i am self destructive, good morning!

i am self destructive, good morning!























PEACE IS FOR THE WEAK-MINDED

THERE ARE A LOT OF THINGS THAT PEOPLE WILL TELL YOU MAKE YOU HUMAN. It’s love, it’s learning, it’s forgiveness, it’s reasoning, it’s language, it’s change, it’s innovation, it’s growth, it’s flaws, it’s war, it’s music, it’s leisure, it’s family. Or it’s the need for affirmation, the theories we make up to reassure ourselves we’re better. Better than everything that came before us (animals, and who we were before this here now, and people we used to know, and especially parents). Better also than everyone we know, and better than everything we own, and better than where we came from. Better than what we’ve been told is to be expected, what can be found anywhere. Or just meaninglessly superior. People will tell you we’re made human by nouns. Art, history, sympathy, mathematics, compassion. But let’s just assume it’s imagination. Because we imagine lots of things – like that being human is special, we have special rights. A person can imagine themselves into sickness, they can imagine themselves into stupidity, they can imagine they’ve found their way out of their own imagination. Imagine they pushed away green underbrush and stepped up onto a rocky mountain top. Wiped their own human sweat off their forehead. Closed their eyes to keep the blinding sun away but let it settle onto their skin and nose their shoulder into a comfortable nest to nap in. Suddenly they became as pliable as the blankets at the foot of their bed. Opened their beautiful eyes and saw white light reflecting off sparking snow on adjoining mountain tops and painfully blue skies and this is what they call truth.

We imagine we are different people, or different lives. We imagine we know the difference. We’re as good or as bad as we can be – anything to stretch the boundaries of what we can conceive. If mediocrity is our sin we imagine ourselves mediocre and if crime is redemption we fine tune self destruction.

on money
So imagine you’re a youth of the consumer age and a product of better times. And if the past is what you think is better there’s only one way out – you live the past again, and you live it better. You’re retro, the new trendy rich, a bargain bin millionaire. You’d settle for any decade but this; your 80’s sunglasses, 20’s dress, 40’s shoes, 70’s music. Nobody thought about their own times this much. You are a money fueled time warp. An individual, but individuality is so passé. You’re the $500 outfit and pawn shop tv. The iPod and garage sale bicycle.

Imagine you’re Marigold Avery. You use words like post-ironic and radical!. You’d like people to see campfires and swimming in lakes and summer and warmth when they think of  you. You actually think about what people should think of when they think of you. Welcome to your new life.






