[12] So it’s the twelfth month, I’ve never been a fan of it, because it’s the end of something. It’s just such a weird time. Wrapping up the year, and getting things in line to begin a whole new one. There seems to be a common theme here, it’s just that time has started to move so incredibly quickly. I feel like i’m somehow standing on one of those moving sidewalks and just watching it all, completely detached from the movement, just watching it all move by. The technology, the work, the time, the year, the people. The hustle and bustle of it all. I can’t make much sense of other people’s actions lately, maybe i’m not meant to. I mean i’ve been putting my best face forward and coming up empty. Today was a turning point, my first reaction to it was to just crumble. It took me a few moments alone to realize what’s been going on. The exercise that i’m taking part in, that somehow I didn’t realize. I got caught up in the day-to-day, the details, and lost sight of the big picture of what was playing out in my life. I know a few things for sure. One of them is that I work hard, the second is that I take pride in what I do, the third is that for a long time i’ve checked humility at the door. This was an exercise. I plan to move forward more intelligently. (Actually Henry Ford said that) “Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently”. How intelligent. Time is passing, and I do not want to be standing looking at it like I’m making my way through a gallery of experience. I want it to be more of an installation. Infrastructure. The time is passing, the year is ending, but I’ve just realized that the time is now. Just finished “Good to Great” by Jim Collins about what makes a company great as opposed to good. I’d recommend it. It’s brilliant. [time] So, I haven’t written in awhile. I’m not quite sure why that is. I think it’s just because the creative juices have been directed elsewhere, painting, doing a little more creative work in the day-to-day. I’ve missed that so much. Getting into technology has been such a love/hate relationship for me. I’ve managed to get really involved with the nuts and bolts and somewhere along the way I lost my creative output. I don’t think that is technology’s fault. I think it’s mine. I think everyone has been bounced around to a certain extent. I just seem to have found the most opportunities to have that happen. I’m faced with a really interesting time right now. I’m getting a chance to be really ridiculously introspective. With that as a pretext to where I am right now, it’s now the holiday season. I can’t believe it. Time has passed so incredibly quickly this year, maybe it’s because i’m getting older. I am totally unprepared, I’ve been doing a lot of leg work lately and somehow didn’t realize that December was coming. I despise the mall during the holidays, I really despise it all of the time, but so much more in December. People get crazy and wander aimlessly. I think i’m such a list maker, and a task master that I can’t relate to the wandering. [clarification] At the risk of opening Pandora’s box and in addition breaking one of the cardinal rules of conversation. I’m going to go with my instincts and talk about religion. Reading an interesting book this morning. It was written by a lawyer and outlines the actual facts for the life and death of Jesus. Interestingly enough, as both a human being and the case for him as the messiah. Very interesting stuff. As I was reading it, I got to thinking about my own beliefs. Where they’ve come from, where they’re going and why I believe them. I think in the last few months I’ve been speaking more theologically than I have in the past few years. I grew up in a family that had me enrolled in a Catholic school. I’ve had the pleasure of being baptized not once, but twice Presbyterian and Catholic respectively. I grew up in a house that didn’t talk a lot about religion, I got my fill of that at school. Where we drew the haloed-golden-brown-haired Jesus in white robes and coloured in pictures of the Pope. I do however remember being about 7 or 8 and standing in line for confession and realizing how strange I thought it was. As the kids all stood around trying to come up with something to tell the priest, something to confess. It struck me, if we hadn’t done anything wrong that week, we in our 7 year old minds thought that- naturally we should probably just make something up. Over the years I thought about going back to going to church, but the older I got the less sense it made. I have had my own relationship with God. I really hesitate in calling it that. I don’t have a name for it, it just is. This leads me to my point. After reading some of this book, I got to thinking. I can’t settle for just one belief system, I find valid points in most of them. The general idea of morality and living an honest life and just doing one’s best in the world is good enough for me. To me they all fall under the umbrella of Taoism. That got me thinking, if I had to define it in one