making an example

I spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon meticulously grinding BBQ potato chips into dust with a mortar and pestle. Thirty-four bags of chips yielded a lot of red dust to work with.

I covered the front steps with a large, 10′x10′ orange tarp, and hooked the brass mailbox up to 50,000 volts of live electricity. When the mailman did his rounds, the shock box dropped him without a fuss.

I dragged him on the tarp to the end of my driveway, positioned him like Da Vinci’s vitruvian man, and dumped the entire quantity of finely ground BBQ dust on his face. It formed an anthill-like structure two feet high off the ground, and the dust washed into every orifice of his head. I think I stood over him for a good twenty minutes in rapturous self-admiration.

Regarding this event, there can be little doubt or debate: if and when he ever comes to, he will be the thirstiest, most uncomfortable motherfucker EVER.

Let this be a lesson to all of you.

~ Driz

take yourself

I fell asleep last night reflecting on an amazing feeling I once had, and have never been able to reproduce. I did improv drama and comedy on a competitive team, years back, and at one point, I found myself, nerves shot to shit, performing centre stage of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. On par with the Royal Alexandria in Toronto, it’s sort of like the Broadway of Canada, but not nearly as well known.

The interesting thing about improv is it’s an endurance race in prestidigitation. Everything is fluid, the script, the motions, the characters, and the approval of the audience. Unlike a play or production, they have no patience for misunderstandings or dead jokes. They have no reason for faith - you must consistently impress, every time, every second. You trip up and the fanfare passes to an opponent.

The beautiful thing about the whole ordeal is, if you’re able to wield and control that chaotic energy and mayhem, and cast it about the auditorium like cloths in a wind, a most amazing catastrophe transpires.

It’s rhythmic, but what isn’t? It’s pregnant and charged with momentum, rocking and swaying. You build on a joke and a pun and a gesture, the audience climaxes at the punchline. The energy goes back and forth, with the actor juggling not chainsaws or apples, but emotions and attentions.

It feels like that great image of the two wizards battling, their spells clashing together, the energy sparking off in all directions as the pressure of colliding wills staggers back and forth. It’s the audience’s expectations versus the wildly overinflated self-confidence and unrestraint channeled by the actor.

And so dishonest it is, this armour of the actor; the fool! But for all his lies and unjustified self-image, his unwarranted confidence, his undeserved attention, he needs every scrap of his delusional god-complex to pull off this glorious illusion.

To pull that off, you cannot be alone. You invent and dream up invisible props, you rewrite reality. Everyone becomes a gag man and stand-in. Memory and story and perception become blurred together, everything is useful, channeled and connected.

And every time these two forces come together (the outrageous fool on stage juggling about and the outrageous demands of the audience), clashing and pushing against each other, the fool must land a blow and strike a point, forcing the audience into bursts of childlike laughter.

And the grapple and struggle begins again straight away, on and on until the actor dies, and in his place remains just a man, just a nobody; the same guy who walked out from behind the curtain, and the same guy who quietly shuffles the fuck off the stage.

So what’s my point? I don’t really know, since I’m not comparing this imagery to anything. I guess it’s just so sweet to reflect on, that moment, that evening.

I quit improv after that performance/competition, and haven’t done it again since. We won. I think it takes a certain amount of innocence, or maybe naivete, to fit that job and honestly bear the weight of such greasy and unshakable assuredness of self. You have to take yourself more seriously than anything else in the world, to fill those shoes. You have to take yourself, period.

I can’t even take myself seriously when ordering pizza anymore.

~ Driz

petals and thorns

I’ve typed this quote out a few times now, sharing it while commenting on other blogs, but it’s all I can think about tonight, so I’ll repost it here.

“What is the price of love? T.S. Eliot says, “Costing no less than everything.” So one of the things you begin to see is, what gets sacrificed in love IS love…

You think you’re bringing a lot of sacrifices to it, but the sacrifice (really) demanded, the ultimate sacrifice, is the sacrifice of love itself. All your notions of love - that’s what’s given up. YOUR idea of love, what you’ve thought of love, what you expect from love, what you cling to as love - this is what you give up.

