So, at the end of August, I had a very, very depressing physical with my doctor. I’d gained back some 15 lbs of the 45 or so I’ve lost in the last couple years. I was wheezing, had been sick for a few weeks and would get sick again three weeks later, too, and just generally felt like shit.
My doctor gave me a very stern “this is your reality check” kind of lecture, told me I knew how to reverse it, I’d done it before, and it was imperative I did it again now, or the slippery slope would go downhill very fast.
I haven’t been weighing myself because I don’t think health is about a number, it’s about feeling good, having energy, and having a good attitude and a willingness to work hard to get where you want to go.
That said, I weighed myself this morning after scarfing down a monster bowl of oatmeal and three cups of delivious coffee, and I’m officially down 12 lbs, and that’s without really getting fired up on a workout program… the first time I’ve ever succeeded in losing weight via changing my eating plan.
Ooh. This is gonna get good. 🙂 I officially began My Nemesis today… a 15-floor highrise down the street that I’m climbing stairs at. My calves will hate me by the end of today, but right now I’m embracing the smug.
Have an excellent day. I’ll write about something less me-centric in the next day or so.

What a couple of days it’s been for the newsfolk here in Vancouver. This afternoon, a small twin-engine plane crashed into an apartment building about five minutes from my home. This evening, a 6-person homicide was found in a home in Surrey. And just in the last couple of days, a very controversial arrest was made in Thailand of a pedophile from the Vancouver area who’s managed to gain international notoriety as the swirl-faced man in digitally altered images depicting him abusing young boys in Asia.

When the shit gets weird, man, it gets weird.

The pedophile– oh, sorry, “accused” pedophile– is an ESL teacher named Christopher Neil who’d travel to Asia both to teach kids English, and I guess when that wasn’t fulfilling enough, to sodomize and rape them.

One of the things I’m huge on is personal freedoms. I’m all about doing what you wanna do behind closed doors, but pedophilia makes me wish public floggings were back in vogue. I say string the fucker up and let us at ’em. A little uncouth, perhaps, but if there’s anything we ought to hold sacred as long as we damned well want in this cynical, strange world we live in, it’s innocence.

Once innocence is lost, it never comes back. Cliche, yes, but true. That’s just the sad reality of what “growing up” means. Sooner or later, illusions are shattered. It happens soon enough for all of us, but when some asshole like Christopher Neil saunters in and ceremoniously strips others of that innocence — whether it’s by force or because some starving kid needs a couple nickels to rub together for his dinner, or, as reports say, $15 to rape ’em underaged — then I say the law needs to answer to it as fast and hard as it can.

Christopher Neil isn’t just your garden-variety pedophile. He’s one that raped at least 12 boys that we know of (but the speculation is that’s just a starting figure… the guy tried to enter the priesthood here in BC, but even the Catholic Church wouldn’t take him. Wowzas! Worked with cadets here in Canada, and did a little teaching, too… Investigations are ongoing). He then digitally altered his face in images he proceed to posted on the internet. Interpol finally was able to extrapolate an image from his mangled files, and pasted them worldwide in an attempt to find out who the hell he was. Vive le Photoshop!

Thing is, we don’t know the extent to which he violated these kids. One would have to hazard the guess that it had to be pretty severe in order for Interpol to take such a vested interest in this one guy.

Well… Imagine Vancouver’s pride to find out this internationally hunted fugitive is one of our own. My, aren’t we lucky.

Like I say, I think it’d be a banner day out if we’d string him up on the Art Gallery steps and allow the masses to flog him, but I hear tell that’s considered cruel and inhumane. Hmm. Well, like the people say, if it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander, right?

No worries, though. There’s always prison showers. I imagine the Thai ones have a certain exotic flavour but I bet when you get past all that international variety, a prison shower’s a prison shower, right? Tsk.

Welcome to crime fighting in the digital age, people. It’s nice to know some of the bad guys actually do get caught.

I’m waiting on a storm. A storm named LingLing, to be exact. You gotta love typhoons… they’re always given such nifty Asian names. We here in Vancouver don’t call this just a “storm”, no, this is the much dreaded Pineapple Express. A lovely parting gift sent our way by the fabulous Hawaiian Islands. Days and days of rain, lots of flooding, oodles of soaked-through shoes and out-turned umbrellas. The nasty part’s going to be the sustained nasty south-easterly winds… winds from the same unusual direction and with potentially the same impact (hurricane strength) as the ones that devastated this city’s world-famous jewel, Stanley Park, last year… razing areas of that park with the same impact as clear-cut logging would’ve brought. Gonna be decades before that park’s all better.*

But that’s not what’s on my mind tonight. I was watching Grey’s Anatomy just now, with the long-awaited confrontation between Torres and Izzie after George finally came clean on cheating on his wife Torres with the hot Izzie. Ah, the drama of it all. Torres called her a “traitorous bitch” for breaking the bond of womanhood and betraying one of her own.