thought, what would it be… In a nutshell, Taoism is the consolidation of a number of concepts and practices that make up the “Path”, or “Way”, of living. The Taoist feels that these ideas of morality and fundamental ideas of balance and peace brings a human being into closer alignment with the “natural order” of life and living – a pathway that humankind appears to have gotten derailed from. not sure what’s wrong really, just a general sickness I guess. I feel both interconnected and shut out. Not too sure what that is all about. Maybe the coldness of technology. Love of the machines. Trapped inside the confines of a cpu, yet comforted by the constant whirr…… It’s distinctive, like a voice through a crowd, a familiar face, a smell. Some guttural wail. I leave you behind and don’t stop to look back. trying to explain, the unexplainable. i have spent this time trying to quantify and i have discovered that for the first time there are not sufficient words. invaded. captured. conquered. are the only 3 that come to mind. i am all three.the dawn of time. it’s as if there was a moment, a tiny window through which laid opportunity. my eyes had been hurting for years. seeing this now defies expectation. i had not been looking for what i found. or maybe i’d just been looking for so long i’d stopped. i’d been walking the earth in search of something that would make me feel this good. now that it’s here I find myself stunned. stopped dead in my tracks noticing, as if for the first time the world around me. It’s as if a layer of skin has been peeled back from my eyes, as if for my entire life i’d never truly been able to see. now that i can, I feel hollow and full and dull and sharp all at once. looking into the deep blue i find something. something that now runs through every fibre of my being and lives outside of me like a star. at first it was like being held underwater, scary, drowning falling, eyes fluttering, blurry, and then calm. quiet. my stomach churns and i hear you speak and it is goosebumps & butterflies. It’s as if every moment of time was leading me up to that one single second where everything changed forever. as frightening and overwhelming as it is, i feel this undeniable desire to just hold on as I am shot out of some cosmic cannon right at you. the collision has changed me. how funny collider now seems. so many instances and nuances and I feel as if light is spilling out of me. something chemical has happenned and I cannot begin to explain how it feels or what it look like, but it is the most beautiful thing i have ever had the pleasure of knowing. [last nite] today is bleak. it’s dreary. i am not sure if it is the weather outside or in my head. my stomach hurts but i’m not sure if it’s hunger or sadness. i feel sick, pit of the stomach solar plexus sick. i don’t know if i’m moving to fast, being too hard, going to slow. [travel] Just enjoying the quiet. I feel like time is slipping through my fingers and I go between being terrified and freezing up to just relaxing and throwing caution to the wind. Maybe too much sometimes. I feel like things are moving really fast, yet crawling. It’s a strange dichotomy. One that I am getting used to. Travelling but not running. Like that. Parts of me feel like they are stuck in time, and others feel that I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s funny I feel that there are these bionic parts of me and then there are these archaic items that are still sitting and waiting for the 21st century to arrive. I’m not sure what to be lately, I move between having the desire to play the game and just roll the dice, to just holding on and letting it all flood in like a drowning pool. Should it be frightening?: Yes, I believe it should. I have gone under. Convergence slips its golden handcuffs around my wrists. The display flickers with unseen frequency. Lying behind the terms of agreement. Signing off on assigning henchmen. Rescued from the depths of day-to-day, don’t you think I’ve almost vested. Awaiting the merger, old to new Amalgamation isn’t so appetizing Disregard the memo, you are free to pack your desk and go. Tongues of fire, encompassed in flames and consumed by raw susceptibility. Destruction transudes measure. Overriding the kill switch and departing through the escape hatch, roaming across barrens to escape. Suddenly returning to the place where it all started. Holding the hands of the clock so that time refrains from passing. Moving at a speed that seems uncanny, driving through the clouds fleeting memories rush quickly. The engine breaks away, all that is left are the days… {middle] Into the center. Entwined connected and enthralled. I feel you and I change into something else entirely. A thousand times and I can’t begin to explain the thirst. Words do not exist, and I cannot do it justice. Nerve endings raw with emotion, uncovering layers of you like an onion, I can’t look away. When you touch me I can’t control it, I can’t hold it. Falling hard through cavernous space and time and now, I dream awake. i remember when i launched transcendz.com, (the actual dotcom) i had an archaic flash animation that stated that the future was binary. Partly because the site went live to the world at 1:01 am, on January 1st 2001. 