Life in the fast lane

Yesterday I worked a thirteen hour day. Coming home, I was completely knackered.

This is what I thought about as I rode the metro back to my home:

Such a fantastagorical tale had never been known.

Such was the way of these things.

Reading a bit like a history of popular culture in the early 20th century, and a tiny bit like a teen trash comedy, the combination was meant to amuse and articulate. Perhaps, most terrifyingly of all, it was the clearest representation of the inner workings and thought processes of two individuals.

One of them had come to a realization that he was often too pessimistic for his own good; he sometimes sought humor in disappointment as some kind of weak balm.

This would have to change. And it did.

Genuine excitement should not have to be manufactured. Riding on a jetski at 60 mph – for example – really has a positive effect on this. You cannot help but feel exhilaration, your mouth open and cheeks flapping with the force of the wind as you carve your way up an arm of BC’s mightiest river.

Twisting and turning you see how far you can go before the mechanical power under you can, shuddering, hurls you into the wild, flowing water. You cannot feign emotion on such a contraption, taking those risks.

SO – how to make life more like that? How to seek out, in everything, a sudden charge of passion and fury. What triggers those flags in my mind to suddenly send me rushing headlong emotionally at something or for something. I don’t need a cause to believe in so much as I need a credible dialogue, a wild formulation, a mysterious agenda.

Just think, the first people who ever read the Principia by Newton or Galileo’s letters must have thought they were reading some Clive Cusslerian escapade of fantastic proportions… and yet we now know it to be real.

But does that make Cussler any less exciting than Newton? Or just more poorly written?

(Definitely the latter.)

Also, should belief be THE defining reason for goodness?

I don’t think the best stories are always the truest ones. I like the ones that hover at the very edge between what-might-have-been, the possible, and the barely possible.

In this space we stop our minds from only formulating those images that we can understand and see, and make things that have never been made and will never be made, except inside the limits and demarcations of our own fancies, the thrum of our birthing brains.

Now open your eyes

Things are happening.

I can feel it in the crackle of the early autumn air.

Just breathe:

He lay upon the red clay, and the world shook to swallow him. Under his father’s sodden cloak, eyes closed, he heard nothing, saw nothing. All was sensation, cool knuckles of the thick riverbed gripping his back and arms; he sank a little more before the tremors stopped.

He waited for the cloak to be husked off, ripped from his body. They would find him, soon. He lay yards from cover under this pathetic shroud; they were toying with him. His weeping eyes stared open expecting the clouded night sky, and the coppery anticipation of death coated his own tongue – made his breath stink like the earth.

The silence was all.

He waited for strangers.

His breaths grew shallow under the thick material, slowed with the cold of it and he remembered reaching that point finally, where the immensity of fear was devoured by a monstrous finality, a sense of end, and he decided to die.

The small arm that pulled clear of the muck was stiff and unfamiliar, as if another boy hid there with him, was betraying him.

Then the cloak fell aside, and all was a screaming panorama of the looming forest and the angry darkness, and a total emptiness – their absence. His sniveling helplessness spurred to quicken his blood; he saw himself as if from the edge of the trees, a shaking unreality.

And that was all, his earliest memory.

And see:
Sunset.
Bridge.
Mural.
Food.
Cat.
Love. (And one of my favourites of the summer.)
Happy Wednesday to you all.

Get out there and just give ‘er

Happy labour day friends!

I am currently working down (or around?) my to-do list. Also, I cannot stop listening to Corb Lund and the Hurtin’ Albertans.

Because, THEY BE AWESOME.

I never really listened to much country growing up. Our family had a pretty eclectic taste in music, and it was a total free-for-all anytime we embarked on a long road trip, or family vacation.

But there was never any country.

It was no country for old country. Or new country at that.

I mean, when I wasn’t running around with my dad’s tai chi swords, dressed up in my highland dancing clothes pretending I was Sailor Moon, I was choreographing elaborate dance routines to such musical greats as The Rankin Family or Enya or Bruce Springsteen.

If I wanted to get really crazy I would break out the soundtrack to The Commitments and boogie down.

Of course I wasn’t just a-moving and a-shaking to these rad tunes – I was either lip-synching or belting out the words with everything that I had. Much depended on whether or not there were other people in the house, and if so, how close they were to my bedroom at that given time.

So having recognized my propensity for taking on the musical works of others and making it my own at such an early age, you can imagine just how much I loathe karaoke.

HAH.

Karaoke is one of those things that I very rarely do, but love anyways.

It’s also an activity that is strictly familial – I cannot remember the last time I sang into some broke microphone in front of a bunch of semi-drunk strangers without the support of my wacko sisters at my side.

I used to sing a mean Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” (doing the low voice and everything) but I just haven’t had the heart to sing it much since my friend Brent told me that I didn’t actually sound anything like Cher, and instead was just singing like a depressed man with a potato stuck in his throat.

He might as well have told me that I was a virgin who couldn’t drive. WAY HARSH TAI.

Anyway, as much as this was disheartening to hear, I still think of it as one of my all time favourite karaoke picks. Check-it:

How can you not want to sign along to that? Effin’ rights.

My other two top picks are very much in the vein of Mr. Corb and his hurtin’ band. Because no joke, nothing works quite as well as a sweet, sweet country tune when you’re up there embarrassing yourself for all of Canada.

If you want to get a ton of people on your side right away, I would recommend singing Tracy Byrd’ s The Drinking Bone:

People totally go nuts over this song because it scores absolutely off the chart in terms of ridiculousity and hilariousity.

Plus the lyrics are simple in the extreme.

Do. Seriously. DO IT.

Finally, (and while you may think that this would best for the ladies in the crowd, I’d bet a silver dollar that a dude could bring the whole house down with a solid rendition of this song) – I recommend Shania Twain’s Any Man of Mine.

Goodness do I ever love this tune.

It also scores highly on the outrageous and funny scale plus you have a whole pantheon of amazing lyrics to chose from, including:

“And when I cook him dinner and I burn it black, he better say, mmm, I like it like that.”

GENIUS.

Bonus – at the end of the song Ms. Twain talks you through a sort of mini dance that you can do on stage for all of your cheering fans.

This is a terrific song to do with a partner, or even as a threesome. Results may vary of course, but I’ve never known it to go down with nothing less than raucous, rousing approval.

So get out there and go for it.

But! Always remember to give it your all – nobody wants to see anything half-baked up on that neon lit stage.

Because if you don’t, Cher won’t be the only one waxing poetic about turning back time.