I found myself remembering back to when I was once the “other woman”. It was a long, long time ago now. More than a decade. I was young, probably 19, maybe 20.

The thing was, it was a guy I knew had a crush on me for a long while. A couple years, actually. We were friends, more or less. I was always seeing this poet writer guy off and on, occasionally dated during the “off” times, but nothing ever came about with this guy in question ‘cos I was always pretty abrupt towards him. He was never really my type, I thought. As time wore on, I started realizing he was pretty cute, but I still wasn’t interested. Now, though, he’s the type I secretly crave.

Back then, though, all us friends had a day at a beach. I was his ride (which turned out to be true in more ways than one) so we wound up chatting a lot. Next thing you know, there’s sunscreen, bare backs, and massages figuring into the picture. Now, I might be putty in a good masseuse’s hands, but I can give a hella-good massage myself, which is what pretty much caused the trouble in the first place. Then he had to one-up me, and that’s always a good/bad scenario. Then the thought of potentials a la him outweighed the benefits of sitting around for the probables that came with a day at the beach with ze usual suspects.

We high-tailed it back to his place, and that began the next couple of weeks of some pretty wild sexcapades, some of which have been “fictionalized” on here, but that I think I might’ve deep-sixed after realizing I felt uncomfortable sharing it, either way, you get no link. And I’m leaving it at that. What I will say, though, is that there was that great friendly banter peppered with excellent sex, and a lot of trust that comes from befriending someone for a couple years before you bone’em in the sack. So to speak.

Suffice to say the sex was hot. Better than I’d had at that point, and possibly still among some the best I’ve had.

And then… and then I found out he wasn’t single after all. Worse yet, he was seeing someone I was friends-ish with.

And then… and then I did something I’m wondering now if I’d do again today. I admitted it. I went to her and I told her he’d cheated on her, and that it was with me, and that I had ended it as soon as I found out. I don’t know whether they ever went out again. I know the friendship I had with her was over, and I can only suspect I busted his heart up a little at the time.

And, yeah, as honest as I am, as much integrity as I know I have, I have to wonder if I’d do the same today. Prrrrrobably not. The thing is, I’m older, I’m wiser, and I know really intense, hot, great sexuality doesn’t happen often, not like that. Not with someone really deserving of your trust. Except for the cheating-on-his-gal thing, of course, I found him highly trustworthy.

Now, I’m at the other end of things. I finally realize he liked me long before… long before he even met his girlfriend. I know what we had was intense and hot and fun and more than just sex. Yes, it was wrong. Yeah, there are things I’d take back in a heartbeat. But I don’t regret a minute of it.

I wonder now if something happened along those lines if I’d chalk it up unfortunate timing but a long time in the making. I do know one thing… I really, really regret going to her. I really regret not having spoken to him first and allowing him to at least say his piece. Now I’ll always have that wonderment.

But yeah. All I’m doing now tonight is wondering. Wondering. And waiting on a feisty bitch named LingLing.

The moral of the story? Make sure your regrets are about things you did, rather than didn’t do. I should’ve had that conversation with him, too, but I didn’t. Regretting things one could’ve easily avoided is even more regrettable than the lack of action.

Fortunately I don’t make a habit of wading through my regrets all that often, and, luckily, the list isn’t as long as one might suppose.

Well, time to batten down the hatches before I get a night-time visitor very much not of my choosing. Come out, come out, whereever you are, LingLing. Such a tease.

*Yes, I’ve secretly always thought it would be fun to be a meteorologist. What? I have a geek side.

There’s a lawsuit before the courts that bondage enthusiasts in the S&M community are watching with intense interest. The question they’re all wanting answered is just how this decision is liable to affect them legally when it comes to getting someone to consent to whatever it is that gets them off.

I wrote a posting on bondage long, long ago, a “beginner’s guide”, if you will, but I’m really not an expert, and don’t know if I’ll ever do much more than the very vanilla kind of bondage I’ve indulged in up until now. I like being tied up and doing the tying up, but I’ve not wanted to try out more elaborate knotting or anything involving much pain, as I’m a reward-not-punishment type of gal.

As time passed, I learned my beginner’s guide was lacking some relatively important information, even if I think one or two of the comment-leavers were somewhat dickheaded in their approach of pointing that out. (The comments are intact both here and on my original blog, The Cunting Linguist. I’ll put the links at the bottom, and I’ve never deleted the ones criticizing my posts.) The main thing someone pointed out was that you should never, ever abandon someone who is bound. You should always, always be aware of what’s going on with your bound playment, ‘cos things can go bad in a hurry.

That being said, even the amateur in me thinks these guys fucked it up pretty royally by binding this guy in the manner described in this story and then “leaving him alone” for a number of hours. It would seem obvious that the fellow who killed himself in remorse must have also felt they’d fucked it up, or else why did he kill himself and leave a detailed letter about it?

