Today when I was opening the door to my apartment, I saw this guy from a few doors down.
He was walking very briskly.
"Hey, how's it goin'?" he said.
I told him everything was going fine.
                              -- Jim's Journal.

so I remember the smell of spring, I remember my room, I remember my stereo, kneeling in front of my stereo, listening to Brian Eno, listening to Thursday Afternoon, and the fresh air blowing in my window, blowing the curtains to my room, and the yellow light as it filtered through the curtains of my room, and the smell of the air, crisp and not too warm not too cool, and the fresh smell of my room, and the feeling of spring, and the excitement of being there, alive, listening to Thursday Afternoon by Brian Eno, and the closeness of my mother and father, and the love of my parents, and this was everything became distant and clouded, before everything became dull and muted, before everything became faded and old, before time changed and the air closed in, before the numbness closed in, before, and I remember the feeling of the carpet on my knees as I knelt there before the stereo, and the sounds from the speakers chiming and slow, holographic and peaceful, and it sounded like the universe standing still and being born, and I was standing still, lost in the colour blue in my head, the colour blue with flecks of gold and shimmers of silver, the colour of the music, of Thursday Afternoon the colour of

now, but now, fragmented and lost, I have to

tts, born January 30, 1970.  Happ

ing is, even if I tried to change things they'd still probably end up here and now, with me here and now, still, frozen, lifeless, everything faded, the immediacy gone, the energy gone, the anger gone, the hope gone, the despair gone, the joy gone, the happiness gone, the sadness gone, the ennui gone, the terror gone, the security gone, the

re you are, standing, in front of me, in this room, you, standing beside the speakers, the speakers thumping gently.  You, swaying to the music.  Slowly.  Slowly swaying.  Wearing your dress, and that t-shirt with some kind of Japanese lettering on the front, and that drawing of that girl riding an alien bicycle underneath.  And no bra.  Underneath.  And your hair moving in the breeze made by the open windows.  And you sway, rocking on your feet, back and forth, with the music.  Back and forth.
        Breasts freed, nipples hard.
        And here I am, lying on the floor, beside you, watching your white legs.  And the hem of your beige dress.  Watching the hem swaying, very slowly.  Carefully, slowly as you rock, the hem slowly touching your ankle, carefully, just brushing.  Carefully, touching your ankle, then brushing, then away.  Your feet are bare.
        And I smile and I stand.  And you turn your head, slightly, smile, slightly, just the corners of your mouth curving, your lips barely changing.  And you smile.  And your face is so relaxed, now, as you sway in your t-shirt and your dress.  So relaxed and happy.  And behind your glasses, one eye is closed.
        Blue eyes.
        And the little smile in the corners of your mouth and

have always wanted to be God.  I have always wanted to be able to wound the universe, to cut the universe deeply and painfully, to make the universe scream.  I have always wanted to be God so I could hurt the universe the same way it has hurt me: some sort of deep, vague wound throbbing in the back of my mind and deep in my heart.  Aching and strange.  Eating me up.  Slowly eating me alive.  I have always wanted to be God.  If I was God I could give some of this pain back.  Make the light scream.  Make the photons scream

t!"
        "You're nuts!" he said.  And then he started to laugh

onverted me!"  Laughing, holding his sides.  "It is all meaningless.  And you've got a follower now.  You're like a buddha, a dark zen master, a nihilist priest!"  Laughing until the tears

sick to my stomach

ehind you, now.  And I want to put my hands on your hips.  And I want to sway with you.  And your dress is brushing your ankles.  And my eyes are closed.  And I want to bend.  And I want to rest my head against yours.  Look into your deep eyes.
        And, outside the air hot and close.  Years ago.
        But this didn't happ

understand what it's like.  Why people just finally snap.  Why all those kids were wearing trenchcoats and shooting up schools in 1999, 2000, 2001.  Why, even though you seem stable on the outside, on the inside the tension and rage just

secret face of the Year 2000

missed her friends and family when she was in Japan.
        "Yeah?" I said.
        "Yeah," she said.  "I mean it was nice and all, but I wish I would have had more friends with me.  So even though it was fun, I still wanted to come back home.

