twilight city.

you’ll never get what you want in life unless you take it.

—

on a completely unrelated note, i think i’m in love with gordon price (of price tags) just a little bit more.

i read once that human beings are the only creatures on earth that will repeatedly continue to do something that always results in an unpleasant outcome.

i think that the odds of this statement being true are fairly high.

i should really just learn my lesson and keep to myself.

i was digging through my papers tonight, and came across this bit of a story.

it tells me that i can be too hard on myself, although it can’t persuade me that such is true in times like these.

i don’t know when i wrote this, but it was probably in early september, right after dave dumped me on vacation.

—

ever since i was a kid, i’ve noticed how social relations work in function of friendships, relationships, partnerships, etcetera. heavy power sometimes, especially since this ability was not gifted to me alongside that of emulation. i’ve therefore oft felt myself on teh outside of most social situations, as a guest, welcome (surely), but a guest still. i don’t know why i’ve not been able to overcome this struggle of mine. maybe it has to do with fear. fear and lack of want.

i may come across as modest and self-deprecating at times. ironic, since i’m actually hugely narcissistic and conceited. i prefer to be with myself, deep in my thoughts. ’cause my thoughts never betray me, much as one parent’s love proved to do. i will never be a parent - i could never bring myself to risk raising a child in the manner in which i was raised. or razed. my spirit never broke, no. it was just given a shell.

i remember very clearly my mother’s discipline. she would lecture me for hours on hours over nothing. [one time, i remember awaking to a four-hour castroesque lecture, as if i had transgressed her law in my sleep.] she would project her skewed vision of the world on me. i hated her doing this. she thought she had an evil son, dark as tar.

my brother, who is certainly a sweet person, was also very simple-minded growing up. he did not question authority. not at all. like the worst of the kapo, he collaborated with the enemy in exchange for pittances. life was like democracy under apartheid.

i hate that cunt of a woman with all my soul. i hate her beyond anything comprehensible. i’d like to see her tied up to a chair one day so that i could give her a nice solid slap across the cheek and spit blood in her face. what a wretch of a woman. i don’t even feel pity for her, only hatred. virgin rage. i hate her for stealing my childhood from me. i hate her for turning me into the victim that i am. i hate her for showing me precisely how life shouldn’t be.

this is why i’m so messy around dave. although i like him immensely, i am nothing next to him. absolutely zero. i have nothing to offer him. thanks to maman. i have no skills. i have no courage. i have grown up completely dependent on family money. and dave, this is why i admire him: he grew up with very little in terms of money, but he is so far ahead of in the game compared to me that i can’t help but be depressed when i think of him. dad’s money is poisoning me, his love is poisoning me. poor little rich kid? perhaps. but you’re not in my shoes.

i can’t even write properly. i’ve even had that stolen.

i ought to fall off the pont neuf today although it would make people awfully distraught, my problems would largely be over.

//

i did not fall off the pont neuf today. i strangely feel better. a miracle what a pint of beer and a cigarette can do.

i can’t sleep.

sometimes, i look back at my past relationships, all of which can be categorized in one of two categories: mild, pleasant and short or intense, tragic and shorter yet. while i don’t knock the few ones in the first category at all, it’s the ones in the second category that get me thinking.

mostly, they get me wondering why i even bother trying, why i even bother considering that i have a hope in this game called “romance”.

problem is that there’s a gent on my mind. he’s been there for quite a time. and although there seems to be some evidence that he might be interested in me, he also seems way too good for me. unfortunately, he’s pretty much what i want in a guy…or would want in a guy. (if i were looking for a guy. which, i guess, deep down inside, i am, although i am reluctant to admit it.)

[see "insomnia, part ii."]

i suppose that i’ve been taking camus to heart a bit too much.

—

my new job is pretty good, although i still don’t know what i’m doing there. officially, i’m supposed to re-design a survey relating to the jewish communities in four sub-regions of greater vancouver: richmond/surrey/delta/white rock, burnaby/new westminster/tri-cities, langley/pitt meadows/maple ridge and the north shore. only trouble is that the 2006 census did not ask questions of religion, which makes my job incredibly difficult.

fair enough, perhaps this job wouldn’t exist if statistics canada had done the logical thing and ask the question in 2006, but still. i have no idea how to find this variable and feed it into all the other variables to come up with a picture of the community. furthermore,

luckily, i have a plan, and tomorrow, it will start to come to fruition.

but that’s not what’s keeping me up.

i should never listen to the radio; it reminds me of how old i am:

1. the song “steal my sunshine,” released in 1999 by the critically- and commercially-acclaimed band len, is played on a soft rock station.
2. the song “otherside” by the red hot chili peppers, released at roughly the same time, is played immediately afterwards on the same station.

what got me thinking is not really about how old i was (15) or what i was doing at the time (finishing up grade 10 and trying to survive mum’s constant fits of rage) that these two songs were released, nor of the span of time that had passed since then.

rather, it’s at the fact that both of these songs are now considered soft rock; they would have never been played on an adult contemporary station at the time.

of course, as another marker of age, i can only imagine what the adult contemporary stations would have been playing (perhaps “i have nothing” by whitney houston, or “i still believe” by mariah carey, or even “because you loved me” by céline dion). come to think of it, maybe this is why i find the concept of the “vh1 divas” concerts so revolting: it’s a symbol of the music of misery.

i keep going to opus on granville island to replenish the art supplies that i consume.

of course, i stop for a cup of well-made coffee every time i go.

last time, i bought four canvases. y’know. to practice.

i don’t really need as many supplies as i purchase, it would seem.

—

i finally got a job. i’m working for the jewish federation of greater vancouver on a summer project (basically, they want to find out where the invisible jews - like me - are located).

—

a friend’s mother once told me about how his father had courted her. they had met in london at the holborn tube station, and he kept returning to this station in the hopes that he would catch her again.

i thought it such a sweet story. of course, today, this would be considered stalking.

the other day, a guy asked a completely random girl on the bus (that he found attractive) over for a drink and, subsequent to her understandable declining said invitation, to coffee, which she accepted. sincerely, i wished the guy well, although i could feel the rusty pangs of jealousy in my gut over this guy’s courage, his chutzpah.

sometimes, i wonder why those i pine for never pursue me. i figure ’cause they have their eyes elsewhere, their sights set higher. and that’s okay! i can’t ask them anything more.

it’s sad. it really is. not in the greater context, but just for me. maybe i say that i don’t care for marriage ’cause the odds of me finding myself in a position to get married is virtually impossible.

what have we done with ourselves?

i already wrote a 3,500 word paper on this stupid topic, but let me take a more cynical approach to it:

there is probably nothing that makes one feel like a loser more than looking for a job.

at this point, i would like to direct my readers to the link above, entitled “hire me” - my CV can be found therein.

*hint hint*

—

i had a fantastic time on sunday. it was - almost - perfect.

i fear that i might not feel so good for quite a long time to come.

—

i’ve said this before: i’m a good judge of character. also, i tend to be able to read people like books. most people, that is.

observation: most of the time, i find it incredibly hard to read people that i (could) fall for.

canadians (likely much like any other people) are obsessed with national symbols, but only in a rather latent way. much like the opera, they are glad that their icons of nationhood exist, even if they are rarely front-and-centre in any individual’s mindset. when they come under attack, however, people will be up in arms, caught in a surge of nationalism that will lament the death of canadian sovereignty, while at the same time accepting no personal responsibility for any of the thousand cuts that killed the latest cause célèbre.

take, for example, the cbc’s decision to disband the radio orchestra. an attack on canadian culture! pretty soon, we’ll be just like the USA! what about the good ol’ days? this, of course, flies in the face of logic; this is the same people who elected a government that is decidedly committed to neo-liberalism and pulling the welfare state apart; in any case, i fail to see how listening to bach, chopin and mozart is reflective of canadian culture.

thus, we have the hudson’s bay company, quite possibly the largest icon of canadiana not directly controlled by government (and certainly the oldest, predating confederation by nearly 200 years). when it comes to stereotypes, your typical canadian will only shop at one store: the bay. of course, while we’re at it, it’s fair to assume that said canadian will devote 15-20% of their weekly food budget towards maple syrup or it’s derivatives.

but the reality is that the hudson’s bay company is hardly the great establishment that it once was. not to say that one could realistically expect it to still hold the status that it once did, on the level with the legendary dutch east india company. still, it is a huge company with a huge burden (both cultural and financial). so, in a world where the department store is (quickly) going the way of the dinosaur, it survives through sheer willpower, it would seem. unfortunately, it does not come anywhere close to rivaling the galleries lafayette in paris or harrod’s in london; more unfortunately, though, is that it sometimes seems to have difficulty positioning itself as a serious competitor to wal-mart. indeed, walking through the downtown vancouver location on a sunday afternoon, when it should be jam-packed, one could imagine that this is what shopping in the soviet union must have been like.

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