Petals in the Fall

Philip knew exactly where he was, but he never felt like he was there. He set the watering can down, held one of his flowers. It was dying. There was enough sunlight, enough water. It should be doing fine. He thought maybe it was sick.

Kip was acting strange lately. His stories were all unfinished, self-deprecating works. The characters were all miserable. Philip worried about him. He wished they would talk more, or that what he said would be heard.

He wondered if maybe the flower needed to be outside. The weather had not been great this past week, but he brought the flowerpot outside anyway.

The last story Kip wrote was about two men who were deeply in love, but would never be together. Philip asked him, after he’d read it twice, why. It was never explained. The writer stormed off, tearing the pages up in a fury as he went. That was four days earlier, when the weather began to turn.

Inside the house, the telephone rang with importance, and Philip did not hear it.

Outside, the flower wilted.

It would have wilted anywhere.

Me, Myself, and I.

I couldn't sleep last night. So I washed the dishes, took out the trash. Watched a video about talking to police. Read a chapter of I Don't Believe in Atheists. Played several rounds of Word Warp. I did some other stuff, too. Thinking.

First thing this morning, I changed José's air filter and polished her up nice. First impressions are important, after all. I. hadn't been on a motorcycle before today, but it went well. It was an incredible date. Moving slowly is a tremendous feeling.

I bought a French press on Wednesday and it's presently steeping the same thing I drank then. Mate chai. I. picked it out. A beautiful aroma that lingers in your mind and dreams.

This entry will end with a quatrain I wrote two years ago. It's how I feel again today, but much more blissful. Before that, though, here's something I found of myself on Google. It's ancient.

I'm falling with the leaves this season
but it seems that my heart is hardly beating
I have become so brittle, I'm barely breathing
I fall through June and I awaken weakened

Searching for a Former Clarity

Well! Imagine my surprise when one of my good friends from Edmonton sent me a message last week saying that he would fly me back on his Air Miles! Time off from work has been approved, so in less than a month I will be on my way home for a few days to enjoy such great things as Randy's birthday, Moustache Weekend, and Jason and Nicole's new baby! Excitement abound!

And in other excitement, there's something in the air these days, catching my ear, my eye, my attention. Volunteering has never held such reward as this.

Run

I don't post most of my writing on the Internet. My poems exist nowhere - except perhaps some ancient web archives - and I have lyrics to exactly four songs accompanying my videos on YouTube. If this seems odd, then there's something you don't know about me. I'm protective of the work I am most proud of, to a point near paranoid. Honestly, the reason is that I'm worried my work will get jacked by someone more immediately able to use it.

I fully acknowledge this is a ridiculous concern.

At the same time, I doubt if I'll change this habit. Someone asked me today how many songs I've written and the list came to over 20. I really need to find a decent room somewhere in this city to record in. My apartment walls are too thin, its windows too. I just need somewhere quiet with good acoustics, like a bathroom... is that too much to ask?

Anyhow. I'm going to post some lyrics - with paranoid credit - to a song that I performed tonight at open mic. I'm proud of this song, not in the sense that I think it's amazing, but because of how it came about. I was practicing two songs yesterday that shared a common theme, and between them I stumbled onto a decent riff. The lyrics came almost immediately. A day later, I had what I could almost call a final version. Almost. I know better.

So here it is. Don't rip me off. You know who you are, Vedder.

Run
By Michael Lagace

I came down with a hammer head
tales spin, flipped, for a one-side said
grip ground, spin 'round, slip on red
bitter pill, little kill, pleasure/pain meds
but I didn't run

less talk, more talk, same old talk
substance abused so we think we walk
world spins, word spins, heart throb block
now we jump our outlines in hopscotch chalk
but I didn't run

I came down with a sick in bed
slaves row boats, I jump ship instead
sink in water too deep to wade
can't see the wave from an ocean away
but I had to run

From the Bunker on Thursday Morning

I figure that since I'm at home today and yesterday instead of being at work, I may as well be productive. So here I am, Thursday morning, tea and oatmeal by my side, forcing production.