I’m Marigold. I’m named Marigold. You can’t call me Mari and I don’t think that matters very much. It’s just a name. And I guess I’ll start with the normal stuff about people that you find out, so I’m going in the pattern of a normal conversation. Or else I could go chronologically or in reverse chronology and I’m sure there’s lots of other ways, like train of thought, which just occurred to me now. The first thing is you see a person and that’s how you find out 90% of the things you think you know about a person. If you saw me you’d notice I’m female and about eighteen years old. I’m actually seventeen but people usually think I’m older. I’m average height and fairly thin, but not in the way that people with superfast metabolisms and tiny bones are thin. I have freckles (even on my shoulders!) and reddish blonde hair. You might also notice my eyes are kind of big and set slightly farther apart than they probably should be. I’d never actually tell anyone I knew this much about how I look. Without even talking to me I bet you’d make these assumptions about me: rich, sad, spoiled, hypocritical, kind, I don’t even know. Some people notice bad things  and other people notice good things. I try to notice good things. So say you come up and say hi to me and ask me how I am. I’ll say hi, I’m good and if I’m prepared I might say how about you? I could be in the worst situation ever and say hi, I’m good because I just can’t process fast enough to answer honestly. So here are your new assumptions: shy, uninterested, fake, polite, anxious, cold, distant, quiet, boring, stuck-up. It’s all in the delivery. I wish I could say NOT TOO BAD, YOURSELF? instead but it’s a habit. After that conversation is pretty much circumstantial and to be honest rarely happens for me. I’ll just tell you about myself then.
I live in Hope, BC with seven thousand other losers. In my lifetime I’ve lived in a pretty impressive assortment of Canadian small towns. My least favourite thing about Hope is probably the jokes. See, almost every town has jokes about the name. In Lethbridge the kids in my kindergarten reading buddy class used to ask me “is the bridge really on the left?” and it would really crack them up. Which usually saved me from answering my boring old person answer. (Depends which side you stand on). But in Hope the jokes are so cynical it makes me cry. You see mothers at the IGA pushing their toddlers around in carts and chatting idly with other mothers, and you overhear them saying “what Hope?” and then a dry laugh. Maybe it’s true. I’ve only lived here a few years so maybe I just can’t understand but I think they’re taking a lot for granted. Then again I’m not the one watching my daughter go to her first year of high school in the same place I got pregnant with her in a innocent but ultimately childish fling with her absent father.
Anyway I’m supposed to be the willing, consumer aware generation and I guess I must be. When I was 8 my parents brought home a TV and I said “don’t you know that it’s going to convince you to buy even more things?”. I’m pretty sure my parents wouldn’t have said that in the same situation, but it’s just a superficial display. I don’t know if there’s an official name for my generation but I’m thinking Generation Myspace is going to stick. And what a legacy.
The thing is all these things that are supposed to be really meaningful are now just trendy, and I’m pretty sure that demeaned them. I remember when cynicism was cool. If optimism, though, is the new voice of our times then that’s great. I’m glad we finally settled on something healthy because heaven forbid I grow up a disenfranchised, ultramodern, insincere youth, like the cold as stone cool of the 90’s. We’re caught in marketing our own causes now, I guess. But hey, what’s wrong with anonymity? A formula like this works most of the time: hardship x optimism = strength x beauty x money x money x money x money x money = amazing person. And that’s nothing new. Another one is sadness x love x sincerity x beauty x forgiveness x self immolation x beauty x beauty x money x money x money x music = relationship. You can do algebra with those if you want.
If you went to school with me or worked with me you would never guess this but my life is so distant from my times it’s like a completely different world. If you’ve ever worked at a restaurant or anything like that you’ll know that feeling of walking out of the kitchen or back room or wherever and plastering a huge tacky smile on your face no matter how tired, sick, sad or angry you are. I’m a lot more cynical than I’m supposed to be. When I should be thinking about faith and how beautiful the world is, I’m really thinking “Jesus Christ everything I do has become an exchange.” And I monologue; “I must be a store. The world is a store and if you pay me a compliment I lend you love and if you don’t read my mind I punish you and this is what we call natural consequences but really it’s just buying and selling who could we even be without rich or poor or especially the lonely middle class and what if nothing was worth anything would anyone bother to listen to anyone else talk what if we couldn’t count or say you owe me one I wonder how many people would die…” It sounds manic. It’s just that my life is maybe too close or too far from what it should be. What Hope?
I, Marigold Samantha Avery, got home from work at 1 AM. I have been working since I was 13 years old – every town is another terrible job. For 6 years now my main priority has been moving out as soon as possible and never moving again, so I work and save my money. And spend it on clothes that make me feel closer to this ideal sunny truthful life. I even have a car, it’s used and ancient (or American, I don’t know), which I drive home in. My parents are asleep. They have separate beds. Each new house is the largest one yet and it’s still not very big. This weird generational power shift has 12 year olds with more expendable income than their parents. I go to my room and take off my work clothes, I peel them off like a parasite that’s welded itself to my skin. I imagine I am pulling shadows off of hot pavement in Hope’s wide and country western small town streets. I pull my hair back into a ponytail and wash my face with the last of my energy, and watch pink and peach and black swirls of makeup drain down the sink. I bought those in Toronto when we lived in Fenton Falls. You can find all these places on a map. I put on my pyjamas and they were expensive but they look so cabin by the lake, so hot chocolate and warm summer nights and tv set from before the dawn of time that I had to buy them. And that’s where my savings go. I lie in my bed which is older than I am and the creak might have echoed. I have 5 blankets and no quilt. Most of them are on the floor. Most of them are pretty darn old. So I turn on my iPod and turn off the light and wonder how long anyone these days would last with no visual or mental stimulation. I used to be afraid of the dark now I think I’m afraid of having to live with my own ideas. And I’m still afraid of the dark so maybe these phobias will build up until I die of fear and maybe that’s how everyone dies.
See and that’s why I get the insomnia. 4 AM and my iPod’s out of batteries. I can hear birds outside and I know I haven’t slept and I know I need to and I would to anything at all to go there. I wonder how much blood you have to lose to pass out. How much physical exertion until awake is not an option. I fall asleep.

