I lit a cigarette as he set it up, so I could knock it all down again.

And I watched this set-up, this regaining of confidence and self-worth, because it was interesting to watch it in another order.

I gripped the melon, wound up, and knocked it all down again.

Sock Puppeteers

They couldn't ask why, because I'm all grown up now. They didn't say no, throw accusations of insanity, or demand more involvement, because I'm all grown up now.

The premise was to see what others don't usually try to. People speed past so many things in their lives, like they're stepping in an elevator and magically appearing on only the floor they want to be. It's willing ignorance of what all the other stories hold, a calculated indifference.

Off the shoulder, the snakes rustled in the underbrush and litter, undisturbed by the rattling of cars. Roadkill in various states of decay, marsupial bones and lizard skins, discarded and eyeless. Sugar gliders quiet and small, fly in astronomical twilight.

I biked at night, with socks as gloves. We don't look at stars for science or faith, but for wonderment and vanity. This is my universe, those are stars in my galaxy, and dear God we're beautiful.

The moonlit dam and midnight train, were the only lights and noise over the kilometers I traveled. I couldn't think through any of it, under the delirium I traveled. During the train ride back through half-formed dreams and ghosts floating and alighting, my thoughts curled up with the idea that perhaps they all understood why, while only held back by the belief that their time's worth more than it is.