In that sense the real lovers, to my mind, are the burned out lovers.” — Hillman

But in that sense, the real lovers are just waiting for death, their time and their hearts heavy with burden and buckling under the weight. I say that I lift and I live my burden, and do it gladly, but gladly is the wrong word tonight.

Stupidly, with manic and hoarse laughter, is a better depiction.

I really have sacrificed my idea of love, somewhere and everyplace along this road, and it’s the memories of that rape that torment me. Blue eyes or green, or brown… black hair and soft skin, full lips, and always empty hearts, always.

I look down at my once-soft hands, now shredded with thorn pricks. I used to be so gentle.

A rose picked is a flower doomed to wilt, but time’s cruel mercy is to delay that death just long enough for it to be loved before it is lost.

Suppose truth be a woman, eh Nietzsche? Truth could only hope to become so cold, so wreathed in practical petals.

~ Driz

papercuts

You thief of trinkets and time; stop robbing me of what I’d love to give.

Commit a crime worth considering!  Steal my kiss instead.

~ Driz

so what

My desk is a mess.  I’ve got pens and papers and post-its strewn all over the surface and stuck to the wall to my right.  Pages and pages of scribblings.  My great sacrifice, my ‘work’, my unholy waste.

Stupid theories and half-wit wastes of time, all of it.  I’m looking over this shelf full of thick, disgusting books, each one jammed with bookmarks, their pages soaked with ink and highlighter colours that don’t belong.  A feminist manual on family counseling.  A textbook on adult psychopathology.  Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics.  A pseudo-religious activist textbook against human cloning.  A book on poetic and experiential psychotherapy.  It goes on and on, this parade of misfit books, this fulsome collection.  How many trees were pulped in the interest of my alarmingly esoteric and incomprehensible exercises?

When you write something, you’re supposed to ask, “So what?”  Why on earth should you, a reader (or, better, the reader) care that only on my very best of days can I take myself and my self serious enough to make any progress?  Why should you ever listen at all?

Who the fuck am I to change this world, to think that I can, to think that I should?  These are the questions put to me so often they’ve become a raindrops, no one different from the next, just steadily beating and beading down upon me, saturating me with doubt.

People talk of this problem of evil, I read it again and again.  Why would a benevolent god allow such suffering and evil?  There can’t be a god, at least not as we suggest there is, if this sort of depravity continues.

But look at me, this young god; this bleeding heart!  My problem is god’s problem, or perhaps I’ve phrased it backwards…  but where to take action, and how?  In what way will such action, such interference remain ethical?  The problem of evil cannot be the problem of god, as we’ve made this declaration, incorrectly, short-sightedly, again and again in classical text.

The problem of evil is just the problem of man - is he worth saving, if he cannot even survive the damage he does to himself?  Does his potential justify his moment to moment failure to explore it?  He’s so self-destructive, offbeat, out of synch, out of touch…  and all by his own doing!  By the very nature of his always, ever so often asking, “So what?” - man becomes unworthy: prideful man, egotistical man who needs justification for everything, fearful as always, of everything; fearful more than anything of living his life.

We’ve taught the benevolent god to ask, “So what?” of mankind’s intolerable and ceaseless racket.  And we’ve yet to come up with a persuasive answer.  We haven’t even come close.  I’m trying to take action where a good, benevolent god should not, which makes said action, intention, and struggle towards, effectively, evil.

But that which is done out of love exists beyond good and evil.  And love belongs to man alone - love is, to us, what we may very well be, to god.

God may be good; indeed, the very best.  But god does not love like I do.

~ Driz

i hate the black man

Racism is hilarious. Often, in chit-chat with store clerks and telemarketers, I find myself injecting out of place racial slurs just to watch their horrified reactions. They stare at me like I just loudly shit my pants.

Truth be told, discriminating against retards is really funny too. I keep at least 2 gigs of high-res action shots of special olympians in brow-furled glory to browse through when I’m feeling glum.

