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Saturday December 02, 06
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07:53 AM - Victoria's Secret
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Missing you all and wanting to share my last few weeks. Below, I've copied my most recent myspace blog entry for you all. If ever you want to find me, please don't be shy, I'm at myspace.com/deathwrites
love to all,
Haze/Sullen
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Anticipating a week or so of the same old, same old I packed for my trip naively thinking it was to be just another jaunt across this country, but it wasn't. No, instead, what I found whilst amid the majesty of ancient mountains and the dazzling cityscapes of this nation's western towns was an awesome awareness of just how detached I truly am from all I thought I was. Undeniably, I'm not the liberated, well-rounded sock puppet I had previously believed myself to be, but as of my typing this, it's all okay because I've also come to realize all that eludes me presently can be acquired rather easily – I just have to allow myself to trust my instincts.
Oh tipping back a few with a European back-packer in a pub rank with a neo-hippie vibe, dropping e with an Irish girl in her dormitory or having coffee with an American poet…such things, they truly can (and will) open one's eyes to just how brilliant life can be. Ah yes, but equally, they can (and will) leave one wondering whether they've past their best before date without having noticed it.
I touched down in Calgary first and I swear, it's probably added a few hundred thousand to its population just in the eight months since I last visited there. Calgary is a metropolis in the making, and it's all due to oil money; there's so much of it in that province. Everything is new. Suburbs are being built faster than I can spit at my own reflection and there's no shortage of work. Truly, in my opinion Calgary (and to a lesser extent Edmonton) are amongst an elite group of areas in the western world still on the rise. Oh yeah and it's all so very inspiring to behold, especially when you've traveled inner-cities in the United States of America, which are nearly all decaying crack 'hoods hounded steadily by whores in fishnets. But anyway, it's been predicted that in the next five to ten years Canada will be the biggest oil producing nation on earth, thanks to the oil sands north of Edmonton, in Ft. Mc Murray, so the wealth and growth rate is completely understandable.
Next stop was Banff (where the pictures I posted were shot) and the mountain ranges leading me into Vancouver. Insane! Seriously, mountain people are as wild as the massive rocks surrounding them.
Anyway, after days arguing over the telephone with work in Toronto I decided that I needed some downtime so I went to a sports pub to catch the hockey game and to have dinner, in the suburbs of Vancouver. Yeah and it was there, it was there where I was suddenly hit heavy with an over-powering sense of loneliness and so I decided I was going to get completely and utterly sloshed, which is something I hadn't done for months. To continue, I sat, text messaged friends in Toronto and drank. I drank; text messaged, talked on my phone and wrote poems on bar napkins… it was all so very necessary. Soon enough though, I became bored of it all so I asked the bartender where there was to go with a slight bit more punch than where we were. He telephoned a taxi for me and before I knew it I was at an after-hours club with yet another drink in my hand.
Long story short, an exchange student from Ireland and I ended up at her place, which was at a dorm off campus in this rather student friendly neighbourhood. High on ecstasy as good as the late '90's rave "e" I once used to love, we ended up naked in her hot tub, tripping as trippers do, and it was only after it all that I realized just how beautifully surreal it all was. I felt young again, for the first time in some time, and it had everything to do with this university girl and the double-stack pills we took. Truly, it was an evening I won't soon forget – definitely one for the books.
The next day I was rushing about Vancouver, seeing it all for the first time since I had lived there at the turn of the century – very strange. So many memories, and each of the neighbourhoods I roamed in the coastal rain bathed me in all I was, a mere six years ago. As I walked on I began to feel invisible, like I was just another tourist, and that killed me. Truly, the romance I had with Vancouver whilst living there in the '90's had disappeared and I swear, I was seeing the city through eyes unbiased, and in a sense for the first time. No triumphant return for yours truly and seriously, where did I get the ego in thinking the red carpet should've been unraveled before me? I'm just another person, just another corpse with pulse and nothing more, so why should Vancouver care whether I was there or not?
Anyway, I met that Saturday evening with a poet friend of mine, and of course, my evening the night before was the main topic of conversation. So right, he told me that it's not that strange a scenario and that for me to think it was just went to show how I've changed. He told me I'd become a victim of society… the usual outsider justification crap, but to this day I see it all as me trying to re-live what is now forever gone. Either way, as great is it was, it's just not what I feel comfortable in doing, or being anymore. Does this mean I've become a wintry soul unsound, or not? I dunno, but if I am, at least it tags me something more than nothing.