Still, I don’t like this American habit of suing people for things, even wrongful death. I realize how hard it is to lose someone, especially wrongfully. My mother died, I believe, as a result of malpractice, but suing over it goes against everything I believe. I’ve had bad work days, and like the man says, shit happens.

But ruling in favour of this claim would mean a massive loss in freedoms for an already-ostracized and greatly misunderstoon community in the sex world. S&M practitioners constantly face judgment, ridicule, and misunderstanding. The ridiculous Craigslist episode last year (where a dickhead posted a fake slave/submissive personal ad and then “outed” all the respondants on his blog) is just another example of where society seems to think they have a right to judge what consenting adults do behind closed doors.

Here in Canada we’re more liberal sexually, and even here you’ll find some of the judgment, but not as much as there was before the great Showcase (what Canada calls our Showtime network) series “Kink“, which aired for 4 or 5 years and followed the lives of a few different S&M Canadians of different levels as it spent a season in each of the biggest cities in Canada. (13 episodes each year, following several different real-life people as they explored the S&M world, from newbies to hardcore, old-school, long-time S&M types.)

I was certainly one of the people who thought S&M folk were freaks when I was younger. I mean, really freaky, I thought. I’ve come a long way from my narrow-minded, good-girl youth. When I first began watching Kink, I was somewhat repelled by what I saw, but then I became attached to the people in the stories and I realized that, for whatever their reason, they were as compelled to be that way as I was to eat, write, photograph, or whatever else it is that I feel makes me whole.

Had I heard about this story some years ago, I might have erred in believing the plaintiffs should win their case. I’m older, wiser, now and think anything but the kind. Trouble is, in a litigious society where lawsuits are the norm, it’s pretty fucking hard to feel free to do as you please without worrying whose toes you’ll be stepping on and how much they’re gonna want for new shoes.

And the thing is, yeah, it’s a wrongful death. Things got fucked up. Someone died. It happens. Should the rest of society be forced to pay the price with their freedom to act when something really just went horribly wrong? I mean, professional atheletes drop dead of heart attacks during games. Stockbrokers make bad predictions. Priests sin. Shit happens. Humanity is a bitch. As crass at it might sound, it really just does go that way.

Maybe these people could learn a little from the S&M lifestyle: Pain is something one needs to endure. The more you endure, the stronger you get. The more you endure, the more you can take. You don’t cry out for a saviour just because it gets a little tough, you suck it up and say “thank you, mistress”. Life is hard. Bad things happen. Blaming others isn’t going to change the fact that something went wrong, and winning their day in court isn’t gonna make that hurt be any less consuming. Their life will still be lacking a person they love, even if they’ll never understand how he wanted to be treated so “badly”.

‘Course, this all might have gone a little easier if the fuckwits hadn’t gotten all freaked out, tossed the evidence, and buried the guy. It’s like the man Hunter S. Thompson said, “In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”

This is one case where people need to err on the side of protecting others’ freedoms by telling this family that they really do just need to suck it up, deal with the loss, and move on with life. The price the rest of us will pay will be far too high if this thing goes the way I fear it’s going, and even if I’ll probably never join the S&M community in that way, they too should have every right to practice what they like when they have consent between parties.

What are your thoughts?

My Bondage for Beginners is both here and at this blog’s original site, The Cunting Linguist, but the comments are different on both blogs. Click on where ya wanna go: part one here, part two here, part one on TCL, part two on TCL.

The hot photo was found on Jaeda DeWalt’s photography site, which you can go to here.

This is a way-long posting, but I think it opens a weird can of worms, and I’ve tackled it from a few different points of view. Tangents are fun. So, bear with me.

There’s a disturbing question before the law courts of Britain. A mother is petitioning for the right to surgically remove the womb of her 15-year-old daughter, who is severely disabled with cerebral palsy.

The arguments are along the lines of “well, she’ll never understand the blood and the discomfort” of her period and more or less “we’re doing her a favour”. (I’m paraphrasing, so don’t take me literally.)

This is a particularly freaky law case because I can understand both sides of it. I only agree with one. Guess which?

Now, you wouldn’t think, that as a Canadian, I’d have much scope on the ethical questions entailed when facing the barbaric practice of eugenics, but y’know what? As a Canadian, yeah, I do.

Here in Canada, in the province of Alberta, eugenics were in practice for 43 years. What are eugenics, Steffi? Oh, I’m glad you asked. In big, fat words, “eugenics” means the study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding, according to the smarty-pants over there at Answers.com.

But in little people layspeak, “eugenics” is when you use science to fuck around with DNA and manipulate unborn babies into what you wanna see… or, in Alberta’s case, “eugenics” means you spend more than 4 decades in the 20th century sterilizing people you don’t think are fit to breed.

What the fuck did she say, Gilbert? You heard me. From 1928 to 1972, the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta was a mandate that employed a four-person “Board of Eugenics” (way to cover up your motives, guys) that decided whether or not people were fit to have kids.