Or have you ever tried just full-blown, out of the blue, pointing and laughing at a woman when she’s hysterical or PMSing? It makes your day, right then and there.

But these things are funny because they’re so absurd. If you expose yourself to something totally senseless, poorly conceived, useless beyond hope, and so self-destructive, it boggles the mind and you’re almost forced to laugh - it’s like high-brow slapstick.

Being a victim of discrimination is awful. It’s very serious, for the individual(s) involved, and sometimes exposure to huge quantities of this sort of abuse can be formative and evolve our perspective, turning us into squabbling, bestial, pack animals when cornered. Eventually you take enough of the same type of abuse and it becomes an enormous psychological burden, an enormous memory that gets dragged up every time it happens again. To defeat that pain, to end it, we mob up with fellow victims, and protest, and fight for our rights, and stand up for ourselves.

Amen, I say. Fuck dem niggas.

But here’s the thing, and I’ve come back to this enough times that I’m proud to be a hater - I’m sick of you parents. Just about damn near all of you. And your arrogant, outlandish ignorance and delusional hubris that prevents you from being worthy of the love and trust your kids put in you. Because unlike the victims of every one of those causes, those personal abuses, those individual violations - your life is no longer just your own. You have kids that look to you for guidance and answers, and you’re WAY too content. You can always be better. You can always improve. And you have the biggest possible reason to always be the ‘bigger person’ when it comes to ignorant discrimination or partisan argument.

I’m reading a single mom blog, (which I know is a bad idea, but I started reading it because at the time I just could not understand their position, and I am trying, vaguely, to practice what I preach and thus attempt to understand this culture of single parent blogging…) and it’s basically just an endless stream of:

“Being a single mom fucking rocks! I’m the best parent in the fucking world! Everything I do is right for my kid, because somehow, my buying his hot pockets and underwear makes me an expert on parenting. My ex is a fucking TOOL, just like everyone’s ex is a tool, but mine is worse. And I want to celebrate how I fucking rule by only ever listening to other SINGLE FUCKING PARENTS! That way, everything I fucking say will be validated, and in turn, I’ll validate everyone else! We could wish away gravity and global warming as well, if only we got enough single moms behind the cause!”

And I’m fed up. This shit is on par with soccer hooliganism, or gang initiations; you’re automatically cool and validated by doing what everyone else is doing. It’s the most irresponsible shit ever, and parents are the one demographic that I demand most of all must learn to handle responsibility! We live in the most complicated, diverse, multicultural, hypocritical society that this world has ever seen, by far! It’s only getting more complex and confusing every year.

I get that being a single parent is a lot like being a star pitcher, goalie, quarterback. Everything is riding on you, nobody’s there to help, you are the whole team. It’s almost impossible to do a good job in that high-pressure situation unless you bollocks it up, and fire yourself up, and headbutt a wall, and attack the thing with confidence, so you can teach your child about being tough and confident too. You gotta step onto the field every time like you’re the best goddamn parent that’s ever parented, and you know best for your kid. But FUCK, you still should show up for practice, and try to improve; you prima donnas, you pretenders!

And I get that the people that hate on the single parents, the happily married couples, don’t get them at all. They can’t imagine having to step up like that and take on that role that very few people ask for. They’re just a skater, another part of the team, another wheel in the cog. They don’t understand the ritual, and the process that goes into forming these people, so they get fed up watching the single parents try to tell them that they are just as good. In their mind, they did everything right - how on earth could someone, who obviously isn’t walking the same path, be just as far along as them, if they did everything right!? In the end, it has to do with protecting confidence, preserving it, keeping it safe and supported.

But really, we have enough type-A, ignorant fucks in this world. There is more you need to teach your kid than how to put their heads down and charge. Call me soft, but I find a lot more strength in tolerance, more defense in understanding moral and emotional relativity, and empathy. These are the skills a child needs to be able to maintain a sense of identity in an intellectually bombarding world, not bullheaded arrogance and contempt for their critics.