I posted an old bit of writing called The Tic and the Toc in the Clock to one of my many specialized blogs. I hadn't read it over since writing it and the opportunity for revision exposes itself like that woman I saw downtown doing something gross on the sidewalk. That was a simile. Also, on another of my specialized blogs, I wrote about Direct and Indirect Consequences. (Really, something doesn't have to be designed for a purpose that it now fills; if it does it, it does it!) Finally, I added something new to Crime of Life, although I still prefer the one I wrote on vegetarianism. Wow, if I had a dollar for every bit of self-promotion I just did, I'd have... um... four dollars. Follow me on Twitter. There, five dollars.

Often I get notions of what I would do if I ever became suddenly rich. Last night - in a dream, of course - I bought a plot of land somewhere remote in South America, built a completely self-sustaining farm on it, and imported all my best friends. That was where we started our own little community. I woke up before I could really enjoy it, though. You would have liked it.

GARY 2.0

Finally, a marketable product. Just in time for the holidays. New Weave Genetics unveiled its latest version after the press died following the Beta flop. Pun intended.

GARY 2.0.

Although if you went back through the official documents you'd see it was actually GARY 1.9.9. Never completed recommended testing. When this information was eventually discovered, heads rolled. Again, pun intended.

On paper and in commercials, Gentleman Always Ready for You was a great idea. Genetically engineered and laboratory-raised. All the things a woman would want in a guy. Or custom modified for what a guy would want in a guy. There was also research done into a female model, but the brain chemistry was too complex. Kept screwing up but nobody could tell. When GARY Beta was released, there was only one made. He went on a rampage. Killed fourteen people. Seriously.

But New Weave went back to the drawing board. People forgot about the incident, huge cover up. Such short attention spans. Then suddenly GARY is released, version 2.0 everywhere but in the marketing, and eight thousand were sold worldwide. Within a year, each one of them had killed on average six people, including a dozen suicides. And get this, the guy that they based GARY on was killed by mistake.

Anyway. That was about a year ago. People are already starting to forget about it, and that's why I'm blogging about it now. Whatever the news feeds are saying, whatever Wikipedia says, it's not true. Six years ago, this happened. It was real. And if this new product - BETSY - is not stopped by government or by force, there will be more blood on the hands of New Weave Genetics. Pun intended. And literal.

Contact your State Supervisor today!

Release Date: June 13, 2015
Read more about BETSY here.

Endless Search For Conclusion (Or At Least Motive!)

I became unstuck in my Great Big Project, then immediately afterwards became stuck again. I'm really over-thinking this - (REALLY REALLY) - but at the same time, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it right. At this point, I'm still contemplating the nature of existence and considering extending the moral implications of the story to "current events." This is the same type of thing that Alan Moore did with Watchmen; he took an existing problem and created his own based on it. I can do that. I just want to do it right. On Wednesday I went to the library and took out four books on different religious and spiritual beliefs. Somewhere within them I hope to find my own.

Ten Years Later

In just over a month, my ten year high school reunion is going to happen. This post will explain why I am not going and how Facebook partially caused that.

Years ago when I first joined the Facebook Empire, it was a novelty to see former classmates. A click down memory lane. Since then, as the draw of the site increased, I was in contact with more of them, and as communication opened, I found myself answering the same questions over and over again. What are you up to, what have you been doing? I hate these questions. They irritate me because I haven't achieved what I expected from myself, nor am I as close as I would like to be. Imagine trying to sell the mediocrity of my life based on an ambition that has failed me! Truly, I never know what to say.

And there are more reasons yet. I have changed a great deal since then; ideals, beliefs, character. I have been fortunate. Based solely on a few minor - and occasionally unrelated - things, I'm not sure others have. So what then do we have in common except the past? What would we talk about except for a time in my life when I wasn't happy? I don't have any interest in talking about teachers and classes and shenanigans, in seeing women that I used to crush on and men that appear differently.

I don't think I'm better than the people I graduated with, not for a moment. In the last ten years, I've learned that we are all different. That's not a negative thing, but it is a division nonetheless. Where we came from defined us less than how we came from it. I am still in contact with many people from my class, people that I have vibrant relationships with, and those people mean a great deal to me. But nostalgia be damned, my memories are good enough.