In 1972, the Sexual Sterilization Act was repealed, and the Eugenics Board dismantled. During the 43 years of the Eugenics Board, it approved nearly 5,000 individual sterilizations, and 2,832 procedures were actually performed.

Now, don’t worry. Not everyone had to go before the board to get approved to get knocked up or do the knocking, no sir. Only the really obvious ones — you know, like native indians or handicapped people or midgets and stuff. You know. The obvious ones. There was an IQ cut-off point, too. And we all know how valid the IQ test has been deemed to be, all these decades later. They never worked out too well for anyone not, you know, white.

Eugenics sound great when you’re arguing Darwinism and “for the good of all” and “raising the bar” and shit like that, but when little things about personal freedoms and the complicated process of being a parent, and who has the right to become one, come into play, that’s when you can’t leave this shit up to four people on a stupid right-wing board, or some judge in a courtroom to decide.

Rights and freedoms aren’t meant to apply SOME of the time. It’s not a “well, after 6pm you get half-off our personal freedoms -happy hour banquet” type thing. Come on! Freedoms oughta be all you can eat, all day, every day! You’re free 24/7, not because you scored well on your IQ test or yer so white you sunburn in February. C’mon!

There are indeed people completely unfit for breeding, let’s not kid ourselves. Most of ’em a drug addicts, alcoholics, sociopaths, or racists. Most of us, though, have parents who consistently fucked up the mix. Hell, most of our parents would have their asses as grass in this day and age if their parenting methods got leaked to the press. My ever-lovin’ rest-her-soul mother took a log — not a stick, not a branch, not even a 2×4 — a knobby, bark-covered, de-branched (but stumpy) big fucker of a log — to my ass. Half-a-dozen times. Why? I cut across the neighbour’s prize-winning rose garden again. I ain’t ever crossed anyone’s lawn in 2 decades since, not without an invitation, man. I learned my shit. But today my mother would be defending herself against a world that thinks they know better. And that’s the thing — we all think we know better than we usedta did, but the reality is, we’re always gonna know better. Twenty years from now, new light’ll be shed on many of our present-day standards and we’ll think “what the fuck were we thinking?” ‘Cos, you know, what the fuck are we thinking?

But today we’re just talking about a womb, right? Just ONE womb? Preventing this poor, unfortunate, palsied girl from having to sit there bleeding, confused, as her womb cramps up, just further compounding her already-troubled existence?

Why, yes, let’s fix her whole troubled world! Sunshine and rainbows for everyone! And, after lunch, COOKIES! Why, yes, let’s snatch out that womb and make her life so much more the better! Whoo! Face it. The argument of “she won’t understand” what’s happening can apply both ways — maybe she won’t remember what it was like when she didn’t bleed. Maybe “she won’t understand” means asking this question is pointless in the first place. Who are we to decide what life experiences she is better to do without?

Methinks it’s sad she needs to discover the unpleasantries of the monthly female bloodletting, but it’d be far sadder still if this little case wound up being the gateway case to allowing a return of eugenics anywhere in our “civilized” world. After all… if it can happen here, in Canada*, for more than four decades, three of those being AFTER the Nazis, well, it can happen any-bloody-where.

Hell, there are watered-down, spoon-fed varieties of eugenics creeping into our system already. People want having a baby to be like ordering a sweater from Nordstrom. Eyes? Blue. Check. Hair? Sandy– no, strawberry blonde. Check. You may think “Well, it’s my baby. I should be able to choose what it’s like…” but there are a lot of freaky destinations in the road ahead if we go opening that door even a crack.

God knows that me, with my health problems as a kid and my hearing troubles, etc, I never would’ve made the cut. Cute as a button, but definitely packing genetic weaknesses to the nth. I could’ve completely fucked that four-person board up. “Well, hell, she’s as smart as can be! But… there are the other issues. Oh, some days this job is just not as fun as I thought it would be. To mate or not to mate, that is her question.”

You can argue the benefit of eugenics any way you like, and I’ll still say Darwin has it right — let nature sort out shit. We’re bears of far too little brains when it comes to deciding such behemoth issues. And still, there’s that silly Charter of Rights and Freedoms mucking up the mix, too.

Think about it, man. One small womb might be one large backstep for mankind, in more ways than one.

*And, oh, we’re not alone. Sweden, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, and a schwack of other nations have had some dalliances with eugenics of one kind or another. Canada had one of the longest state-sponsored programs, though, a real black mark on us.

The original story is here. A medical ethicist shares his two cents here.

I know scientific studies are funded so we can have “evidence” of things, but, really, how obvious does something have to be for that study’s evidence to be a waste of everyone’s time and money?

Case in point: A study in Great Britain has now deduced that unhappy marriages (or relationships) are bad for your heart.