Victoria, B.C made me realize that Canada is elegantly beautiful, as much as it is beautiful naturally. Such a charming city and one that I didn't want to leave. But of course I did, and as I rested myself up against the rail of the ship taking me back into English Bay I swear I saw a Killer whale in the distance, and for some strange reason, a tear came to my eye. Oh and the obvious parallels between myself and that other solitary mammal shadowing sundown in a cold and endless sea spawned the realization I'm alone, doing what I love, and probably always will be. The crisp breeze over the ocean at sunset… utter agony!
In Edmonton, a few hundred km's north east of Victoria and on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, is where I stationed myself the following Monday. Work had me there for reasons they hadn't apparently shared with their contacts in said city and consequently, I looked like a bloody idiot in the eyes of strangers wondering what I was doing in their presence. Of course, I ragged out my contacts once again in Toronto and stormed off and into the Edmonton nightlife. Again I got drunk, using every reason I could think of as a form of justification for my actions, and ended up loaded at a casino in the city's north end.
I awoke in my hotel hung-over, sick and just simply tired. I was getting rundown, vexed, bored and extremely lonely – it may have been a good thing I missed meeting my online friend Lucretia that night. Seriously, my drinking was becoming a habit this trip, which terrified me immensely, and I knew something was going to give, sooner rather than later. For certain, all the interesting people I meet, party with or even sleep with, well… they're out of my life the second I awake the next morning, though they linger at the forefront of my thoughts, at times for years. Truly, I'm not a heartless, globetrotting drunk, hell-bent on ruining the lives of those around me as I drown myself numb, though I understand it does appear as though I am.
So anyway, I traveled back to Calgary that evening and met with a co-worker who, if you asked him, I'm sure would say he knows more than God himself. It was no kind of fun, but he did take me for dinner at Hooter's (a place I'd never been before) so he wasn't exactly Lucifer under the guise of Les Nessman. Afterwards, I was off and alone, so I drank again, in a small pub in a styishly re-developed industrial area of the downtown core. I simply felt vile, exhausted and frightened over not knowing what I want anymore. Seriously, I needed outside of my own mind, so I started a rather animated conversation about literature with someone I exchanged myspace info with, who was sat at the table next to me. Anyway, on that, Sean, if you're reading, I quite enjoyed our talk. After that I escaped back to my hotel, drank some more and pondered my immediate future with a company pulling me in a thousand different directions. Yes, and I began to feel quite ill as a result and subsequently, I began to crumble under the multiple layers of anxiety I was feeling... it was all quite horrible stuff!
Anyway, a few days later the trip was over. I returned back to Burlington (just outside Toronto) and was asked, straight away, to do Montreal. I told the company I needed some time home, which they couldn't understand, so I quit.
I can't do it anymore. This trip opened my eyes to realize that no matter how much I see or do, it's never going to be enough. So if I can't deal with more, maybe I should fit less on for size. That's it, it's just that simple. Everything I do, everything… it's all done on freakishly large scales, and it can't be healthy. Partying hard with drinks, blow and ecstacy, travelling endlessly, having and losing women… it's all so very, terribly taxing stuff, and I'm running out of steam. Oh but strange thing though, as much as I hate being away, coming home to an empty house is just as depressing, so this is why I'm feeling as I am.
But regardless... this is the life I've designed, the life I've cherished and the life I've despised, and, it's unfortunately the only life I know, so in spite of it all I must push forth, open to change yet at the same time regretting nothing but perhaps my lunch today, which is not sitting right, thanks to shot nerves and bad mayo... such a brutal combo!
That all said, this Christmas shall be spent in old school fashion -- no more Christmas' spent as they have been in recent years, at pubs with friends, instead of home with family. I shall simply relax this month, re-connect with old friends and sleep long sleeps on my newly purchased queen-size mattress. Indeed, I need to stay anchored in my surroundings for this Christmas season, and if come January I'm not climbing the wall, well… I'll know that there was a brilliant reason for doing all I did this Fall.
Oh it's true, I need to know if my heart belongs anywhere, rather than simply everywhere…
As mad as life itself,
Haze
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