And these are the skills that the parents of today are lacking. Damn you all, every last close-minded one of you. You’re the best chance we have to improve this world, the brightest hope to bring value and colour back into the fray, and you’re dropping the ball because you can’t look in the mirror or shut up and listen for even the briefest of moments.

You honest to god bring me to tears, and I’m not joking this time. It’s not funny, it’s never funny when you’re in the moment - like anything we laugh about after the fact.

Tonight, and tomorrow: you bring me to fucking tears.

~ Driz

egomania

Following in the steps of Bookcrazy (see blogroll), I submitted my blog for review to Ask and Ye Shall Receive, a blog review site with the very best URL a blog might ever have, and some vicious and altogether excellent reviewers on their panel.

I found this site when I mistakenly kicked in their front door and picked a fight. I’m still laughing about it, telling it to people I see, nobody gets the joke at all… I think there’s something resembling nobility to be found in going to bat for a friend, which is what I thought I was doing.

It was more like Bookcrazy paid some hooker to spank his ass with a kayak oar, and I tackled the bitch mid-swing.

Bless the crew of Ask, mind you, they were actually disappointed in me for not correctly picking a fight.  What the fuck does that make me, a troll poser?

Since then, I started reading their reviews, and have been enjoying it quite a bit. I think they are trying to do with the blogosphere what I’m trying to do with… something. In both cases, there is harshness, elbow grease, time spent, and an end result that smells lemon fresh.

$20 says I’m too fuckin wordy. I’m okay with that. I think the main reason I want to submit the blog is I want to gauge how my writing is received by them. I aim to be poetic, but I know that by many a standard, that automatically means pretentious. Or hell, maybe I’m not even poetic, maybe my egomaniacal haze has completely diluted my reality.

I guess we’ll see. I’ll link their review when it’s up.

~ Driz

catastrophe

For a while, a while ago, I was with a woman who told me she wrote her poetry beginning with the last line. She’d decide on a decidedly delicious rhyme or phrasing, and build this house of cards around it, not supporting it, but leading to it - rather than plant her idea in a garden, she set in in a pot and then built a fancy walkway to it.

When I read her poems, I could never escape this feeling that with her, there will always be this static and decided upon feature of Julie-always-in-context. I’m usually loathe to suggest a certain persuasion defines a person, because most persuasions are based on lies, but this was honest, this was how she wanted things. We had really intense chemistry, but I couldn’t love her for this reason.

When the goal or motivation is communication or expression, it feels almost criminal to reduce our mediums to framework and finality like she did with her poetry. There’s something to be said for art borne in the name of beauty alone, but when you’re grappling with your experience and trying to express it, that process (when you genuinely have something unique and exquisite to express) will always be painful and exhausting.

There’s no room for that kind of accessorizing. A starving man is blind to his food’s presentation and his lover always looks lovely. Find this urgency, always - always!

Nine times out of ten I’m shocked if I get my breath back after exhaling. I marvel that I even wake up from those few fitful hours of sleep I get - there’s a presence about my life that efficiently persuades me that this process, this grind of life is over for me, that I’m living on bonus time.

What wouldn’t amaze me is if I faded right away, just disappeared one night. Phased right out of synch and finally bring my body up to speed with my life. Driz in context is a catastrophe - I can’t err on the edge of safe.

How can someone start with the end? I’ve been at the start, and I’m way past the end. And yet my lungs still fill, and I can’t explain it at all. After a certain point it all gets reduced to moments, little risks of the body, big risks of the heart.

Which is worth more - the potent and poetic roar, or the unheard echo of it’s resonance in another?

~ Driz

* * * * *

(An afterthought, for I thought it after:

As I go to tag this post, I found myself writing, “Love, and love, and love again.” There’s sixty-five buttons on this ‘Write Post’ page, and not one of them let me tag this post correctly. This is my precise problem with life, in a very axiomatic and essential way.)

we and I agree with we

Thoughts of the day for April 16th.

I’m too serious.

No I’m not.

I’m crazy.

No, I’m not.

My taste in music sucks.

No, it doesn’t.

I’m too focused on myself.

Not really.