Oh, okay. Good to know. So, when the sound of my lover’s voice makes my cringe, when I dislike being in their presence, when the sex isn’t hitting any of the right spots, when I’m looking for stupid chores to do to keep me out of the house for longer, these are all indications that maybe, just maybe, I’m under so much stress from the unhappiness that my heart might finally decide to disagree with my choices in an overwhelming kind of way? This is a bad thing?

Doh! Who knew!

Of COURSE doing things you dislike, being with people you dislike, living a life that feels like a lie are all things that’ll send your heart around the arrhythmia bend. Like who needs a fucking memo?

All the unhappy people living lives that make them unhappy, I guess. Here’s your wakeup call: Wake the fuck up. DING-ding-DING. Life is short! Live it the right way as soon as you’re fuckin’ able, ‘cos it’s all too damned short! Anything you’re doing that makes you unhappy is something that maybe needs undoing, all right? Common sense, isn’t it.

Look at me — six months in a job I hated and I’ve managed to gain back 15 lbs, let my house go in a complete disarray, fell out of touch with everyone, developed an overwhelmingly negative mindset, and lost focus on everything that used to be important to me. SIX MONTHS! That’s all it took! Granted, there were a couple years of instability before that, but the six months of doing something I just couldn’t handle doing really took their toll on me, and FAST.

It’s one thing to be unhappy while you’re chasing your dreams, but it’s another thing to have given up on everything and force yourself to live a life because you “chose” your path when you said yeah at the altar. Hello? What’s the statute of limitations on stupid decisions? Oh, right! There is none!

If you’re staying in a relationship or a marriage because the alternative strikes you as being “too hard”, well, maybe you should consider the ramifications of living with a daily sense of dread that you’re trapped and life holds no options for you. Yeah, change is hard. For a little bit. Then it improves. But staying in a shitty situation because you feel obligated? Well, that continues to suck ass for every fucking day you allow it to continue longer than needs be.

Me, I’ve used my failed job as an example of how far from a number of things I once loved that I’ve now strayed, and I’m using it as a reason to recalibrate everything in my life… but it’s only when we realize how far we’ve fallen that we can see the distance we need to travel. I’m not the first person to observe that, and I won’t be the last. Hell, Sufi mystics have been saying same for centuries now.

I just don’t get how some hundreds of thousands of dollars (or pounds) need to have been tossed frivolously into the “scientific study” pit to realize that unhappiness is bad for our health. There’s something for the “no shit, Sherlock” files, eh? Unhappiness hurts. Goddamned right it does.

Living in bad times because we’re too afraid to change our course is as sad a decision as it sounds. It’s pathetic, but god knows many of us are guilty. I was. You’re not doing anyone in your life any favours by sticking around for them when you’re no longer who you were back when you made those promises. I mean, if you’re bitter inside and resentful of the life you lead, how can you possibly delude yourself into thinking no one else is picking up on it — or, worse, that no one else is affected by it? What you claim you’re doing for everyone else’s benefit is likely hurting them as much as it’s hurting you, but y’all are too close to the picture to see any of the detail clearly, ironically.

Relationships are a crap shoot. We hope like hell that the person we’ve fallen for will be able to change and grow in ways that we can mirror. But when they don’t, and we can’t, then how is it doing anyone any good to stick it out?

I’m the product of a marriage that stayed together long after its expiration date. I’ve learned from the best (thanks, Mom! thanks, Dad!) how to avoid the truth, how to lie about feelings, how to suppress what’s inside in order to just get through a day. I learned from them that there were obligations and there were wants, and wants always took a backseat to obligation. Those are the legacies passed on to me by my parents, and at 34, I’ve spent my life trying to unlearn all those debilitating things they taught me.

Think of the consequences of your lack of ability to act for better change. Think of what you’d say if your best friend, or better yet, your child, one day came up and laid out a tale for you of similar particulars as the ones holding you back. Would you tell them they deserve better? Would you explain you know they can handle anything that comes their way? Now why don’t you deserve the same?

If you want to read the rocket-science brilliance behind this scientific study, then have at ‘er. Click here. Meanwhile, do what you wanna do today and enjoy yourself.

(Oh, and before it sounds like I’m advising everyone to drop everything that makes ’em unhappy and run for the hills, then screw on some common sense, bub. Obviously cutting-and-running is a last choice. Face your unhappiness, do what can be done to improve it, and if improvements don’t do it, then maybe it’s time to just cut your losses and leave town. There are steps you take. There are books that can guide ya. Look for ’em. Consider your options. But know this: You are far from trapped. You only choose to be trapped. Time to make new choices.)

These are the kinds of weekends one has to grow accustomed to when one lives in a rainforest. Ah, Vancouver. The world outside my windows is being soaked to the core by an omnipresent drizzle. There’s no definition in the skies overhead — it’s just a world of soft grey from the clouds on down.

It’s the first weekend where I’ve really noticed the odd red maple leaf soaked to the sidewalk. The autumn is upon us.

