I was sincerely impressed by the technology of our modern world that, with the press of six silly little buttons, made it so that over six hundred dollars could suddenly cease to exist in once place, and reappear instantaneously in another; like a surreal form of teleportation where only Captain Kirk's soul does any travelling. And not only that, but that this fantastic sum of money (I've had six hundred dollars before, and in fact earned cheques well in excess of that all summer long, but the only time I've ever spent it all before, in one sum, was when I paid my first and last month's rent here) is going towards the arrangement of me getting inside of a gigantic contraption made up of all kinds of crazy alloys, which will allow me to fly across an entire continent in a matter of seven or eight hours, to visit someone I've never physically met before, but only know by virtue of a strange and random introduction through an ethereal mode of communication that involves the movement of electricity across said continent. This was something I was thinking about today. To anyone who chanced to fall forward in time to the present day, from as little as a century ago, surely my life would seem like magic.

The very fact that I can whine about my life and somehow have it at the same time function as entertainment for people who've never even considered a world of smallpox or polio, and know nothing of life without plumbing or magic talking picture boxes (televisions, computers, tamagotchi, or otherwise), is more of an example of this. And this isn't one of those "be thankful for what you have," diatribes. Not at all. This is merely something I thought to be tremendously cool, and it all sort of makes me wish that I had me some visitors from the past, so that I could have them gasp and gape and confess what a truly amazing person they thought I must be. It also helps me put things into perspective, when I examine them from the outlook of someone who would have no context for really understanding the meaningless things I do in my life that seem so important simply because Ottawa lacks a sufficient number of wolves or fields of crops for my life to have anything really resembling a "grim struggle just for survival."

Now that my little sojourn has been paid for, officially, I do feel lots better about my decision. I mean, all this time I just knew this was something I wanted to do -- spend some time with a person I've reached a comfortable level of personal intimacy with, and in some way make our friendship closer and more interesting when a human touch can be associated with what is normally just interesting yet 2-dimensional text. The only difficulty I had, though, was that for all of my resolve, I was still waffling over whether or not my decision was coming at a good time; whether or not I might have call to need that kind of money later, or Clorinda would randomly decide she didn't want me coming down, or events conspired in some way to establish that I just couldn't visit, and then be stuck with the attractive but prohibitively costly souvenir of a bright, shiny, non-refundable airline ticket.

The trip is just a little less than a month away, but I've been twinkling with excitement over it for at least as long; and now that the particulars have been established, and the journey made official, I really find it difficult to patiently wait for the end of the month -- October, a most emotionally trying month for me, even though I love it so -- when I can take my very first flight ever, and meet my very first real fan (who has since become a trusted and needed friend) ever. The reason I love October is also the reason I dread it. It is almost always a month of many portentous happenings in my life. Everything begins for me in this month -- a time normally so associated with endings. Unfortunately, it is the ending of these things themselves that makes October so difficult for me to face emotionally. It's hard to say how I feel about certain things. I'm hoping Lucretia and I will be able to reunite at some point before I leave, because the 15th shall mark the third anniversary of the night we met, and Hallowe'en itself is a special date that I'm sorry to miss. And of course, Hallowe'en is the night Lilith first set shining eyes upon me. She and I have been speaking of late, and I'm more assured of her feelings of friendship towards me, but nevertheless she remains terribly busy, and I must confess to delight at the idea of being able to create some new, wonderful memories instead of reliving older, unhappier ones.

I've been very distracted. Friday was not at all a great day for me. Which is a shame -- I was looking forward to a quiet day at work, sitting in my office, being productive, and earning my keep. The tragedy was that they've hired somebody new -- I believe through some adult retraining program -- and since I'm only in the office once a week anyway, the workspace they gave her was mine. I felt quite awful realizing that someone else was in what I had otherwise considered quite passionately to be my space. And of course, she seemed perfectly nice and it was entirely reasonable for her to be working where she was, doing data entry. But meanwhile, our hero has been left a note instructing him to research articles on CD-ROM indexes in the libary, and library work is, it might need to be pointed out, something yours truly deplores. I shrugged, however, and figured "Eh. It's what they're paying me for," so I tried running around the library, searching various keywords for articles coming before 1985.

