On Love

My buddy has girlfriend troubles. He says she can be emotional and that's fine. Yes. But he's weary and last night he laid his thoughts on me, thoughts I won't share with you now. Not for privacy's sake. Not at all. I just can't remember 'em...

But we're driving down a lonely road late at night. Dylan's aching voice his pushing through the mesh stereo speakers: "Sometimes it gets so hard to care, it can't be like this everywhere, and I'm gonna let you pass..."

"Fitting song," I said.

Buddy wasn't aware. Nope. He said: "I tell her I love her, even though she knows..."

"She knows...what?"

"Well, I just don't like throwing that word around."

"You don't like..." I grunted. "No one likes to throw it around. Man! That word's not thrown around ENOUGH. Love's simple. And always is. All LOVE means is that I feel fondly for this person and they're changing something about my insides. That's it."

"I know, but--"

"No, no. I love you man. I have fond feelings for you and you have shaped my insides in some way. People should say that more--it might open a lot of heads. I love and him and her and them. The only difference between romantic love and everyday love is the sexual impulses. That desire. That trip is romance. Without that, it's just love. Most people have this Hollywood notion of love or romance or whatever and it's fucking everything up.

He was silent for a minute, smirking, taking the motor vehicle up a steady hill. Finally, he said: "You should write an article on that. It could go a long way to explaining why people are so shut off in this city, or in this part of the world. It makes a lot of sense."

"Yeah? Well maybe I will."

And so I did.

People can be so nice.

I went to McDonald's to buy a pop. I asked the manager lady: "How much is a small pop?"

She rang it up on the till, said: "One dollar, forty seven."

I opened my palm and scanned the measly change I was holding. One loonie. Lots of pennies. Not enough.

"Oh, never mind," I said and turned to walk away.

She stopped me though, said: "Don't worry about it. Just put the change in the donation box." So I did. And she gave me a small cup of delicious Coca-Cola.

And I wonder if I would have received the same treatment if I were ugly...

Some randomness

It's been awhile. I'm not sure what I'm even saying here. It's more just a feeling I have throbbing somewhere inside. No thoughts, really. Haven't had much of those lately. My journal's been sitting at the bottom of my bag, collecting sand.

I don't know who this is for. No one seems to read this blog. But if there's anyone out there who does, who too feels vacant, well, 'you're not alone,' as they say. I'm around. Unfulfilled.

I've been away for six months. 4 of those were spent studying in England. The rest was spent traveling, whittling my time in foreign cities with amazing people who felt, for the most part, like they weren't fit for their homes. So they drifted about, living the world because that's all they--we--feel is necessary. To Live. It should be so simple. For short spurts of time, it can be. And it's happiness. And then real life resumes.

Yes. I'm filling in for vacation time at a local newspaper. They're hiring two reporter positions. I applied. I think I'm good at this work. But I can hear the editor calling people for interviews. I'm sitting in the back cubicle. There's no action over here. No one visits me. I get few calls. I'm not in the running. My chest swells and my eyes water a little but I've trained myself not to cry because there was a time when I felt that everything works out in the end. So why cry unless it's necessary? I trained myself not to cry before I realized that I have no idea if things "always work out in the end." I haven't seen the end. When the end does comes, I probably won't know if everything worked out because I won't be here to judge such a topic. All I know is that things go well and things go bad. And sometimes humans are happy and other times we are sad.

At this moment, I am sad. It is the first full emotion I have felt since I returned home. I will not deny myself this feeling, nor will I deny my happiness, nor my fear nor my depression. To deny any emotion is to deny our humanity. We have this range for a reason. The idea, as far as I can tell, is to live it and learn from it, to carry on with experience as some sort of evolutionary survival tactic.

I don't know what I'm doing. Ever. Just floating about and hoping for the best. Many of us do that. Maybe all of us.

Right now I'm typing so it sounds like I'm busy. But I'm not busy. I'm, 24 and wasting my time. People may not see it, but I am.