I’m keeping to myself after getting to sleep around 4am last night. Caught a gig, was good, got in late and did some me-time. Woke up at 10, looked around, figured I was still tired and nothing was pressing, so I went back to sleep and slept till 1 for the first time in a year or so. Sweet. 🙂

Going out last night kind of came at an awkward time. When my friend arrived, I’d just had one of those moments where I realized how hard I’ve been running, and for so long, and now here I am, literally back where I started… same job, same home, same income, same everything… and I’ve gone through so much emotionally, physically, and financially in the last three years, and it’s all because I lacked a little patience and had too little faith in “letting go, letting god”.

I am not a religious person. I guarantee you that I will never be a religious person. (Don’t get me started. I’m not about to follow some guy’s interpretation of what god is, nor follow some baffling systematic method of worship. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I passed on the t-shirt, all right? So, don’t try to save me or convert me. You’re wasting your time.)

I am, however, spiritual. At one point, I was enormously spiritual. I always found the time to find myself in a forest, at a beach, hell, by a roadside. I would just stop and take in the whole world, whether it meant pulling off the side of the highway back from Whistler, in the mountains and by the water, to sit on the hood of my car in the middle of nowhere, my stereo blasting Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Little Wing on repeat in a world just silent as death on a mid-August night, or sitting above a valley in the Yukon as I watched the light changing on the land as the midnight sun swept deep and low over the land.

God’s never been about four walls and a church defined by man, not for me. Not since I was a kid in high school history thinking how wrong it was that the Catholic church once sold salvation, and the church of England was formed so that King Henry could have his divorce. Faith shouldn’t need parameters, you know? It is what it is. I don’t need to understand this ‘god’ or really have a clear idea of what exactly it is in order for me to feel just awe-inspired when I look at the world around me and be the kind of person who celebrates that daily.

But that’s the problem. Somewhere along the way, I’ve lost that. I’m basically coming out the other side from a long, dark tunnel I’ve been trapped in for a number of years. For the first time in a long, long time, I’m losing my sense of dread that the other shoe’s going to drop. When my mother died — as a result of so many mistakes by professionals and in the midst of a few years of hell for her personally — I lost my faith in everything and everyone, and sure as hell lost my faith in me. (If you’ve never read it, the best thing I’ve ever written was this posting about my mother’s death.)

When I started blogging, I did so because I had blown out my knee for the first of three times between ’03 and ’04, and living on the fourth floor of a walkup, I was more or less sent into recluse mode. Something snapped and I was able to write. It wasn’t until the next year that I really began digging deeper and writing hard-to-write stuff, exploring parts of me I didn’t often let out into the light.

Lately, I’ve been avoiding blogging for many of those same reasons, ironically. I’m coming to terms of late with the fact that much of the grief and trouble I’ve endured for the last three years are as a result of my probably making the wrong choices. Instead of realizing I could handle six or eight unstable weeks a year at work, and not trusting my own strength and the way of the world, I chose instead to try and find my way into the corporate culture. Years ago I told my friends I’d never be the career-type person. Work was work, a job and a necessity because the world had the nerve to demand we pay for shit, not something I’d do to find the value in who I am. I always said I wanted the trappings of success, but not the trap. The value in who I am comes from the home I’ve created, the writing I do, the photography I do, and the experiences I have. Work’s just a necessary evil… and I forgot that. I lost so much sense of self that I felt I needed to find it elsewhere, and that didn’t exactly work out for me either.

Now, funny enough, I’ve found out that it’s not uncommon for people with head injuries, who are rehabbing and getting well, to start questioning everything. It was six months after my serious head injury (almost died in a bike accident, yada, yada) that I ran into a lay-off at work. Suddenly I thought I was in the wrong career, etc. Instead, I could’ve opened up an EI claim, taken some time to myself, and gone back when things got busy again. (Read about that accident here, another one of my better works, imho.)

What happened to me, though, was that I spent the next 2 years chasing down jobs that would never be any more fulfilling to me than what I’d already been doing, and would all require more from me, meaning forfeiting more of who I really was for a job I deep-down knew would never mean anything more than a paycheque every second Friday. I can’t believe how hard I’ve been running in my hamster wheel, only to find myself back exactly where I started from.

In short, I feel like an ass.

But it’s been interesting, because, in all that time, nothing I did ever made me any happier. Everything I did, I did so without really listening to my inner voice. I was lucky and fortunate that I was able to keep it all together, never miss a rent payment, and not go deeper into debt, but nothing ever made me happier… and that’s been weighing heavily on me this week. Nothing made me happier.

I guess many of us have times when we just realize we’re pretty distant from where we wanted to be when we thought about our lives as youths. My recent birthday has made me realize, yeah, I’m getting older, but I’m still pretty damned young, and I’ve wasted enough of my time running in a hamster wheel that was getting me nowhere. And however much of my life has passed, I’m hoping it’s still a fraction of my future, and it’s on me to make sure it’s the best future it can be.

