gettin' in the habit

i leave for australia in exactly two weeks (holy CRAP) and i'm starting to get back into posting daily. i've been very consistant at writing stuff over on my hockey blog, even in the off-season, but i've definitely been a bit stumped to write much of anything over here. i'm definitely hoping to turn that around a little while i'm gone. we'll see how much time i end up with to be creative, with all the boozing and socializing i've got on the schedule... ;)

today i've been thinking about how i've been a homeowner for nearly SIX years and still don't really own anything.... both the roommies will be moved out by the time i return, so i will walk back in to a messy bedroom and a truly empty house. with very little cash in my pockets, i'll have to spend a few thousand bucks on stuff like a sofa & loveseat, a coffee table, a kitchen table/chairs etc. etc. etc. too bad that january is about as far away from garage sale season as i can possibly get...

but, of course, when i start thinking about acquiring one thing, it starts to snowball. i think maybe i'll put a sectional over in the corner where the TV is, which would require me to either move the telly or... get a really nice big flatscreen and mount it above on the wall.... ? it doesn't help that the layout of my living room is really twisted, though i must take full responsibility for that cause i decided to put in the 'bar.' *sigh*...

and i'm a-gonna need a freakin' toaster....

garden state

i remember the first time i watched zach braff's 2004 directorial debut "garden state," i thought it was the most incredibly beautiful movie of my generation. upon a second viewing, however, it occurred to me that the film itself was average; a quasi-believeable yet fairly mundane storyline, punctuated with a series of intensely beautiful moments. i realized today that what i'd initially thought to be the movie's downside is actually it's brilliance: the film is a flawless mirror image of 'real life.'

there have been moments, in my past, where i have taken a mental snapshot of the physical beauty around me. other times, i take a deep breath and note how truly, perfectly and utterly happy i feel in my heart, so that i can recollect it in the impending darker times of melancholy and confusion. when i look in the mirror puffy-eyed and tear-streaked, i am able to smile at my misfortune with the memory of golden sunlight, the laughter of friends, soft lips...

i am living my garden state....

we are all made of stars...

i feel as though i should begin this post with some kindof historical view on the heavens, how innumerable ancient societies must have viewed the shimmering lights in the night skies, or how the stars have become wonderous and magical things to look upon, and to divine the future...

but instead, i'll lead with this: in all the time i've been anticipating my return to australia, it didn't occur to me until tonight that i'm looking forward, with the most excitement, to seeing the southern cross...

i spent half the night tonight trying to figure out if the wisps of clouds barely visible in the darkness were, infact, clouds, or if they might have been the northern lights. i sat on my balcony and acknowledged both the bears (ursa major and minor) and orion, while breathing in the crisp calgary autumn air, thinking about the past two times i saw the aurora borealis from the city, and the one perfect time i saw them in astonishing colour and duration through the window of an airplane. then i spent the rest of the night poring over my old journals, trying to find the entry from margaret river when i mentioned walking home from work at the knights inn, my path across the field led by the southern cross and lit by the moon... it was a beautiful, magical time.

the southern cross holds some mysterious and incredible charm for me, and i think it's because it's so bright and obvious in the southern skies and yet most of the people that surround me day-to-day have never laid eyes on it. it is this twinkling picasso, an absolute heavenly masterpiece, that i guess i can't believe people don't flock to see, the way they do the louvre... or that the people that do get to see it every night don't become enchanted by it at every sundown.

i would walk back to the lodge through gloucester park (which, btw, i only discovered was its name about 30 seconds ago), most days and nights, either from the tavern, the shops, the cafes, the post office or from work on walcliffe road at the margaret river resort: the knights inn. it was a fairly sizeable park and i recall days where i would dress with my bathing suit underneath my work clothes, so as to tear them off as i ran through the park so i could jump straight into the pool. at night i would walk without shifting my gaze from the 'cross, and try to remember every divet in the grass so as to not trip and fall...

i couldn't find the entry, but what i DID find was the entry from exmouth, december 18th 1998, when wade, su and i went to the shore at night to catch sight of the sea turtles laying eggs. well, we didn't see any of them but it was a night full of shooting stars, and wishes were made a-plenty...

i can't help but wonder if any of them came true...

driving home from set on my last job, i missed a turn on the stoney reserve and opted to continue on highway 1A all the way back to calgary. just as i crossed the ghost dam, a shooting star brighter than any i'd ever seen fell to the ground just infront of my car. it was so vividly bright and huge that i actually considered pulling over and looking for the smouldering spacerock. instead i made a wish...

thanksgiving

it's been an awfully long time since my last post, and it's mostly due to going through a totally uncreative period, yet again. not surprisingly, the bouts of disinterest in writing coincide directly with long stretches of exhausting work that are followed by long stretches of boredom... *sigh*

this past weekend was thanksgiving, here in canada, and on saturday night i was suffering from a minor case of the melancholies; i was cocooning on my couch watching mindless television when my phone rang.

"area code 509 ????" i thought to myself, convinced (as i hit 'answer') that it would be a wrong number.... nope. it was dez calling from winthrop washington, just to say hello. i can't say how much that phonecall meant to me --a guy i adore, but with whom i've never corresponded with any regularity. it was incredible to know that the salt of the earth was on the other end of the line...

of course it's not news that that all a person needs sometimes for a quick pick-me-up are their friends.... and i have been blessed, in my lifetime, to know some pretty fucking amazing souls...

so, after i got off the phone with dez, i jumped onto msn messenger and low and behold, there was lindsay. although i intend to see lindz in a little over a month, down in australia, i hadn't communicated with him much over the past while. we chatted for awhile, about the usual things --music, movies, food. can't wait to see the goof...

hangin' online with lindsay got me all jonesin' for aussie, so i (of course) called ems. she was out at a party so the convo was short, but the "i love yous" are always so heartfelt between us that i couldn't help but hang up the phone with a stupid grin on...

in the past two days i've had some extralong conversations with cooie, who happens to be on a working vaykay in belize. when i need counsel, she is my first call --and i'm glad to say the street goes two ways. she is insightful and strong and wonderful...

but the clincher ?

a text reading "what has 4,000,000 thumbs and sucks without you ? ...... downtown toronto."

a smokejumper i met on the beach in the kingdom of tonga....
a punk rocker, radio show host i met backstage at a porkers show...
two of the best friends a girl could ever ask for...
an award winning drummer from a shithot band...

thanks, guys, for making me smile....

x