Even if I am, it’s not a bad thing.

Yes it is.

This is frustrating to type out, when I phrase it like this.

Finally, we agree.

But I don’t want complacency with the problem, I should be trying to disagree. Why else are we talking?

No, you like it. Shut up and enjoy it.

Fuck you.

No, fuck you.

* * * * *

My penguins won their series 4-0, sweeping the first round of the playoffs and advancing. I think we’ll be the only team to sweep the first round. There’s a sense of dissatisfaction within me about the whole ordeal; it felt like watching a lion run down a gazelle.

Every time I see a situation like that, I find myself siding with the gazelle. Maybe that’s why victory of any sort always seems so hollow. In a stupid way I’m concerned my team will get so good I won’t be able to cheer for them with any honesty.

I fell in love with the penguins for their heroics, their history, their struggle. Now it looks like they bully the other team for 60 minutes.

Am I the only person who achieves greatness with a thing and then views the whole mess as a sort of gamble, a sort of heroic story, where despite competing as best I can… I root for the other team when I become assured of victory?

I’ll only raise a hand to help myself when I’m uncertain of the outcome, if I’m uncertain if I’ll win. And the minute I become convinced, I’m miserable.

I want to lose. I want to lose it all, I suppose. There’s a real element in me that just wants to burn this motherfucker down, that wants to get beaten and destroyed and humiliated. Give me Achilles. Give me the impossible. Give me the lie, the false champion, and I’ll give you truth.

Everything seems possible, and that’s a despairing prospect.

*sigh* I don’t know.

Yes you do, liar.

Fuck off, I do not.

Yes, you do, you poser, you pretender.

Enough!

* * * * *

* * * * *

You’re pathetic.

You don’t understand me. You’d just as well shame a boat for failing to escape the water.

You’re pathetic.

Are you listening? I’m not! You have no good reason to say that!

You’re still pathetic.

Amazing how if you repeat that enough it feels true.

Yup. It’s remarkably pathetic.

* * * * *

I took a shot and I think I missed. But like any noble shot, I aimed for something I wasn’t meant to see, wasn’t meant to aim for, something I wasn’t designed for. I think I’m still sitting here, trying to figure out what it feels like to miss, because it hasn’t hit me yet.

I tried to use paper to beat scissors. I think paper should trump everything.

I’m just so tired. This post is trash.

~ Driz

essentially effective

I haven’t found one hour of sleep this weekend. I forgot what insomnia felt like, so detached and removed from the moments you’re having. Everywhere you go you feel like you’re wandering, ever step you take is suspect and unconvincing.

I was kind, I think, to some people on the bus, as I rode to and fro. They feel like dreams, so when I got a good impression from them, I told them so. Maybe I made a few people’s days. Maybe I scared them.

* * *

I have one person in my life that I can trust in and believe in without skepticism. I rarely talk to her; I can’t take away from her truth in any form but bits and pieces, for fear that any curious and indulgent misstep might wreck that spirit and manner of ways with which she brings truth to me at all. Like the phoenix, I suppose; I can’t bear to waste a second of her at all.

I asked her, essentially:

‘Is it alright to just fucking love anymore? Does it have to make sense, does it have to be legal, does it have to conform to these oppressive rules of causality? Can I not just fucking let myself be thrown and fall anymore - do I have to climb down with poise and caution? And most of all - what if I can’t? If I must be nailed into a prepackaged system of affection, how could I ever love again? The way that I love you - that way that I love, that I must love?’

She told me, effectively, ‘When you love the way you love, you can love any way you want.’

* * *

I want to argue her and debate, I want to refute that and demand her to demand me to make sense. But she won’t do that, she doesn’t enable me like that. She’s probably right anyways, I trust her judgment more than my own when it comes to matters of me. There is chocolate, and there is chocolate. I adore that she remembers my taste, despite my frustrating penchant for switching my colour, my wrapper, and my name.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, just as, I suppose, I’ll always taste like me. I love being corrected by such gentle hands. But, put just as well, I could say simply… “I love.”

~ Driz