I’m also realizing that the world’s full of enough cynicism, and I’m tired of being a part of that. I’m the original Libra — I’m constantly in and out of balance, and I offer both cynicism and optimism, but I’ve been offering too much of the former of late. I want to rediscover my awe for the world. I want to rediscover that pause button. My priorities are completely changing, and all because I’m tired of not being the person I used to be. Now I can both be that person and be the new, more comfortable, more sure of self version. I want that youthful awe and this wise, appreciative “been there” mentality I know will help me value that worldview when I pull it back into focus.

This is the project I’ve set before me this winter: Rediscover the person I was before life came along and threw me wildly off-track. I’m done with the detour, man. I’m coming back to myself. What a fun journey this is gonna be. Right?

Slog, slog, slog. Squish, squish, squish. There goes the work week.

I’ve got a day left and it’ll be a chore, but I know I’ll be done at 5. I know I’ll have the energy to conjure a quick snack (soup’n’sammich, both homemade and upscale, but a real treat when I’m in a rush!), the smarts to have a primer drink, and the enthusiasm to go back downtown via transit, drink the night away, and enjoy a live show, and get my ass home around 3ish, if it all works out right.

Why? Because it’s that kind of a job. Gr-r-r-r-reat! So, even though the day itself will be frustrating and tense, I get to leave when I wanna leave. This is good. Beats the shit out of working until 7:30 on a Friday night and being too drained to take my ass off the couch… much the story of the last few months.

This past week, I’ve still been sick. Today I woke up feeling a million bucks, and had an all right day even though it’s been hard, but I’m still less sick than I was. This is good. Change is good.

My scooter, however, is sick. Poor scootie. It’s putt-putting up hills and making me feel like a victim waiting to happen as it chokes up at certain angles and loses 35% of its power with traffic hot on my ass like I’m showering in prison. Methinks it’s the carburator needing to be cleaned. If you’re a motorbike geek and know that answer, lemme in on it. It’s taking 10 minutes to warm up. This is new. This is bad. I feel all pathetic. The one thing that always rocked about my scooter is that it stormed the hills. Never lost power.VrrrOOOOm. But now, pUtt-pUtt. Ugh. So uncool. And unsafe. And ungood. So un.

So, is it the carburator? Gotta be, right?* Could probably change out the spark plug, too, eh? All of $2 to eliminate that possibility. Better than the $100 cleaning dealie for the carb. Cursed putt-putt.

Anyhow. Hey, look: It’s a weekend! Wow! I’ve always wanted one just like it! Gosh, thanks! And you have one too? Swell! Let’s both enjoy them, then!

(*The Fine Print: The Tech Shit. It’s a Yamaha Vino, 2003, classic edition, 2-strokes, 49cc, never been modified save for removal of the restriction washer in the muffler. Top speed was 65 km for the longest time, but I’m at 23,000km and around 17,000km it started going a little slower. in the last 1,500km, it’s really began to bog down on hills and such. Sounds like it’s groaning a bit. Top speed now is about 55km, and I can bog down for up to about 40 blocks from home after warming up 3 minutes before leaving, and bog down so I’m choking at 30km/hr up hills I ascended at 50 last month. After about 50 blocks, it gets more comfortable and performs a bit better, but it’s still compromised. There, is that more informative? Is it the carburator? Never cleaned it since I owned it, and I’ve had it since Sept. ’04, so 21,000km of the 23,500 it has now.)

After a week of being pretty badly hit by the cold making its way around Vancouver, I kept much more to myself on my birthday weekend than I’d planned to. The weather has been lousy, and I realized I wasn’t as flush with cash as I was hoping, so I figured I’d keep it simple.

Case in point, among the other exciting happenings of my life, in a few minutes I plan to empty out my refrigerator. I’ve been buying way too much way too infrequently of late, and it’s an ass-backward way to live a culinary life. Food has been on my mind this weekend because, well, I’ve been avoiding shopping. As a result, I’ve started thinking of how this can be a good thing.

So, deep in thought all weekend, I’ve decided to simplify my life in a number of ways, in keeping with returning to the old job and all. The biggest of simplifications will be in regards to food. I’m going to return to the Slow Food movement and start taking the time to pop in to the local markets a couple times a week and be inspired to create fresh foods, rather than trying to take the easiest way out. I want to really cook again. It’s such a great way to add meaning and dimension to your life. There’s food, then there’s soul food, then there’s food for the soul. Slow Food refers to the latter two.

The Slow lifestyle’s something that really appeals to me. (Read “In Praise of Slow” by Carl Honore.) I wanna be totally present in the here and now. You hear people talking about living their “best” lives, and it all sounds like so much new age bullshit sometimes. But they’re onto something.