6 AM. Technically it’s not a new day but you’ve gotta be crazy to care about those technicalities. My whole body is frozen with exhaustion. I already feel too drained to carry on. Finally I give up and try to fall back asleep. I am filled with lead. I am the tin man but even heavier, less mobile. He wanted a heart and I think I have one. At 7 AM I question mortality, at 7:30 AM I practise describing things with flowers (can’t find anything for marigold) at 8 AM I wonder what I should wear. Does the light pink (primrose, dew on a rose) top truly represent my attitude toward life? Does it reflect my inner personality? Would people want to know and love a person wearing that top?  And is there anything I can wear it with? 9 AM I become restless and roll around. My cat comes to my room. No thoughts define this time. Like clockwork at 10 AM I start to think of getting out bed. This is my getting out of bed ritual and it goes as follows: I have to pee, I’m restless, I want to sleep all day, I can’t even sleep five hours, I’ll have to do work, I really need to pee, someone will see me, why am I afraid of being seen in my own house?, someone might want me to talk, I am an unhealthy person, I get to get dressed, I’ll have to see my parents, I’ll have to anyway, I want to sleep all day, I need sleeping pills, I am self destructive, GOOD MORNING. It takes me about fifteen minutes and it happens every weekend.
10:15 I got up with a headrush and I am in front of my mirror, staring at my reflection. Hey, I look good. You can’t even call this vanity. Innocent curiosity, it’s just me wanting badly to see myself minus what I think I should be. Here is a portrait since I seem to paint those for myself a lot: my hair is messy, my skin is whiter than most of the ghosts I’ve seen. There are small bags under my eyes but they’re not dark, just puffy. I probably cried last night. Work stresses me out that way. I mentally slap myself for being vain. I think, what Hope? Man  I am just sharp as a professional grade $300 kitchen knife, aren’t I? I like to think so, too. And now I’m laughing internally at my own joke. Time for getting dressed. It takes me ten minutes total. I don’t put on makeup because you can’t just wash makeup and use it again. It’s such a waste, I think.
Sleeping and the morning are probably the most exciting part of my life. Mostly because I’m terrible at both. The door is open and for a moment I think it must be snowing, in June, even! But it’s a downpour of pretty white flowers. The air outside smells like adolescence. It’s bittersweet. I judge the air outside by how the deer and bears and ducks are doing. Right now they’re adolescents, they’re about to leave home, having many tiny existential crises. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I congratulate myself on this discovery about my own thinking process. These things bring light to my day. I figure once I can fully explain myself in more than just a series of images and scents and emotions I’ll be able to become a better person. Oh and here are some questions for you to think about. They’re not great questions though, just ones that come to mind and don’t even warrant an answer.
1.          Why better?
2.          Better than what?
3.          How can you change who you are?
And so that’s how we’re supposed to grow up. We ask those questions and then decide, oh, we are happy with who we are now. We’re going to start living in the suburbs. We’re going to buy generic mom and dad clothes and start a dreadfully unhappy family. All because we really were not happy quite yet. Honestly I have no clue if that’s what happens. Weird tidbit though: thinking the word “dad” right there in relation to mr was a pretty terrifying experience. I wonder if that says something about me.
10:30 and I’m in the kitchen downing two or three tablets of expensive (thank you, public health care, for funding my addiction to whatever the opposite of reality is these days) medication for some vastly overdiagnosed “medical condition.” Hypochondriacs and cowards dream about this stuff. Anyway it’s one of those things you can’t prove definitively and can pretty much lie your way into. Ritalin, Paxil, Zoloft. You’re just not interesting if you don’t take something in this modern age. Anyway I won’t be specific. My parents are watching tv and they’re on the computer and it sure looks like fun. As soon as the computer’s vacated I rush up. Welcome to my other addiction. When I was six years old my mom told me that my imagination is just like an elastic band because the more you stretch it the bigger it gets. My dad told me “if you stretch an elastic band it breaks.” I lived in fear. Of course eventually I figured out you can’t break your imagination but it’s still kind of habitual for me to stick to reality. Thus, rampant optimism. I guess if the world you live in is your only world it had better be pretty good.
11:00 If money can buy happiness this is probably the best it can do. I feel a reassuring headache (you’re alive you’re alive you’re alive you’re alive) coming on while my brain is pumped up, or down (I can’t remember) with neat new emotions. I’m not going to buy anything today. As if. Every day you buy something. I think. In a literal sense of course you buy electricity and all that kind of stuff. If buying is what I think it is then you buy every single thing that happens to you. If it’s just a simple exchange gone so ridiculously wrong then I’m thinking this is like ivy crushing a building. Money, buying, oh boy we really, really do love it. And that’s the pretty ivy on the walls. But this modern day art of the purchase is more specialized and brutal than it looks and it clawed it’s way into the fundamental way we think and it’s probably too late to reverse. Kind of like me and my exploding imagination. Some things you buy during the day are from talking to people. Conversation is like a purchase. A simple transaction, maybe a bit of bartering. Maybe that’s why I’m not good at conversation. I hate shopping. Or maybe I hate shopping because I’m no good at conversation. What’s a look too long worth? A passing laugh? What if one day we put material values on human expression. Could you live a life of crime in that world, could you hide away in the softer side of the rocky mountains with other rebels, squatters, freaks. I hate what if questions.
A more interesting thing to trade would be attributes or features of your life. Friends. Here’s an idea, imagine a communist society where the destroyed currency is friends and bits of your life. Maybe the more you improve your own life and your self, the better you make your friends feel, the more you get to share. Well, that’s pretty much here and now. Just like farming, everyone isn’t equally good with people. Then again you pretty much get what you give, huh. I guess my mind’s oiled with currency today.
12:00 Blood pumps sluggishly through my brain and tears spring up behind my eyes. Some scientist actually thought of this stuff. It’s anything, I tell myself. Anything that will slow down my brain. I convince myself I’m just aiming for quality not quantity. I can’t tell if that makes me a good emotional communist or not. Probably not. Technically I’m supposed to focus now. Technically. What Hope?
Hey want to hear what I got for sale in my life shop? Yeah, I know you do. In store lingo everything has a real meaning and a store meaning. I learned that in the retail industry. Me, the young communist, working for a sense of purpose at 13. Me, the young capitalist, working for a sense of self (money, you know) at 13. I did my homework in my break.
I don’t know what home means (store name: Life Experience), crushing small town, no-set-location, single child loneliness (store name: Independence), inability to form lasting bonds (store name: Freedom), my only real friend lives a 5 hour drive away (store name: Communication Skills), ruthless vanity (store name: Confidence). Methods of self immolation (store name: Self Awareness), addiction to useless methods of self-improvement (store name: Self Improvement), general addictions (store name: Coping), my need to devastate possible happiness in family relationships (store name: Growth), THIS HOPE (store name: Not For Sale).
So in case you were wondering, whatever you’re thinking of buying right now, you probably don’t want it that much. And I’m taking a 24 hour nap.











