every last second (except this one)

I find myself smack-dab kerplunk in the middle of an insanely packed first aid course. They take six weeks of material and jimmy it down into two. I wake up at six and study for an hour. After that it's forty-five minutes of chores, a half hour to get ready, and a half hour travel time. After nine and a half hours of class time I drive home, eat dinner, attend to a few minor whatsimahootsits, do three hours of homework and then go to sleep. My few free moments I spend hoping, praying and worrying that I'll pass. Those are the facts of my life, and I have nothing wise or witty to say about it.

notes

It is six forty-five in the eh em and I'm peering between a crack in the curtains, watching a hawk as she sits in an old funked Oak waiting for me to come let the chickens out. That is, if you can call a couple of old mis-matched bedsheets "curtains". The curtains are part of the folly of the perpetually migrant. You think about fixing a place up for about two seconds and then you shrug and walk the other way. Plants are often a good compromise. They don't cost a lot or require a lot of loading time for the amout of atmosphere they exude. Our cat, however, has ruled that out by eating the one plant that survived our sojourn in Peru.

If you're the sort of person who thinks in a linear fashion (point A leads to point B leads to point C leads to point D leads to point Et Cetera) you may be wondering where I'm going with this. Truth is, I watched the Martin Scorsese Bob Dylan Biopic last night. It turned me into a rambler and I'm gamblin' you don't care. I guess that's not fair. I guess you deserve some credit for wheelin' free with me just to see where I might go. So here is where - I've been writing songs. This is funny (go ahead, chortle), because I do not play any instruments. At all. I whined and shreiked and complained and got myself out of piano to my everlasting shame and musical ignorance.

Given enough poo to shovel, however, the mind is bound to want to make a song out of it. It is a proven mathematical formula: poo plus shovel equals music. So every morning out in the barn I sing away and when the spirit leads I toodle out some lyrics to some probably-derivative melody I've got clanging between my ears. When the poo has gone from the ground to the barrow to the pile, I go inside and sit at this laptop and turn on my Windows Sound Recorder and let her rip, a capella. Would you like me to play you a bit? Tough luck, you silly nit. This is a web journal, not internet radio. It's all about the words.

You think I'm just saying that because I am justifiably embarrassed. Here's the juicer, though. I played one of my little clips for a buddy of mine who is in point of fiction probably something closely approximating a musical genius and he said and I quote, "I like it. It has a nice melody. But what ever prompted you to write an ancient traditional Irish Ballad?" Hah! Eat that, you doubting mustaphah. I'm the musical king of the world! Wolfgang Amadeus Barkey please and thank you, and leave your hat at the door.

Oh, that? You want to know, too? Well, I don't have any idea. The poo speaks, I listen. The poo happened to speak of misty green hummocks, and Ireland just herniated its way through my cranial walls. That's the way it happens some times in the eh em, so stop straining to get it all pegged. It's your lucky day, however, because I'm inclined this minute (seven-ten in the mornin' on March eighteenth) to give you the words to my Irish ballad. If you play the fiddle and it catches your fancy, drop me a line sometime and we'll create a masterpiece of celtic nostalgia. Or turn it into a punk-rock scream-fest and email me the results. It'll be a real hoot.

Leonard

When Leonard Met a girl he was only twenty-one
livin' on the run from growin' old.
//She was seventeen and the sweetest he had seen
with a tongue of silver tellin' lies of gold.//

refrain:
He never meant to play her game
and he never meant to win.
He only meant to stay a while,
which is how it always begins.

She led him through the doors
of an ancient, battered church
where the organ played a dirge to youthful joys.
//And the choir singing low was a group of younger men
who were only barely more than little boys.//

refrain:
He never meant to play her game
and he never meant to win.
He only meant to stay a while,
which is how it always begins.

They danced between the pews
and they frolicked all the while
in the glimmer of the candles' golden flame.
Leonard never saw they were workin' up the aisle
which had always been his lover's single aim.

refrain:
He never meant to play her game
and he never meant to win.
He only meant to stay a while,
//which is how it always begins.//

how I came to hate the third "R"

My hate affair with mathematics began the first day I stepped into Miss Fowler's first grade classroom. She was short and shrivelled and had eyes that bored holes as she tried to write mathematical equations on my soul. She noticed pretty quickly that I didn't "get" arithmetic (like Einstein, right?) and wasn't content to just let it ride. I was her own personal math problem, and she was going to solve me.

One day, she kept me at my desk after school to try to "help" me get it. "Seven plus seven, Josh," she demanded, "do it again!"

"Twelve?" I offered, this time less confident.

"NO", she said, her fingers starting to worry the beehive of white hair on her head, frizzing it higher and higher as her eyes started to bulge.

"Okay, try this. I have seven apples. Then Jeremy comes over to me with seven more. How many do I have now?"

"None", I said, this time sure of myself.

"What?!?" she asked.

"We don't have apples in the jungle, Miss Fowler, and if we did I wouldn't have any because Jeremy would take them all. He's bigger than me and one time in preschool he pulled my pants down in line and everybody laughed."

She slapped a sheet of problems on my desk. "Add and subtract", she quavered, "Do it until you get them right."

So I did them, and did them again. I sniffled and did them until the sun was going down and my mom called looking for me. I pedalled my bike away from those problems and didn't looked back as Miss Fowler slumped at her desk, shoulder's shaking.

This, however, was only the beginning. In fifth grade it was discovered that I was still a numerical idiot. I was given a companion in torture, Matt Simmons, who came along for moral support as I was forced to trudge to the fourth grade teacher for water torture. While the fifth graders did fifth grade math stuff, Matt and I spent quality time with Miss Rose, who'd probably spent some time in the KGB's interrogation division.