Me, I’ve taken the most important step. I’ve quit the big fancy job with the nifty title and no down time in order to take the pressure-free, life-balanced job. Now I’ve spent my slacker weekend setting the groundwork for something I hope to bring me even greater work-life balance, my self-employment scheme. I’ve come up with a company name and spent my weekend working on personal branding and designed all the graphics that go with such things — business card, letterhead, invoices. It and looks pretty polished. Now I need to spend a week or two getting the rest of my life feeling a little bit more polished to go with. My home needs to be more Zen so I can make better use of my time and work smarter, not harder, as I try to get my life back under my own two thumbs.

The next several months will still be transitional. There are a few ways I see my life going, and I’m hopefully setting the stage for good things, but the only way we’ll know is when it all comes down the pipes. Life’s more fun when it’s unexpected, so I’m just trying to keep an open mind, ‘cos the whole controlling-everything thing wasn’t really working out for me, so…

Anyhow. Here’s how I’ve spent my birthday weekend, I guess… pondering what is and what might come to be, and trying to set a little something in motion towards that end.

Y’know, I’d have thought I’d have had it much more together than this back when I thought of what “34” would one day mean, possibly in my late teens. And, it’s weird, but as much as it’d be nice to have a nice, firm, predictable and together life… it’s kind of cool to know I’m just as open to adventures as I was a decade and a half ago, if not a little more so. Getting older’s mostly all about me not taking myself as seriously as I once did. I still have work to do on that, but it’s all good. What I do know is, being single, kidless, and mortgage-free, I sure as hell have nothing to lose. I’m just trying to think of what kinda license that gives me and what I oughta do with it. What fun.

So, I don’t want to get into anything deep, but here are the snippets flashing through my mind at this late hour.

(I have written… I will not edit. I am sick in the head. Go easy on me. I should edit. Considering I’d overlooked “this lat hour” until this late minute, I should edit. But fuck editing. I’m an adult and I can do what I want. Tomorrow I shall aspire to better grammatical correctedness, perhaps even stellar spelling. Tonight I aspire to sleep, so fuck all else. There: I came I saw, I wrote that ass.)

I had a moment watching a show tonight. I began to wonder just who of my dalliances would be the ones I remember in flashes and sensations when I’m at the end of my days? Who’s gonna rate? When I’m that much more wiser, I’ve travelled more, done more, had more, who is it that’s gonna stack up against The Rest? What am I most gonna remember about them? What gave ’em that memorable edge?

You ever wonder who’s really gonna be memorable at the end of 75 years? 85 years?

A kid died after crowd-surfing at the Smashing Pumpkins gig here in town last night. I’m gonna be 34 on Saturday, and one of the things I’m promising myself I’m gonna do this year is to get back into the live music scene.

Nothing fills the void like a wickedly energetic gig in a small venue.

But here I am, now, right? I’m 34. There was a time when I was front-and-centre at the gigs. I got the close up shots and could see beads of sweat melting into their t-shirts, y’know? Sigh. I don’t know if I have it in me to get into the mix with “kids today” and their “unruly state” and all. Throw this dude’s mysterious “no obvious wounds” death into the mix (drugs?) and I have the “hmm, maybe I’ll find a stool and power up the Bic” bullshit mentality creeping into my head.

I guess I’m starting to want to embrace my inner rebel this year. Hell, I said screw it to the man, quit my schmoozing, networking job for something lowkey and behind the scenes, and who knows what’s to come. First, I’ll get over this cold. 😛

In Argentina, a minor has won the right to have a sex change. It’s an interesting story, and one that I’ll probably look for more information on in the coming days. We like to think that kids under 18 are so ill-informed, but the thing is, we keeping lowering the bar, right? We’re looking at norms and averages, and perhaps a good many kids don’t have the savvy to make informed life decisions, but some do.

You can look at this two ways. One, life’s long. What’s the hurry? Let the kid wait till 18 or 21. They have the rest of their life to live in that body. Don’t rush the knife; it comes soon enough, yeah? Or, two, life is short. Why waste a single day? What if he/she’s hit by a car in a year, or is stricken with some rare cancer in the mid-20s? What then of the wasted days spent counting and waiting on something they knew was the only way they’d ever feel whole after a lifetime of feeling dysfunctional?

Yeah, they’re both great arguments. Who’s to say who’s right? I know what the safe, conservative answer is, but if I was safe and conservative, I’d have ridden out the last job for the usual year, but it occurred to me that I’d already lost a whole summer to overtime and fatigue, and I couldn’t waste another day. But this is a teenager, and how can a teenager truly know the range of emotion and need they might have? They think they’re going through horrors, but wait till their 40 and then let’s rate ’em outta 10, okay?

So, you see, complicated issue and I haven’t the foggiest whether I think it’s the right or the wrong action to take. I bet if I had a beer with the kid, I’d know within the hour what I felt, but going off tempered press, well, who knows anything, eh?

Hmm. So, I have a head cold and I’m going to bed now. Curse you, sinuses. Curse you, I say. But, hey, Happy Wednesday, y’all. Half way there, baby. (Three day weekend for little old me.)