6:34 I’m in almost every form of physical discomfort I can imagine. Let me list them and create mirrored responses in your own over sensitive body. Here’s your stimuli: My skull is a giant dumb beast trying to shove its way out of my skin. My temples are tingling. You’ve felt like this before. My mouth is dry and my lips are cracked. It’s 6:44 and I’m already in bed. And oh god I think my insides are dying. My  whole body is a little shaky, I’ve got major butterflies. My insides are hopelessly confused. Nature screams hunger and science tosses the pillow over his face. It feels like someone coiled a squirrel around my spine and let it die there. My legs are fine, just jittery.

Pain’s got nothing on me.

7:00 I wonder if I can still express love. I don’t think I’ve said it since I was 8 years old in any real way. It’s not that I want sympathy it’s just that I don’t even know why I’m still relying on a single force. Sometimes my mom or dad will say “I LOVE YOU” and I will be politely silent. Because I think those words just crush the voice out of me from sheer intimidation. I live in constant fear of changing and constant fear of staying the same and constant fear of fear. Words don’t cut it. Well they can but I know I’m not making myself worth the effort. I don’t cry anymore. My emotions have become so irrational that stuff just falls out of my eyes. The worst part is its cold as soon as it leaves the tear duct. People cry to comfort themselves, but animals don’t cry. Nothing cold and wet is ever comforting. This is my life. This is the romantic and beautiful part. I had a boyfriend once but he was so impossibly unselfish that he couldn’t love me at all. I doubt I could either. Now what do I have? I have a small house in Southern British Columbia. I have no idea who I am. I have a lot of time to take personal inventory. I have years of my life to make up. I have no future prospects. I grew up a smart kid. From  kindergarten to grade 9 I was this fucking genius child. I never swear out loud. But yeah I grew up expecting worlds of greatness from myself and assuming I could have everything I’d ever dreamed of. Just by being here and now. Lots of things tend to happen at once. That should be a law of the universe. Things don’t ever just spread themselves out at even intervals. No, things just want to raise hell. Anyway all of sudden I’m dumb and it’s a lot farther to fall when you used to be mighty. I’m a saint now, or a nervous wreck. I get it, I don’t have a future anymore. The doors aren’t all open. Say you’re standing at eye level with me and speaking to me, and say this is while we were about to become friends. I’ve been about to become friends with almost every person in town but eventually I don’t put in any effort and we become a continental drift. If you were walking in the Alaska and the ice was melting and all the chunks of ice were floating a few meters away from this one the doesn’t look any different from the others what would you think. You can meet my best friend, Hannah. She’s beautiful. She’s not self conscious or in control of herself at all. Things come out of her mouth that she didn’t mean to say or even realize she was saying. When she gets the impulse to move she moves in whatever weird way her body wants to. That’s the low down on Hannah. We could be close friends but instead we’re best friends. I wonder if she knows that I’m just holding so far back. She’s cute and charismatic and real and pretty much my opposite. Everyone I could ever care about is my opposite. My other friend is of course Hannah’s friend first. They both pretend I don’t know this. Her name is Jennifer and she lies through her teeth. She’s a premeditated crime, she’s perfect. She’s not that pretty but no one notices. She’s the kind of fit you thought only existed on tv. Her eyes are too close together, her nose a little big, her mouth just bland. Her hair isn’t that colour naturally, heaven forbid she be anything natural. I tell myself this stuff because I don’t want to feel too inferior. It’s just she’s planned out what she’s going to think and say and eat and do and dream about for the next 40 years of her life. After that she says she’s going to get Alzheimer’s anyway. She makes me thank god for my neuroses and flaws, ‘cause otherwise I’d be her. Personal inventory. I have a friend who lives five hours away.




on love
7:58 I sit in bed and grind my teeth together. I wait for the advil to kick in. There are bricks hanging from my eyelids. I’m trying not to think but my head is spinning. I wish you luck, I want to see your face. In your time of need how impossibly far from thinking of me would you be? What do you have that’s so great that I don’t have? I worry about your prefect-in-the-eyes-of-god soul all the time. Because you’re perfect in the eyes of God. Because one out of every ten waking minutes I say a tiny prayer to the world for your well being. Because every good deed I do is in hopes that the karma will sometime pass through you. I can’t wait for someone to sweep you off your feet and make a loving home with you. I want to close my eyes for the part where I know you’ll do wrong. I’m just a blind animal now, because I need to believe that everything you do is right and strong and better than everything I do. Just so someone can be my future and my big dreams. I’m visualising your eyes, your big brown eyes. It’s just not meaningful to visualize a nose or mouth, but mostly I communicate with your mouth, not your eyes. Here is the day I left you in Manitoba.