Outside her classroom was a rusty old tap that spewed rusty old water. Every math day, Miss Rose would make us fill a HUGE cup with rusty water. Then one of us had to recite a multiplication table while the other drank the water. We did this over and over and over. The theory, I guess, was that fear of drowning is a primal human instinct, and therefore a marvelous teaching tool.

Moderate distaste had by then given way to seething hatred, so sixth grade was a relief. The first half of sixth grade I went to a Canadian public school where they taught first grade addition and subtraction, which by then I had mastered. The second half I was at an American private school where they taught pre-algebra, so the teacher told me to sit at the back and leaf through the textbook until I found something I didn't know, then do it. I got a lot of drawing done.

This all left me utterly hopeless for Mr. Barker back in Peru, who taught eighth grade algebra and hated every bit of it. As official algebraic class retard, I generally got the focal point of the lazer beam, except when I didn't.

Fortunately my dad was principal of the school. He pulled some levers and my own little hell was over. I haven't done a lick of formal math since. You say that's wrong and I should be ashamed of myself but you know what I think? I think you're jealous.

---

Oh, by the way: starting on March Fifteenth at 7p.m. I'll have some paintings hanging at the "Bean Around the World" coffee shop on 19th and Main in Vancouver, BC. If you want to see them, there is where you should be, drinking caffeine.

yum yum, eat 'em up

Well… since you asked, I think I can say with the uttermost confidence that a crunchy peanut butter, banana and honey sandwich on some kind of grainy bread is just about the world’s perfect food. Now, don’t go getting all uppity on me before I’ve had a chance to explain. Here’s why:

First, the crunchy peanut butter. Peanut butter is really filling and full of all sorts of very small good things that make your body boingy. The crunch is important because it will remind you that peanut butter actually comes from peanuts. This will remind you of goober peas, which will remind you of George Washington Carver, who did a lot of research into the bazillions of uses of peanuts (toothpaste, anyone?), started a good university for blacks, and did a whole lot to bring more equality to America. This in turn will get you thinking about how pride leads to racism, which ruins lives.

Second, the honey. Never, ever forget the honey. Honey has seven essential vitamins. It is also the only foodstuff that, if stored properly, will never go bad. They’ve found honey in the pyramids that was still good to eat. Eating this nectar of the gods will place you historically, allowing you to see yourself as a very small part of something much, much bigger.

Third, bananas. Bananas are great, but I have to tell you that before you die you need to go somewhere warm and pick a banana right off the tree and eat it. There is just no comparison in flavor and texture between a tree-ripened banana and one that’s been picked green, frozen, shipped, thawed, and ripened on a shelf. Bananas need to be on your sandwich because they’ve got potassium which is super-duper for dissipating the lactic acid which builds up in your muscles when you’re leading an active, physical lifestyle (Get out there! Do stuff!). Also, bananas could get you thinking about the third world from whence they come, where people work in awful conditions so that Chiquita can make a bundle and you can buy a hand of bananas for around a buck.

Finally, bread. Bread is what it is, man. Bread is life. When bread is made like it’s supposed to be it is good old, down-home, ma and pa and the farm type of stuff. Bread is about soul, family and love. Bread is about walking in the door after a hard day’s work and smelling a house full of inviting scents, begging to be eaten.

Then, when you’re done with your thoughtful sandwich, chase it down with a glass of cold orange juice. Mostly because I like orange juice. Also, though, because Gandhi spent a long time on a diet of fruit and nuts, and maybe as you drink it you’ll be filled with the energy oranges provide and you will begin to believe you really can make a difference.

What? You think I’m crazy? Well, you’re crazy. So there.

crybaby

When I was four, Jeremy Swift pulled my shorts down and stole my place in line for the water tap. I cried like a baby, which I was not.

When I was thirteen I was riding home from the school ditch day in the back of a truck with a few of my peers. I'm not sure whether someone had said something unusually cruel or whether the raging hormones of pubescence had gotten the better of me, but there I was, banging my head on the metal side of the box welded into place over the bed of the truck - Dong! Dong! Dong! Richard Smith, resident high school tough guy, told me to cut it out or he'd tear my arm off and beat me with it. I turtled and cried like a baby, which I was not.

When I was playing pick-up soccer one day on campus at University, I told a rugby player named Luke he should calm down since it was just a game. He called me a "fag". At long last, I didn't cry like a baby. I had finally learned that mom was right - that people usually said mean, unjustified things to other people because there was some sort of inner pain they didn't know how to deal with appropriately. Later, Luke sought me out at an art show to ask about a piece of mine and we had a good little chat.

So a few days ago when somebody responded to my journal entry about the suit with the comment, "You don't get it QUIT FUCKING COMPLAINING", I didn't break down. I'm still a sensitive guy so it still hurt, but the lingering effect was one of bewilderment. This is the third comment this person's left, and they've gotten progressively more poisonous.

What can I say, my angry pen pal? If you don't leave your email, I can't respond. If I can't respond, I feel like I've ignored an opportunity to set something right, which I hate.

You see, in sixth grade I was the new kid in an elementary school in Calgary, Alberta. I was short and shy and my nickname was "Morris" because I wore a "Morris the Cat" shirt the first day of school. Early in the year I got a hall pass to go to the bathroom and on the way back I saw a small girl who couldn't get her classroom door to open, though she was pushing with all her might. I could have helped her, but I just kept on walking. I have no idea why, but it's haunted me to this day.

When you wrote that email, you probably were "just joking". From my standpoint, though, that's all of you I know - anger. For all I can tell, you've got plans to fire-bomb my cat. While the cat is a pain sometimes, Anya would be crushed if you did so.

So why don't you just put down your sword and tell me what's really up?