even though, well, I felt like I was being ripped apart by my emotions.  And still, I had to smile and try not to look too dead inside, and go to class every day.

alking through a gigantic graveyard.  The sun is beating down.  We are hot.  Sweating.  A slight breeze blows and, in the wind I can smell her.
        She smells wonderful.  Warm.
        We sit beneath a tree.  We look at crows.  There are always crows in graveyards.  She tells me that crows are the gatherers of souls, the transportation units.  Or maybe they are the reincarnations of the people buried here, ghosts looking after their own tombstones.  I ask her, if crows are ghosts, where do crows go when crows die.  She tells me that crows don't die.  They just fade away.  Later, walking under some trees, still in the graveyard, we find a dead crow.  She moves its body with a stick, and we watch the ants crawling out from underneath its body.  Its eyes are gone.  In a few days all that will be left is a dry shell, she tells me.  In a few days the insects will have taken all the moisture.

never have I wanted s

thought you liked it in Japan?"
        "I did," Kim said.  "But still, I was sort of lonely.  I missed my friends.  And it was hard to communicate.

," I said.
        "There's a lot of potential, here.  But really what you should do is focus on what you know.  The things in your past that matter.  Your emotions.  The girls and women you knew, your hopes and dreams and loves.  Not just politics and music reviews."
        "But, that's what I'm

ack then, in the past.  Back when I felt like I could go places, like I knew people.

doesn't want a funeral.  She doesn't want to be buried.  She wants cremation.
        She tells me she doesn't like the idea of rotting.  She likes to look at other things rotting, but she herself, she does not want to rot.  It bothers her too much, to rot.
        I understand.
        The idea of her rotting bothers me, too.  But the idea of her burning also upsets me.  The thought that, some day, she will have to die.  That she will grow old, and sick, and have to die.  Either that or she will be killed suddenly in some sort of random act of senseless violence.  Which, with each new day seems more and more likely.  This fills me with horror and pain.
        And then she will burn into carbon and her bones will be ground to dust.  And she will be encased in cement, or in an urn, and she will have ceased to exist.  I don't want to think about this.  About her mind ceasing, and her body ending.
        I have always wanted to be God.  If I was God she would never cease.  I would never cease.
        But I am not God, and I am trapped in this body.
        And if I could escape my body, I would.  And then I would burn my body into carbon ash.  And destroy my body utterly.  Obliterate my body and erase it from her memory.  Because that is what my body deserves.  My body is ugly.
        If I could escape myself I would.
        And I won't forget her if she ends before me.
        Even if she burns, I won't forget her.
        (But, this is all just a memory.  This all happened a long time ago, and, in a way, things have changed

tching this, like, this balloon descend and land, slowly descend and land in the schoolyard and it's the middle of June and the air is warm yet nice and the world smells like leaves and freshmown grass and I'm in Grade 3 and out for a walk

atching footage of Budd Dwyer over and over again.  Footage of 9-11 over and over again.  Music roaring and droning in the background.  Acid Mot

her skin smelled good.  Warm.
        She laughed.
        Alana said,

in the car, on this bridge again, and it's rush hour and I'm alone listening to Japanese Noise Music roar and shatter, and I've stopped in the middle of the bridge and there's always this thought in the back of my mind, this fantasy that here, on the bridge, stopped in the middle of a long like of cars, I get stuck, and then I can see the missile comes in from somewhere, and I can watch it coming along, I can watch its descent, I can watch it coming along the river, following the river, I can see it coming, approaching, descending, coming, and the feeling of being trapped of knowing that I only have seconds left to live that I can't get out of the car and run, that I'd never make it to the other side, and so I watch the missile coming and when it hits there's a blast and I'm falling down into the river and people are screaming and the bridge is crumbling and the water is cold

always, more

wyer's eyes always flicker out at that exact same moment.  You can pinpoint the actual moment of his deat