6:00 AM I become aware of my consciousness. I can never remember what it feels like to wake up. The first thing I really think is SOMETHING IMPORTANT IS HAPPENING TODAY. And you’re gone. Spent on better things. This is where reality becomes unaware. I must be 14 or 15, you must be 16 or 17. How could we ever understand exactly what I’d lose. I’m asleep on my bedroom floor in a fortress of boxes. My toothbrush and a pill bottle are conscienciously rested on top of the nearest box. I must have put them there. I feel mildly clever but mildly offended. If they weren’t so expensive, if it wouldn’t poison the Earth, I’d throw them out my window. But I put them in my backpack instead. By now I guess I’ve figured out that starting anew doesn’t exist. If I was ever twisted and warped beyond recognition this would have been the end of the beginning. I’m thinking, What Is This Town. I’m sleeping in my clothes and I wonder if I should go to your house looking bad or not. Even way back when I recognized that what I was thinking had nothing to do with how I’d look for you. You saw me running, crying too many times to count. I brush my teeth and sit on a box. I feel so mellow with the birds songs napping on my window sill. The early morning light resting on my face and bare legs. I remember in minute detail staring at the soft blonde hairs that I never bothered to shave on my thighs. I remember being as crushingly disappointed as I have ever felt. The weight of every chance of recuperation and life and every imagined future I could have with you to save me resting on my stiff shoulders. I remember the last time you were mortal when I sat on your front porch in denim shorts and a gray sweatshirt, with August rubbing against my leg in every sense you can imagine. I remember my brain for once the pace of a snail remembering you asking me why do cats rub against things when they walk by them. It’s because they want that thing to know it belongs to them. They leave their scent on it. I remember discovering August in a dumpster behind my building. She was tiny and malnourished and the yellow-gold-cream colour of August. It was one of the darker, more haunted Januarys and she was freezing to death. No one was looking for her, and to think. This tiny angel that brought you back to life was then just another name for death. August is long and lean and her coat is full as she reminds me I am hers. Her fur is breaking free and floating away on invisible breezes. It’s a hot summer. I kiss her nose and everything I remember crushes me again. I gave her to you in early January. I told you I know how winter gets you down, I know I forgot to buy you a Christmas present. I know you’re here alone. I show you how August is all of this. She’s summer so you can feel no longer down, she’s my gift to you and she can do no wrong. And, I remember adding, if I forget to get you a present next year she’s still gonna be here. Plus, you won’t be here alone anymore. I remember how I didn’t said anything negative because I knew how that made you angry. I feel my ghost’s body buckling, I’m glad that I’m not prepared to cry quite yet. I think I’m trying to, I’m pushing myself farther. I imagine the main street and the highway and the lake. Snow Lake. I remember being 9 and running to the lake and thinking, finally. Mom said this is home now. You were eleven years old throwing stones at ducks in the lake and feeling sick with guilt every time. Perversely fascinated. You were thin and sullen. Your eyes were much too big for your face and I know I probably thought you were immeasurably old. I thought you looked like an owl, I thought you must be wise. You don’t remember me, I know. When I saw you the next time in junior high I guessed it was you because of your owl eyes. When we became friends I was only 13 and I knew if you changed me it would be the last time I’d change. Not so true. I said I think you were the first person I saw here and told you that charming little story and you said oh yeah I think I remember that. I swallowed that story whole until you stopped lying. You were only 15. I wish I had a photo of that face.