Of course, half the task ended up as a wild goose chase (forgive the cliches, but after all it is after seven in the morning as I write this). The resources I (pre-1985 articles, listed in indexes of summaries) needed came from two different indexes; one that was in the Main (Sir John Carling) building, and another that seemed kind of like a blip, but everyone seemed convinced it was not available in my building, so I ran over to the main building, which has an enormous library. They informed me that they had no such thing, and that I had to go back to my building's library, where certainly they existed, and in fact where I was told that while yes, indeed, the indexes could be found, they most assuredly did not have any records that existed before 1985 on CD-ROM. Go to the main library, I was told. So, back there I went, where I found out that I could only find what I was looking for if I actually searched gigantic indexes printed month by month for every year before 1975 until about 1920, and searching through them would have been soul-crushing and disturbing, and several weeks longer in terms of execution than necessary (I did the first half in several hours). So, I did my best, but both of my co-workers were away that day (one doing field work in Saskatchewan, the other having taken a day off presumably), and without their presence(s), my options were crummy: Do nothing and kill myself with boredom; or do what I can, and hope it could ever possibly be enough until next week. I opted for the second option, and even stayed an hour late just so I could make myself feel a little more productive than before, during my uncertain questing that wasted so much of my time.

I think it's perfectly true for me to say that I like my job, and I like my family, and I like my home, and my school, and my friends, and my life. However, if I didn't complain about all of these things, then obviously I would have to be some supreme being of infinte love and patience, and trust me -- supreme and morally perfect beings rarely are everything they're cracked up to be, and often use sneaky and powerful tricks to get what they want from you. So, either I whine, or I the city burns.

Your choice... but, there's always going to be more later, when it isn't 7:30 in the AM. Ouch ouch ouch.

O c t o b e r 2

So, anyway, there is a Subway -- home of things tasty -- not two blocks from here, and bedecked only in the most modest of garb -- looking for all the world like I was on my way to a volleyball game, with a trenchcoat thrown over top -- I walked down Bank Street, with visions of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies dancing around my head. Now, in the Subway works an old friend from high school; or more specifically, an old friend who is the older sister of an even older and dearer friend. She's been working there forever, and now and then during my excursions downtown, I'll see her working, and stop in as to inquire how those eternal tricks are. She whipped me up a 12 inch veggie delight on whole wheat (living is cheap and tasty when your only requirement from otherwise pricey subs is lotsa green things ... my vegetarian carcass might cheat this scurvy of its prize yet.), gave me my cookies, and with a nod and a tip of a metaphorical hat (the real one sits atop my Darth Vader helmet in my room, and I just didn't look good enough this morning to wear either out), I was back out onto the streets.

Coming back onto our street, location of my home and humble headquarters, I noticed several things at once. The first was a fire engine. The second was an ambulance. The third was the police. Not a thirty second walk from my door in the alley beside some enormous apartment building, agents of the city were removing a corpse. And my first thought was, "Crumbs! Didn't they pull a body out of here just a couple of months ago?" I was sure this was something that had made the news, and indeed was gossip that I found fascinating and creepy when Caira spoke of it during the move in here. And sure enough, the case seems to be that another body has been dumped here. See, this really isn't a bad neighborhood. It's right off the busiest street in downtown; it isn't posh living by any stretch, but you'd have to walk many, many blocks in various directions to find the first prostitutes or slummy drug dealer neighborhoods around here. Mostly you'll just find students and young couples, like any other street downtown. So I can only assume the crime happened somewhere else, because I was up until a stupid hour of the morning, and however good a murderer you are, your victim is probably going to be a good enough victim not to go down without a screaming fight.

Indeed, a roving news van for a local TV station just cruised down the street, getting this juicy tale ready for the evening news. I bet the phone rings tonight, a call from my panicky grandmother, who'll hear the location and worry about me, and then wonder if I knew anything more about it, or saw any murderers lurking around last night, or whatever.
I don't know. It makes me feel terrible to think of someone spending their last minutes in complete terror and pain, as I was complacently lounging around in my purple underwear, scratching the back of my head as I composed endless e-mails or sulked over something trivial, like being lonely, even though I was lonely and alive. As if I could have done something, or should have known. Like, maybe if I hadn't put the Clerks soundtrack on infinite repeat when I went to bed, I might have heard something at five in the morning, and been able to help, or at least get murdered myself in the name of stupid nobility.

I was thinking recently, that if I were to become a nocturnal vigilante, it would really be impossibly difficult to patrol a whole city, hoping to be in even nearly the right place at the right time to bust up the wacky theme villain of the week, like Cake Man, and his henchmen, who just whip cake at everybody. But it seems like all I'd have to do is stand around my street a lot, and save the world one corner at a time. I don't even feel particularly unsafe here. I just feel sad. I mean, the entire region of Ottawa Carleton and its one million inhabitants grosses about 8 murders each year, and already two of them have happened right here. The only people who die in Ottawa are people who get involved in drug deals that go bad, or families wiped out by an insane member, prostitutes, or some poor woman killed by a man she either loved or feared.