01:01:01 – 010101. I don’t even know if anyone noticed, the site then was launched with a splash which played Knights of the Jaguar by Underground Resistance. Who also interestingly enough did ‘The Punisher’ (UR-017). This message may be cryptic, but it’s meant to be. I don’t believe in coincedences, so all of this seems even more strange. Binary Knight Punisher. funny. I don’t even know how I thought of all of this. I did, though and that is why we’re here. Together. You and I. I am still stunned and amazed by how things tend to happen in waves. I suppose it can all be attributed back to the way things are. I had the best weekend I have had in a very very long time. Taking the time to thank everyone who has been there for me in the past weeks, doesn’t seem enough. I am so blessed to know such a plethora of incredible people. So thank you- sometimes life throws you a curve and the grace and tact with which most of you have handled it is more than appreciated. Many of you are out of town, all over the world scattered like beacons right now, on journeys- you exotic bastards. Singapore, Thailand, India, England- to start. It’s been a summer of dreams come true for so many of us. I am so glad to be on the road with all of you.Planning on spending some quiet time this week, allow things to settle in, take a minute to just take it all in. The memories of the past 3 weeks are my oxygen. Sometimes, it hurts to say, but I am so glad we’ve stayed together, all of us. I know who you remind me of… [faster] distracted, i feel like i am being privy to all of these nuances that I just didn’t seem to notice before. As if things beginning and ending at the same time are plugging me into some type of new circuit. I am finding myself getting oddly emotional and retrospective at the strangest moments. Climbing up out of this self imposed fall out shelter into the light and re-discovering all of the normalities of life. Summer is almost coming to a close and I feel like it flew by faster than usual. As if time was somehow faster than it was last year, the pace changed or the rpm was turned up on the terrestrial turntable. Not sure what it is, but I feel as if i am a part of something which has it’s own trajectory entirely. I am flying without moving. Dissecting it is feeble, it’s just an exercise in logic I guess. Picked up Dancing Wu-Li Masters by Gary Zukav tonight and spent an hour reading about quantum physics Amazing, and so matter of fact, I feel like that describes us to a tee right now. Amazing and matter of fact. August 16, 2003[blackout] time to blackout, no doubt. The past two weeks have been unbelievably weird and surreal. It’s as if there is this unravelling taking place and now it has culminated in a blackout. pitch. selfish of me to feel like anything had to do with some insanely huge cosmic puzzle, but all i know is that for the past 14 days it has certainly felt like i’ve been dealt a wild hand. It felt like things were spinning out of control, and then, nothing. silence, blackness. Calm. Unbelievable really, the streets with their bleak abandon. Shadowy gridwork. I feel as if I am testing things. That for a moment, I am stepping back into the dark to look at my cards. The dark envelopes me and I can’t see them. I am stripped of my gameplan. taken aback, frightened of the outcome. worried i’ll lose my shirt, betting my life on something intangible, like coming up into an air pocket and trying to get as much oxygen as possible before I go back under.I am going under, with fifty percent power… [knots] Waking up in agony I can’t get over what is living in me I lay awake for hours Paralyzed by my own discretion I fall apart from the inside I just can’t let this in. Found my heart upon the carpet Can’t help but wonder how I am everything I thought I’d never be Closing eyes and doors Delay reminds me of last night I can’t shut my mouth I found what fit I hold on tight, won’t lose this grip I can’t help but feel afraid, That I won’t be able to get the knots untied. [deepening] I feel like I’m floating and drowning at the same time. Going under the countless layers of life and time and space. The words seem to just bleed from my fingertips, raw and bloody. Severed from direction. Split in a fit of something that I can’t name. I plod on….. Finding feelings, uncovering something that is reeling. I lay down to sleep and find myself rising up off of the bed. Into the blue clouds and dreams. Every lost item seems to be within my reach. I blink my eyes and catch a glimpse. And here it is, starting all over again from the beginning. Falling away. Friday, April 25, 2003 It’s one of those days again. Seems like everyday lately has been like this one… Toronto is a ghost town, thanks to the W.H.O.’s travel advisory there