I only came to see August. You knew where to reach me. I didn’t want to risk a long goodbye. I had this perfect last memory of you. Me, 15, and full ofyouth and delusion and self awareness. Thinking to myself and then saying out loud if I wasn’t here right now I’d be somewhere else imagining I was here right now, with a person like you, I think. And you asking how come. Here I was so happy with my own mind and the ideas I was getting, so excited to impress you with my calculated uncalculated youthful maturity. Letting you know I didn’t want to be any older than I was, even though I guess I was anyway. I said, well I think most people my age think about this kind of thing. I pause and loose track. Except the ones that like to go clubbing. You crack a smile. What are you doing here? I’m asking.
You’re my friend, you say. I guess.
I remember my trembling silence. I remember feeling like a destroyed brown leaf in fall, wonder what will finish it off first, a brutal gust of wind or snow. The move or whatever you say next. You don’t know what you did wrong, I won’t get mad. I wonder if we appear equals.
I guess that’s why I’m here, you’re saying. That’s what I meant. You know I’m you’re friend.
I squeak, am I yours?
The moment is almost too hallmark. I’m hoping you say something imperfect.
Uh, whatever that means.
OK!
You’re 17 years old here. You’re not a rock but kind of like a hard place. I know the only place I’m still safe is in the little mossy cracks where tiny forests grow and small fairies are. You’ve been cut down a million times but you’re still standing. All humanity, passion, and boundless love. Owl eyes.
I’m thinking about my first definitive memory of you. You were standing in the hall with a group of guys who just look mean and girls who just look lost. Your cheeks were pink and you stood on the edge of the circle God but I was so little. I looked so weird. You looked youthful, to be honest. Youthful and resigned for now. I saw things different then though. When I see someone now I make a mental list of things I can tell about them and things I assume about them and of things I make up about them. In grade seven I promised myself I’d always take the things I thought “back then” seriously. It’s not easy. I rub August’s tummy and think, so this is what it feels like for a place to evoke memories. I don’t have a watch but  I left home at 6:30. Plus ten for walking plus five for August means 6:45. Your mom’s at work and I knock your door. I’m staring at the peeling white paint around those big brass numbers. Haha, I’m thinking. You live in number 69. I remind myself to take a mental image of you to remember forever. My fingers shake a little and August’s brushing up against my legs again. I scoop her up and kiss her warm fur between the ears on the top of her head. I’m trying to get every detail in because I know you’re still asleep and need to get dressed. Looking at details is my favourite game. The details about your house are that it’s big and old. The panelling is horizontal and painted a white that I can’t imagine ever looked clean. I absorb myself in tinier and tinier details until the regret uncoils itself from it’s vice grip on my body and slithers away. Here’s one: there used to be a garden in your front yard. The grass hasn’t been cut and I can see the neglected remnants of spray painted green chicken wire wrapped around the tall tall tree that brushes against your window at night and used to make you think ghosts were visiting. I wonder who forgot that trees don’t have green bark. Another detail is that your mailbox is empty and black and plastic with two bronze rectangles bearing two black numbers. There are cobwebs behind it and a place for newspapers that you don’t get. There are dandelions and wild flowers growing in your front yard and a hose attached to the side of the building. You’ve got one of those screen doors in front of your front door with little patterns made in the thin metal and painted white and chipped. The screen has a few holes in it and one corner is coming out. There’s dirt gathered in the corners. I think I see a tiny red spider. This kind of door is always awkward for tick-or-treaters. I’m standing on the steps leading up to your house. They’re in about the same state as the rest of it – someday nobody will remember houses like this. Historic. I look up at your window and consider throwing rocks at it. But to be honest the most likely outcome would be that I’d think it was hilarious and you wouldn’t get it, and then I’d hit myself in the head with a rock on the rebound. Then you’d tell me that if it had happened to you I’d be laughing because I’m that mean. Then our last (for now) conversation would be a fight. Here’s the details I can see about your window; it’s high up and made of glass. Old fashioned with shudders and a window sill where August sometimes sleeps with her mother, sunshine, and brothers, love and loss. Inside I can make out your curtains which are sloppy and pulled back. Probably I am just filling in the gaps with previous memories here but your curtains are white with eyelets and lace trim. Not very manly at all. Hey, I can see your face through the glass!

Mmmmm hi, you’re saying from where you’re standing in the front door. I thought you weren’t going to come today.
I can’t tell if you were trying to say my name or ‘um’.
My mind is a video camera now for this last morning. My mental snapshot: your messy hair is getting in your owl eyes. It’s not just that they’re big, and brown, or that they look like pools oil that you could burn a candle in. Typical of you to have to endure tremendous pain just to light a room (you’d be the first to volunteer), but there’s no synthetic supplement for an oil  lamp. But they’re just round and I don’t know. You’re not a stud exactly, not an underwear model or pretty boy. You’ve got a Jewish nose and squished together lips. There’s a light polluted milky way of freckles on the bridge of your nose. I’ve yet to see Brad Pitt in all his theatrical makeup and generous lighting project an image anything as beautiful as this one. I’ve yet to see him expand to fill the world for me or give as much to a single person. When I saw Fight Club I didn’t feel like Tyler Durden could be the only thing that’s strong in my entire lifetime, and that could be enough. Well of course I love you. Of-fucking-course. I bet you’ve heard the word platonic love at least once in your life. I think Plato made it up, or one of his students. And it means brotherly love, of course. I’m not sure how it happened or why but the sun set calmly on the time we could have been in love. I think we both want too much for eachother for it to be romantic love. We’re friend-married, you know. I realized that looking at you right there when you distracted me from my details. Say everything goes right for us both (and it should, we talked about it enough), we live ideal lives with loving families in beautiful places and every moment of our future lives glows with the sheer luminescence (that’s right, luminescence) of this august morning that smells like last night’s lightning storm. Say we both have perfect, uncomplicated marriages. Well I’m telling you this right now and I’ll tell you again when I’m 20, 30, 40, and all the way until I’m 70 or I die, whichever comes first, we’ll be writing letters and walking together and calling and saying I told you so, I told you it would be right. I told you, you deserve this.

