i can make the world explode with my mind

The weather has been grey and wet these last few days but for some reason I’ve really liked it. I was walking through the office building when I dropped into a book sale to get a book. As usual I didn’t have anything in mind but in the end I got a nice copy of Canada and the Two World Wars at a bargain price. The reason why I had ultimately bought the book was that of resilience in understanding why we as Canadians fail so miserably to understand why we had fought in the mud and blood and died for a cause we so seemed to have forgotten. I hope to have a better understanding and greater appreciation for Remembrance Day in the end.

I once got cornered by a drunk Asian guy—at least I think he was drunk. He sat down next to me, held out his hand and told me his name. I didn’t catch it.

"What do you do?" he asked.

My all time biggest pet peeve question a person can ask, and he wasted no time getting to it.

"Nothing," I replied.

"Nothing? That’s good," he said, then went on to tell me about how he developed an internet blabbidy blah web based thing-a-ma-bob, with his college roommate.

I might’ve been impressed if I knew what the hell he was talking about.

"I ain’t never been much fer book lernin’" I said. "I just blog."

Night time. Sometimes I don’t know what to say. Day time. It takes approximately one hour for me to get up and get to work. Sometimes when I get there I go bananas with the dangerously easy-to-use coffee/espresso/cappuccino machine and drink two coffees and six espressos. Why? Because it was there. My legs bounce like jack hammers under the desk as I work and sort of sweat and sort of just radiate because I’m a coffee achiever! YOWZA! I CAN MAKE THE WORLD EXPLODE WITH MY MIND!!! I work close enough to Sharon’s workplace that I'm able to eat lunch with her practically everyday. It's a much-needed break from the harsh deadlines and assistant interfering that ensues throughout the rest of my day. I wouldn’t know what I’d do without the moments time.

Notes to self: like a rat in the wall knawing on cardboard for its nest.

A little over a year from today I had started writing about a man who lives in two spaces of thought, neither of which is known to be true. Each is an escape from the other. Once is increasingly mundane, and one is increasingly violent. A little Jekyll and Hyde like, but it is not his personality that changes, it is his environment. All of it sort of happens in front of the laundry, so say.

Stuck from the onset with questions of which point-of-view I should use, and stalled for hours on the very first sentence, I spat out four different beginnings with three different men. I knew that I needed an end before I had the right beginning. That's how I always write short stories: knowing the ending, it's a matter of getting to it fast and decisively. But I have a feeling it's different with novels, where speed isn't essential and often detrimental. I've never had the patience for description and detail, same goes with developing my age old idea of creating a comic book. I mean look at the thought of it, day after day, night after night of carpal tunnel madness. I think of mood setting as being in the order of the words, not in the insertion of adjectives. Just a whole lot of pain. Do I write like I read? Well, when I read, I impatiently skip over anything that threatens to pull into "...and beyond the central square, above the rows upon rows of right-angled structures occasionally punctuated by a lone steeple, one with the knowledge of its existence could imagine that he could make out the outline of the mountain, but even with this knowledge, the purple line of haze could be attributed to a thin cloud. A visitor without the knowledge of the mountain could not imagine it, and would not even be able to instinctively feel its presence..." I read that, and it just sounds like "blah, blah" in my head. I disliked writing it as much as I dislike reading it. Maybe the blah blah was the whole point. If I ever make a novel, it will be two pages long because I don't know how to read or write.

I have now scanned the first page of mostly every book in my collection, which is a stupid thing to do. Sharon says I need an outline. I wince. I just need a beginning, that's all. We are both right.

I’m excited enough by my birth to plan a future. I am sorry, but I am becoming less and less aware of the audience. This I say, but like all my passions, and directives, and codes to live by, it will be im-profoundly short-lived.