Anyway, I have class. More ruminations later.

O c t o b e r 1

Lately I've been pretty involved in this whole Charlotte dynamic. She's having super big problems with her friend(?), and they're getting weirder and weirder. In the space of an hour yesterday, he sent me three letters, all sent from different points along the gigantic roller coaster ride o' emotional weirdness that he seems to experience. The first one was conciliatory ("yeah, you're right.."), the second one was defensive ("you're kind of right, but listen...", and the third one was downright self-righteous ("I hope it makes you feel good to point fingers and blame") and, like any good bitch, I carted a disk full of this e-mail to Charlotte's apartment, where we sorted through it all with much head scractching. The worst part was that Charlotte, having read everything, admitted to the fact that it was possible some of the things she'd said to him in the past could be taken as quite seriously indicative of her desire for a future with him, and this muddied the waters a lot, to where I still feel comfortable in my judgemental fervour, but nevertheless it's tearing because I'm just that much closer to understanding where this person is coming from.

I realized tonight that she and I are in a lot of ways the exact same in our approach to love and friendships; the key difference is that Charlotte can shut things out when they bother her too much, whereas I obsess. This means that instead of talking about every last thing with people, sometimes she'll clam up about what she's really feeling in order to avoid hurting anybody, while I'm excrutiatingly honest. But otherwise, it's weird how needy and extreme we both are. I pointed out that it's like we're fictitious characters. We both behave in these extremes that real people don't, but instead they live in some grayer shade or mid-point that's more realistic and to some degree balanced.

But I'm every bit the flighty, love-addicted, emotional weirdo she is. I blushed a bit when Charlotte shook her head at me and said, "I LOVE sex! I love it!", because I was talking about how I'm not really comfortable with it.. but then again, I went into near-gorey detail about how much I love other aspects of sexuality, like performing oral sex. And I pointed out the fact that she just naturally exerts the same kind of mysterious charisma that I seem to, and yet she reacts as badly to compliments as I.. like, I'll enjoy hearing nice things, but deep down I don't really believe them. I don't know. I think I'll always find her attractive, but while we work as best friends, there's no doubt it would be disastrous for much more to ever happen, because of the polar extremes we take with regard to communication. Sometimes I think I search too hard for my Kevin Smith-esque platonic homoerotic best friend; in a lot of ways, that person is actually Charlotte. I'm never sure who's Dante or Randall, or Brodie or T.S., but I feel like the same banter is usually going on.If I tried to have a relationship with her, then only disaster would ensue, as per the parting of ways between Banky and Holden in Chasing Amy. The latency of the chemistry must remain, but never be indulged.

That's the weird thing though: my weird perspective on our friendship. I'm so confident of her being incapable of doing wrong, but I'm insecure enough that I never presume anything about my own role or standing. She offered to give me her couch tonight, because it was late and cold and she felt bad for chasing me out simply because of extreme exhaustion. She even had a spare bed we could have set up (she wanted her own bed, instead of the one that came with the apartment), but I didn't like the idea of imposing at all. I'm funny that way. I love it when people require things of me, and just plain need me, and I can offer them something, but I hate stepping on toes, even if it's something tiny. Like, I'll accept a cup of coffee from Charlotte when I'm over there (hey... it's coffee), but she couldn't ever manage to feed me anything (she tries). Broken and I have enough of a sharing rapport that we can impose on one another for things, but this is certainly the exception. And I was trying to explain to Charlotte that, for a lot of reasons, especially the imposition factor, I just prefer to sleep in my own bed at night, unless there's the promise of cuddling to lure me away. I found it very difficult to properly explain why I was refusing her kind offer, so I was glad when the topic changed back to other things, and we ended up blabbing for some time before I left, even when we managed to get into the lobby outside the main doors. We just kept talking. I honestly don't know how to shut up sometimes.

I managed to reserve a seat on an October 30th flight to Spokane from Ottawa (via Detroit and Seattle, bleargh... if you're going to fly for the very first time, make sure it's an especially long flight...), with the actual purchase of the ticket (setting me back a whopping six hundred twenty-four dollars and twenty-five cents!) pending me making sure that nothing bizarre or unexpectedly inconvenient happens, such as Clorinda freaking out and insisting that I not visit her should she find out that I am not, in fact, Batman, or some other such random act of annoying reality. She did feel kind of reserved towards the prospect of me spending that much money, though, which I kind of understand, since it's a stupidly large sum, and she was questioning whether or not she was "worth" spending that much money.
My current line of thinking, to be cryptic, is that I'm not sure if anyone is "worth" six hundred dollars (except in terms of individual organs, in which case, yes -- and a hundred times more). I don't think it's specifically the issue for me, though. I think if I was the sort of person who had motives and agendas, I'd be analyzing my willingness to spend stupid amounts of money more closely, in terms of is it "worth it," but the only question I'm asking myself is, "can I spend it?" Which is actually a different line of thinking altogether, if not obvious at first. I mean, I want to meet her very much. And I was willing to spend three hundred dollars, or four hundred dollars. I think when I heard it would be more than that, though, what I asked myself was the question "Can I afford this trip?" but not "How much do I really want to go?" so, really, I've decided what I want to do. I just have to convince myself that it's possible for me to do it.