Even so, I say: Well I can go if you’d  prefer.
You tell me to save it, that you don’t want your last (for now) memory of me to be of me being a little brat.
Hey, I say. I decided what I’m going to change.
Tell me please.
I’m going to be a kind person. I’m already thinking of all the sarcastic things I could say in response to that if I hadn’t said it.
I say: I just thought of about 7 sarcastic retorts to that.
Your laugh cracks in the dry air, hoarse and adolescent. You wish me good luck. You’re still mortal and I wonder if we appear equal. Your house smells like pancakes and I say I’ll make some for you.
Uh, as long as some doesn’t mean martinis or anything.
I’m standing in your kitchen and every time I shift my weight the floorboards creak. Your house looks pleasant and sunny. It smells of nuclear family and loving golden labs. I feel deceived, and I’m wondering when you got funny. I’m about to talk and I’m cringing a little bit thinking about this part because even then I was thinking oh just close your mouth and have a good morning. Good thing I’m not in the army because I suck at orders.
You know I’m probably about to start babbling uncontrollably now and every single time I look back on this day I’ll feel like a dork, I’m saying without my own  consent. But um why does your house smell like pancakes and how long until I get to smell them again except at Denny’s and uh. I don’t know why I said that I’ve never even been to Denny’s because well you know I HATE breakfast and those lines people get on top of their mouths when they smoke too much which is exactly what Denny’s makes me think of. And um well I just hope you still remember all the promises you made me because I’m gonna make sure you uhh, is that a bag of dog shit?
You make sure I’m done and then say: It’s stuff you left in my house. We pause, and laugh. And pause again. You say there’s lots stuff for pancakes in the cupboards if I know how to make them from scratch. I ask if you’re kidding. I am a master chef.
The floor is cold against my bare feet and this is what was said:
There’s no pancakes here.
I need a recipe, or something. You can’t just make this stuff up.
I’m hungry now.
You’ve got a family of elephants sized bag of uh… (I’m bad with words.) Cereal.
No milk.
Um.
…let’s talk about you.
I’m leaving.
Yeah, about that.
How come? I wonder if questions like this make me sound dumb. I know why, I just wanted to hear what you’d come up with.
We’ve talked about breakfast a lot.
It never ends well.
…
Ugh well. Maybe BC people will laugh at my jokes.
Ok.
I’m sorry. Let’s leave games out. Uh I mean, mind games. Or whatever.
Okay, what time are you going?
I guess whenever my parents get here. When you were little did you ever go to friend’s houses and hide there when your parents came to get you?
In the time it take you to process the information and answer me I’ve already made a bet with myself on the answer. Something depressing,
No. You pause. Didn’t have any friends.
Yeah you did.
Well... I don’t know. What are you going to do in Hope?
High school.
And it’s silence. And I say: I feel like we should be cramming all the conversations we might miss out on in this time. Or something. We’re already out of things to say.
Um. Well I like you. I’ll miss you. What can I say that doesn’t go without saying?
You know how I don’t like people to leave or things to change or end?
Yeah… I know that. You’re speaking very sluggishly. Maybe I just forgot your voice.
Well, ugh. This is like two ideas and I don’t know which to start with. Umm… Well I feel comfortable here. I don’t know I just like being here and it makes sense for me. I’m living here, uh I mean, not right here, but yeah I’m living here instead of staying here. Or something. So yeah it feels weird to be moving from you and… but that’s not the point. First, just, I don’t think that this should… be. People leaving or things changing or and end. Especially not and end.
Ok…
Please stay in touch… is what I meant. Da—nevermind.
What were you going to say?
Bad joke. Oh but I think that you should know and I started before but it didn’t have anything to do with what I was saying but I feel weird that I’m the one that’s leaving. Like uh, well don’t you think it seems weird? Just ‘cause I’m usually the one… not leaving. You know, like I’m the one that’s… more dependent. And just always I’ve been, wanting to be around you. And you have more priorities kind of. Like uh a life for example, heh. And like, well. Yeah.
You think, you think, you think. If you didn’t leave next year you’d feel, um. You think some more. Left behind and… or bad about yourself when I move.
I’m used to that.

I never noticed what bad talkers we were. Or are, I don’t know. But anyway it was hot in the car and stinky when we drove away and regret was now a hot white pain in my forehead, or some dream I had. It was my jaw tight and stiff from Not Crying when I waved goodbye to you  and then your house and then your town and then the tiny smudge on the horizon. Regret climbed off my shoulders and sank into my throat. She coiled herself into a collapsed supernova at the bottom of my stomach and slept there and sometimes she wakes up and digs long deep trenches in my  insides with her ugly fangs. And sometimes I tell her to fuck off, that I’m not a halfway home.