Many Muches

Oh my my! As of last night, my friends have left for Edmonton, leaving behind a couple beers and a very tired moi. Sleep deprivation and regular intoxication takes its toll on three guys living in a kitchen together. But seriously. It was a great weekend. Much sun, much much beach, and much much much fun. I even managed to toss the disc despite my healing thumb, injuring it a little further in the process. Progress?

I had a dream last night that I was standing in a crowd of women that all looked like Her. Slowly, the crowd forced me to an edge where I fell a long way into cold water. When I reached the surface, there she was again, standing on the side, hand extended to me. In the dream, she wouldn't acknowledge her part in making me fall; in reality, I'm not quite sure it's any different.

What's-Her-Face

As days push me through this city, What's-Her-Face becomes more and more immemorable. Yesterday on the bus, a woman's features looked so similar that for a moment I was filled with a feeling; two days before that, another woman had hips that made me wonder about a face I could not see. Everywhere, I'm seeing her, her shape changing into a paranoid metamorph of features.

What's-Her-Face contacted me a few days ago. A formality, a letter from my previous insurance company in Alberta sent to an old address. It being now-accidentally-opened, she's unable to put it in the mail to my new address. But questions arise, those of her intentions. Rather than contact me at all, why not put it in another envelope and re-mail it, with whatever apologies are deemed necessary? Why not destroy the letter in its entirety and forget the whole measure? Why send me a message on Facebook, a medium in which she went out of her way to distance herself from me?

The thing about Facebook messages is that following contact with someone, you are able to snoop on them for a month. Now that she sent me a message, I could - and have not, will not - look at her profile. If I were to reply, she could look at mine. It seems so contrary to her constantly calculated habits for this to be accidental; she could have sent me an e-mail more easily.

Anyway. This is all the weight of her that's been on my mind this entire year. I am forgetting and she is forgotten.

Cheers

By the 7-Eleven, there is always someone asking for change. Usually, I am listening to music - or at the very least, have my headphones on - and do not speak to the person. Understand that I do not think giving money to these people is any sort of solution; indeed, without knowing their life story, I see no reason why they can't get a job. I am always skeptical about giving my hard-earned money to support someone's addiction. Usually, I don't give them money, but as I was walking up to the store, I made eye contact with him, sitting by the door on a milk crate, eyes as blue as mine, eyes as empty as mine, and when I found an extra dollar in my pocket, I handed it to him on the way back. And he said, in a way of thanks, "Cheers!"

I did not stop, but I wanted to. I wanted to turn to him and say, angrily, "Cheers? No! Not, cheers! Food, shelter, clothing! Work! But not cheers!"

But I did not stop because there was somewhere I did not want to be.

Various Things Regarding Friends

One of the things I miss about Edmonton is having Randy as a local call. I can't even guess how many times I've called him self-indulgently to play a new song or riff. And no matter what he was doing, he'd listen and give me feedback. Having an audience helps tremendously in developing songs. These days, I have a new local call audience, but I hate infringing on her. Students hardly have enough time for themselves. Yestreen, however, she heard two of my newest songs and liked them. (Sun Fade and Weight On Our Shoulders.) Soon enough I'll have these recorded and/or videos posted so you can like them too.

Tomorrow night, two of my closest friends will be visiting for a week. I'm excited. I have bachelored my fridge with beer; presently, there are 24 regular cans and 2 supercans of Kokanee, a Granville Island Taster's 12, and a lone bottle of Red Stripe. Expect a full report next week on which - if any - survived.

And finally, last week, one of my closest friends won the lottery. This friend is the one not yet accounted for in this post. It's ironic that at one point in my Great Big Project, some characters were supposed to win the lottery, but I changed that with the thought of the unlikely odds against them. The ironic part is, of course, that this friend is a huge part of this huge project. The benefit for me is that he's going to have a lot more free time in which to tackle his part of it. Now it's really up to me to get my balls rolling.