I will say, I'd be a lot more comfortable if I had 600 extra dollars kicking around. If I spend it, I can still afford rent, and utilities, and food and all that, but it means less shiny things and comforts. Nevertheless, I wouldn't be particularly subjecting myself to hardship or anything, and I am employed, so I'd make at least some of it back. Heck, this month I've already earned enough money that technically it's like I'm only spending $424 dollars for the trip, and by the time I actually leave, I'll be at least two hundred more dollars richer, so the net cost of the trip gets even smaller, and I'd be making some degree of income to chase the wolf away.

It is hard for me, sometimes, to face the fact that we've never met. It makes our friendship more abstract somehow. I don't know. I'm also hoping that Clorinda will still be able to come up in February. Part of my motivation was that it made things more possible if she got to meet me and found out for herself that I'm not psycho, and that we get along. But then again, if she couldn't come down, then it'd be our only chance to meet. So, I don't know. Wemble wemble wemble.

S e p t e m b e r 29

Anyway, I spent a reasonable chunk of yesterday afternoon typing away on the precious ergonomic keyboard which I find so sexy and conducive to manic sessions of encoding my thoughts into text (a friend pointed out that the curves of an ergonomic keyboard resembles the cold buttocks of a corpse... I am inclined to agree, and find this a statment more upon the policy of Microsoft (who built it) towards the dead than my own sensibilities, since I just find it appropriately comfy), and it's a shame I couldn't observe myself, because I bet my expression was the sort of sinister twinkling that people occasionally will see in my face and find charming (it's like if a Care Bear looked as if it were up to no good... you'd find it adorable, and refreshing), and knowing this, I am constantly foiled in my attempts to consciously reproduce it.

I tried my best to be fair and reasonable. It wasn't that I wanted to yell at this person, or call him names, but really just point out the fact that I thought he was on the path to an extremely grave mistake that he would spend a lot more of his life regretting than he probably thought. As well, it just smacked too much of my own past for me to leave alone. My own affection for Charlotte caused some serious complications this summer, and it was for the forces of good that we could deal with it in an adult way, with me being aware that she couldn't return my love, and furthermore, my paradoxical and strange conviction to the desire to have nothing change in our friendship, even if she learned some extremely hard lessons in life, caused by my own powerful emotions, and the effect they have upon my judgement and behaviour, and if my self-induced regrets (and the tragic mistakes that caused them) have any value in the world at all, it is most likely that I'd like to help someone else avoid even worse mistakes committed in that same unfortunate name -- love.

It upset me that he seemed stuck in this notion that he was unconditionally in love with my friend, and that her inability to return this in the way he craved was in some way her fault. I'm not sure if there really is such a thing as unconditional love. I'd like to pretend there is -- we all do -- but it seems that so many selfish and insane acts are motivated by our need to be with the people we love. And in any event, how is a concept like "Since I know you're not really in love with me at all, and you probably won't change your mind someday like I thought, we just shouldn't be friends because I couldn't deal with anything less than what I want from you." unconditional? It strikes me as being something of a big fat condition. Maybe it's just a talent I've picked up from years of extensive training in philosophy, but I could spot the logical flaw in that argument -- in the middle of the night, under the bed, tucked inside a big pile of porno mags (unfortunately I have no pornography, but tha analogy still works). You want me to point out the condition? Here it is: Love Me Back.

There's poetry, and then there's reality. Love by implication is want, need, desire. If you love something, you won't be happy unless you have it. If something you love needs freedom, you don't let it go, you crush it pathetically to your bosom, and weep endless tears in the attempt to trap your dearest, truest love, in a big sticky-sweet web. I know. I know all too well. And maybe it's not love that is so innately flawed, but we as people. Maybe love doesn't demand, manipulate, threaten, plead, and scar, but people sure do.

People just like me and you. And in fact, me. And in fact, you.

And if I'm wrong, then come on over and marry me, because I want some of that good time loving you seem to have so bloody much to spare.

Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.

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