PHILOSOPHY IS SELF DEFENCE

LAST NIGHT’S THUNDERSTORM LEFT STREAKS ON THE WINDOWS IN THE LIVING ROOM. I’m watching the summer stillness outside with detached excitement and I feel like I should wash those windows. As if outside isn’t inaccessible enough as it is. Ever had that feeling like everything you do is complete bullshit but you’re addicted to it anyway? Well I guess we’re all addicted to our own persona. I guess that’s why we improve it constantly. I guess that’s why we neglect it constantly. To do lists, ideas, all that. Everyone has stuff they focus on and stuff they forget. I’m writing down things I need to do today.
01.          clean window
02.          walk dog
03.          swimming
04.          buy underwear
05.          laundry
06.          kitchen

And now I’m writing down things I already focus on too much.
•          home
•          time
•          lying
•          permanency

The sun outside isn’t touching me at all. I just realized something. I never want today to end. Could you imagine if people realized how unimportant time is? Solve this one mathethematically.
You have to love God.
You have to fear God.
God has to love you.
God is what happens when time ends.
God = Love
God = Fear
God = Fear = Love
Fear = Love
Fear = God ≠ Time
Fear ≠ Time
Also,
Fear + Love = 0
Therefore,
God = Fear = Love
God = Fear + Love
God = 0
Now introduce you into the equation.
God + Love = You
You + Fear = Time
But Fear ≠ Time
So Time – You = Fear
What could that possibly mean?
Math doesn’t really prove anything though. It’s so similar to language – false oversimplifications of intrinsic truths. I mean, green is real. It’s right there and everyone can see it. Warmth is real. You don’t need to tell someone that it’s warm to understand that it’s warm. And math is exactly the same. You don’t need to know any addition to understand that if you have two leaves and take one away then there’s only one. I guess the thing about math is that it assumes that things can really stop existing. At a certain point math stops being related to anything and is just numbers. Language is always related to something. I think I’m gonna try to get good at math this summer.

Time is something humans created to measure the amount of moments until we die. I don’t like it but I abide by it for the most part. And I guess I wasted today so far. But tell me, what’s not a waste of time. I mean. I’m happy enough. We’re just scared to die so we sit here and think of wasting time. What does that even mean? What time is not wasted? I think every moment must be well spent. Just this moment; sitting alone on the couch in my living room, no one’s here. The smell of this house, or home. Cars are driving by outside. I have plans, I have goals. The temperature is uncomfortably comfortable. Nothing is completely still because maybe I’m just not at peace. I’d like to say I’m not afraid to die but really, I am. I’m not afraid of what comes after or anything. It’s not even fear so much, just sadness. I don’t want to stop living. I want time to stop. I’d fear immortality a lot more.

I digress.

A few hours pass and now I’m sitting on a dock on a calm little corner of the Fraser river with the entire male squadron of the Eld Brood. The Elds are these Brandy Bunch types who live ten minutes (by foot) out of town in one of those big old houses held together by sheer willpower and the remnants of peeling paint. The younger four of the Brood all go to school together in Agassiz, which is this impossibly tiny town about half an hour away. They’re not typically a brood in that they’re suspiciously undestructive for a group of six bored small town kids ranging in age from seven to twenty-three. Raised by one of those inexplicably depressing couples who still cling to their babyboomer/woodstock status, no less – a woman who changed her name to Starshine at the age of seventeen and the man who got her pregnant with the firstborn. It’s almost painfully typical – what were they thinking? Edward Connely (Eddie!) and Starshine Eld (the children got their mother’s last name – a femisnist statement) are 22 years going and somehow still happily married so I guess something must be going right in there.

So the five of us (me and the 4 boys), are for the most part sprawled out in various stages of chaos in swimsuits on the hot wood of the dock. I love these kids – they’re so existenial. So metaphor-able. Tyler, the oldest, is 23 and for the most part dead silent, kind of distant. For some reason I can’t help but need his approval. He’s sitting on the corner with his feet in the water about 2 feet away from me. We’re both listening to his three other brothers chattering like birds.
“ Zach, my hair!”
“Oh Chase shut up.”
“You wouldn’t understand, Jer. We can’t all be Adam Levine.”
“What? Don’t be so obscure.”
“He’s in that band…”
“Maroon 5,” I say.
“Historic, Chasey.”
“Whatever. And  don’t call me that”
“He doesn’t even have hair, asshole.”
“Yeah he does!”
“No.”
“Yea-“
“No no no no no no shut up.”
“Be quiet stupids.”
Everything has to be emphasized for these guys. And they can all be captured with an adjective, a name, a number, and a couple conjunctions. Tyler, 23, an enigma. Chase, 21, the charismatic (drawl the a. do it.) one. Jeremiah, 17, the brooding intellectual. And of course Zach, 7, the smart kid. Chase gets along with Zach and Emily (one of the girls) best, and quarells semi-lovingly with Jeremiah (never Jer or Jerry – “so  ¬prosaic”). Zach likes everybody. Jeremiah teases Amelia-Mae and, well, everybody who isn’t in with his teeny tiny select group of friends. Tyler’s difficult to pinpoint but he seems to get along with Amelia. I don’t know, but I adore the dynamic. Ah, and it’s catching on.