is a smaller than normal population of tourists wandering the streets. Though Torontonians seem to be taking it all in stride. No masks. No shortage of Sars jokes, of course. The world has somehow become a smaller place. Took the opportunity to get my camera out, this one digital and took random pictures of everyday things. Interesting how things that can appear somewhat mundane daily through a lens have never looked so incredible. Looking forward to summer. Seems as if I’m always looking forward to something. Why do we say “looking forward” and not “looking now”- maybe people aren’t as accustomed to living in the moment as they are living in the past or future. No one would admit that though. “living in the moment, typing thinking about email and lunch, just enjoying looking out the window not thinking about too much of anything just a series of things really, wondering what other people are thinking about- shopping, lunch, lost items, music, buying that cd after work…..reconnecting”. I feel like I have been waiting so long at this crossroads, standing watching life move. I don’t know what I’m waiting for really, but I will know it when I see it. [relaunch] So today I relaunched the site i’ve been working on for months. I have already gotten feedback from people saying that they feel like they are reading someone’s diary. You are. The difference is, I know about it. I am giving it to you to read. Some of the things i’ve posted I had to make a conscious effort to put out there. Others just flowed out there like an exhalation. Life is too short not to put it out there…. [backdraft] Spent a few days (too short) in Atlanta. I don’t know what it is about the city but it always offers me a perspective and a renewed faith. Maybe it’s the smells of the blooming magnolias or azaleas. Or maybe it’s seeing some of the people who have made me what I am. On the plane home, as we were taking off from hartsfield I looked down at the city and had a glimpse of where I have come from. My throat got tight and my eyes welled up. I felt as I looked down I could see it all. All of the experiences, the people, the moments that have made up my life. Suddenly it came together and the relief of it all spilled down my cheeks. Thank you. I felt. Sorry, Loved, Pained and Excited all at the same time. I held on to the armrest for dear life. I listened to the sounds of the plane and wondered just how I ended up looking through this window on the world. I’ve been equally introspective and retrospective lately. Normally it’s only the former, the latter though has caught up with me and I am finding myself caught in a timewarp of indiscretion and remarks. Perspective is an amazing thing, and sometimes looking back on things you wonder where it went in the first place. [awe-ful] uncertainty, what is going on? hearts hurting, casualties, talk of enemies/evildoers/infidels. terrible, terrible losses. Tears hide behind my eyes and I wonder how the world can be so strange and violent. How in times of such events you get that heaviness in the pit of your stomach and you think about your life. Lately, more so than usual, i’ve been more conscious about the reasons behind things. Why people leave your life only to return, why I’ve made the decisions I’ve made, why I have loved the people I have. I don’t think things have been easy, but I don’t think they are ever easy for anyone. I look back on the last 6 or 7 years and I can’t believe all that has happened. I feel sometimes that I let so much slip through my fingers. Like things just got too heavy for me to carry. I wonder why things couldn’t have just happened in a different order, even though I know why they did. What a dream a lot of it was. Monday, March 10, 200325 So i’ve now had the pleasure and wonder of being on this lovely planet for 25 years. I remember thinking I would definitely be married with kids by now. Wrong. What is the most amazing to me about it all I guess is all of the connections i’ve made. To use a technology analogy I have created my own network. There are empty ports. lights that have ceased flashing, family, friends lost, friends found, hubs upon hubs, wires, routers, mixed messages, mixed signals. It’s incredible really. Those of you who know me know that this is a really consistently hard time for me. I lost my best friend 2 days before my birthday 6 years ago. Every birthday that passes I think about her, and there is still that empty feeling – i’m sure there will always be that gap in the network. I think you end up carrying it around with you forever, in some way, shape or form. I wanted to take this time to thank everyone in my life from past present and future. Those that have surrounded me the past few years who are to me the most astoundingly brilliant and beautiful people on the planet (i’m not drunk- i swear) So thank you, for contributing to my memories, my stories, my network and my heart. No worries tomorrow i’ll be back to normal complaining about the weather :). Happy Birthday to ME! |