Eno.  Thursday Afternoon, Music For Airports, Discrete Music.  They're all so perfect.  So quiet and peaceful and beautiful.  I remember listening to Apollo and feeling like I was in outer space.  I remember listening to On Land as it droned and burbled and sounded like nothing I'd ever heard before.  Painting with sound, making swatches of ever-changing colours in my head.  I remem

can I?  I'd love to.  Love to tell

.  And turn on the tv.  Again, there's nothing.  I spend hours flipping channels hoping for cartoons, or something.  Anything to stop all these memories, all this shit from my past from crushing m

in the store.  And Kim would come to visit, and hang out or a while, and then take a bus and go home.
        And I'd be in the store, and Robin and Becky would come to visit, and then walk home.  Or sometimes I'd drive them after work.
        Summer days, in the store, the heat melting my brain.  And even though the store was cramped and ugly and kind of grimy, it felt like home.  Like it was my place, before it was taken away.  By time, primarily.
        I remember one day in the store, I had a headache, a migraine so severe I could barely stand upright.  And so I loaded myself with painkillers and slumped on the counter.  And I was playing Heyden that day because I'd received a promo in the mail and I made it a policy to listen to every promotional cd at least once.
        And Heyden was strumming atonally and moaning about his life, and I was blinded by pain.
        But then the pills kicked in and the sky clouded over, almost simultaneously-- both the pills and the clouds at once-- and then a cool breeze filled the store.
        And I went outside, and it started to rain and the whole thing was so beautiful I almost started cry

VE YOU I L

brown eyes, brown hair, white cheeks with pink, big smile.
        Everything that is right with the world

can't really be serious, can you?" he said.  "That's so, so megalomaniac."
        I laughed.
        "That's just the way I am," I said.  "And besides, I think that everybody's pretty much the same way."
        "Well, I don't walk around saying I want to be God.  That's nuts."
        "Not outwardly, no.  But you do impose your will on everything you see, and everything you interact with-- and everybody you interact with."
        "Yeah, but--"
        "You want everybody to do what you say.  All the time."
        "Sure, everybody wants that, but--"
        "Then you want ultimate control."
        "But I don't want to control the seasons," he said.  "That's what God--"
        "Do you have air conditioning in you house?"
        He paused for a long time.
        "Yes," he said.
        "You want to control the weather, then.  Maybe in a limited way because you as an individual are limited, but you still want control over your environment."
        "But," he said, "that's not the same thing.  What you're saying is blasphemous."
        "What I'm saying is honest."
        "God decides who lives, who dies.  I don't do that.  I can't do that."
        "Do you crush ants, swat flies?"
        "Yeah, but they're not people."
        "But you're more advanced than they are.  Maybe to what you call 'God' we are ants and flies.  Either way.  When you kill something or decide it's going to live you have ultimate control over that thing's fate."
        He didn't like where this was going.  But, for some reason he still kept hanging out with me.
        No matter how much I insulted religion, he still stuck around.  Like he was feeding off my abuse.
        I always figured it served him right.  He wanted to be a priest when he got out of highschool because he said he'd read the Bible and that as all it took to be a priest.  And besides, he didn't want to go to University.  He just wanted to graduate highschool and become a priest.  He figured it was easier that way.  I didn't have the heart to tell him how wrong that was.
        The teacher was going to break up our conversation, because class had started.  But when she heard what we were talking about, she let us talk.  Eventually

rebus could have been so good, so grand, so magnificent, could have been The Great Canadian Novel in comicbook form but then Dave Sim-- one of the people I used to admire most, a real hero to me, someone I grew up with-- had to go and go insane and now all it's about is misogyny and the Torah.
        Is that all that's left?  You do the thing you love for almost 30 years and you go insane, by degrees lose your mind, and all that's left is just, well, insanity?  Is that your reward, madness and horror, for striving, achieving, wanting to do more

in highschool, sitting in a my desk in English, writing

rst time I ever read William S. Burroughs.  Grade 9.  It was a weird winter day.  Very cold, the kind of cold that's so cold it doesn't even feel cold-- and then before you know it, you've frozen.  My aunt was in town, and she was loud because she was deaf.  The lights were dim in my room, and I was hunched over, lying on my bed, reading Exterminator.  I bought the book because of the cool-looking bug on the cover.  I couldn't make heads or tails of it because the cover said it was a novel, but inside there was no narrative progression, or consistent characterization.  The next day was even colder, and I bought The Ticket That Exploded.  I had no idea what cut-ups were, I had know idea the book was a non-linear collage.  I tried to read it and it made absolutely no sense.  The words were all in the wrong order.  And what I could understand of the book was very ugly.  I had never encountered writing like this ever before.  I loved it.  I needed mor

