Grandpas are supposed to shop at Peavey Mart, not MEC.

My grandfather would have stoically ignored away the existence of a $700 windbreaker.

I lost my front tooth (just a baby) to a punch in the face from an older neighbour boy when I was in elementary school. I swallowed it, and have forgotten the reason he hit me.

I found a cassette tape last year of a surveillance recording my brother and I made back in the early eighties when I got my first (little pink portable) stereo.There’s us saying “yeah we’re going” and my mom in the background says “supper’s soon, so hurry along” (I kid you not). Then the tape hiss and a faint melody in the background, a soft baseline. My mom starts singing along, my dad joins in on harmony. They sing Elvis’ Blue Christmas and then fall quiet.

My brother cornered me and a best friend in the garage and pretended to douse the door in gasoline in preparation for setting it on fire. I’m pretty sure he used water.

I loved the first man I slept with.

I don’t remember who I was as a child. I can pull up moments, but they’re mostly embarrassing examples of what an asshole I (apparently) was.

My father was in a boating accident while engaged to my mom, he lost his memories of her and had to be re-introduced by his mother. It’s unclear if he ever got those memories back.

There’s a certain stretch on the Trans-Canada that I can’t drive without fighting  the urge to stop the car, lay down on the highway and let my head rest heavy on the pavement. This is the aching scar of a severely wounded heart.

I am happier now than I can recall ever being in the past.

I don’t have my shit together, I am lonely some of the time, I have more plans than accomplishments, I am afraid and almost constantly exhausted, but I am happy.

I like to help.

Behance find: Iain MacArthur. Illustrator from Swindon who is getting a lot of thumbs up on the Behance network, and for good reason. He combines sensitive pencil portraiture with graffiti design elements in a way that is often rude and always stunning.

It’s not that I like everything he’s got, but I sure am glad he’s giving it to us.

Portfolio on Behance here, or carbonmade here.

I’ve got to make a home for my new friend, 27″ iMac. Martin and Soren (aka the fish) will be carefully shuffled to another surface, much water will be spilled.

I need to purchase new furniture. I’m making a desk out of one Ikea table leg and a few spare bits of wood. It looks like an old teak singer sewing machine table, which is what I wish I had been able to find.

27″ iMac needs an uncluttered home, so I must clean.

I have to learn an entirely new method of computing. I aim to enjoy it, to take it as a first step towards becoming more productive, more efficient.

I worry that my life will start moving faster (losing farther, losing faster). And then I’m mad at myself for being so afraid. All. The. Time.

I’m excited today, and it seems to become me. I am making friends and attracting admirers. What a world.

Can we at least be good friends for one another? Good people, I mean. And more than that. Good friends.

I don’t know if the things we keep from each other are secreted away for the sake of the other’s feelings so much as to preserve whatever pretty flutter of tension there is between us.

That old dusty moth, hope.

I’ve never been one to crush a pretty bug, but everyone knows what happens to over-handled winged things.

everyone is afraid to let new people into their lives. By the time we’re ready to call ourselves adults, we’re scarred and wary of the pain of losing friends and lovers. Jaded doesn’t quite cover it. I get the sense not that the majority of people are worn out; not burdened with an excess of painful experience, but rather that we carry with us an acute memory of the sharpness of our losses.
For some of us, this means a hesitation to move beyond whatever level of interaction we think borders on the path to friendship. For others, it inspires a gluttony of sorts – the acquisition of many acquaintances and friends so that each loss is but a drop in the proverbial bucket. There appears to be so many different ways to handle feeling lonely that we have lost the ability to recognize loneliness in others.
We are, each of us, special.
Our fears, our friendships, our loves, our lives. Each of us grows to believe that we are unique and that the quality of our lives is dependent only upon our own strengths and weaknesses (or due to some predestination that makes us intentional beings to a higher power’s will).
I don’t know how to reconcile this with the obvious necessity and desirability of interpersonal interactions. I will always be me. You will always be you, or at least: you will always be someone else.
I am aware that where I struggle, some just do. It takes a particular type of person to try to figure this out like long division with each new personal encounter.
I need an emotional abacus.

Etsy find: potatobird studio. Small and interesting mixed media pieces with old photos, foreign text and hardware. This work hints at more artistic implications while completely filling the need for handmade, better-than-boring decoration.

I need to work on my collage skills. But not until I get a show up somewhere.

Etsy here. Or, her blog, here.

I’m not sure how to turn the manic swing in my thoughts of late into productive behavior. There seems to be a barrier there, a disconnect that I am afraid of, not to mention philosophically opposed to.

What. The fuck.

I’ve always opted for self deprecation over self discipline.