Years later, sitting alone in a chair:

makes me want to vomit.  And then you stand there and stare at me and tell me to go to hell, tell me to go fuc

and then he punched me in the face and called me a fat fuck and it wasn't a hard punch but it still hurt and I didn't run home and tell anybody because my dad would have just probably said he's right you need to lose weight and my mom wouldn't've known what to do

stitched together, but only barely, and only with

soft.  My hand on her ch

can take a cd, either with music or data on it, or blank, and cover the print side with tape.  Masking tape works the best.  And then, when the print side of the cd is covered with tape, lift up a corner of the tape and make a small nick on the print side of the cd with some scissors, or a pen, or a pin.  And then put the little tape corner down.  Press all the tape down firmly and then lift the tape.  The entirety of the cd's foil will come up, stuck to the tape.  You've just ruined the cd, of course, but it proves how fragile these recording media are.  They're fragile, but they're also, if not disturbed, permanent.  And even if the foil degrades over time, copies of the original-- before the degradation-- will still be perfect.

when the day is over, and I'm driving back, I always feel sad because I know no matter what I do this will never last, it's all just a pipe dream, and I will never get where I want t

paralysis

trying to explain that it's not as bad.  Even if something hates you, that's still a form of attention, acknowledgment-- even if it is malignant.  So there is something worse than Good and Evil, and that thing is Indifference.  Because when something is good, it cares about you and when something is evil it still cares about you-- you are important to it because you are worth hurting.  But when something is indifferent you do not matter at all.  You are not in that thing's notice at all.  You aren't worth loving and you aren't worth hating.  You're not even worth noting.  You're worth nothing.  And being faced with that, that's worse than being faced with evil.  At least, with evil you matter enough to destroy.
        She's skeptical, and doesn't really get it:
        "So, you're saying that no God is worse than an evil God?"
        "No," I said.  "The absence of God isn't as bad as the presence of an indifferent God.  If there's no God, you can just go on about your daily business as before.  But the thought that there is something up there, and it doesn't love or hate, and in fact it just doesn't give a single rat's ass about you, at all, in any respect-- that's the worst.  Because if there's nothing, there's nothing.  But if it's there and it can intervene, it can show itself to you, but it just doesn't want to, because you're not worth the time or effort-- or it doesn't even notice you when you call-- that's true horror."
        She

ana looked at me and threw the pages onto the floor.
        "You disgust me," she said.  "Your writing, your ideas, you-- you sicken me."
        I crumpled, inside.
        "I can't believe I ever thought you were a nice person," she said.  "You're sick, and disgusting, and you make me feel sick.  You think everything is garbage.  But I've got news for you-- you're the one that's garbage.  Everything about you is garbage.  Don't touch me.  Get away from me.  I can't believe I ever-- we ever-- I let you

to Acid Mothers Temple And The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.  It's psych-rock from Japan, more 'psychedelic,' more 'acidrock' than any of those 60s and early 70s bands they ape.  Walls of trippy, guitars and reverb and noise.  Again, the Japanese take something from the West and hone it to perfection."

driving around town with Kim, going to comic shops, eating lunch.
        Happy

sick feeling in my stomach.
        The feeling that maybe when they both die she wants her ashes mixed with his.

rthday memories, hard and sharp, fragmented and fragmenting, ripping into me, ripping me into shreds of

loved Brian Eno.  I still do.  His few vocal albums and those dozens and dozens of ambient works-- real ambient music, not just slowed down dance music.  It's mostly beatless, droning, with occasional shimmers, and treated instruments.  Holographic, in that you can listen to 2 minutes of it and know what the piece is like, but if you listen to the whole cd you get a better picture, a bigger picture, more detail, more interrelation

m smiles that big smile at me and I feel warm

ic For Airports is one of the best pieces of music ever made.
        Music of peace, and sadness and mystery.

night....  Thunde

eed you I want you I need you I want you I

Monsters Of Grace.  Watching that computer generated cube spin, listening to Philip Glass.  Wanting it to last forever

Next:  Going boom....