Why I stay up all night

I like staying up all night and sleeping all day. I feel more at peace that way. Darkness brings a closeness and warmth. The stillness makes me feel like I'm not alone because you're supposed to be alone at night.

Confidently and honestly,
D.

Frame of Mind

You don't know what you need, because you know that what you need is inside of you.
No other can give you what it is, only you are able to give it to yourself.
You don't know what you need, but you know what you don't need.
You can feel it in a deep part of you, it screams "this isn't it".
You ignore it, but it gets louder.

Each passing hour it becomes more discontent, begging for what it needs.
Finally you break down asking what it needs, all it replies is "not this".
You can't ignore the screams, you have to get what you need.
Frantically you search, but always comes "not this".
You can't do it, you're going to break.

Absolutely nothing feels right in your life, everything and everyone is wrong for you.
It wrenches inside of you, tearing a hole through your soul.
You feel life suddenly leaving, forgetting you exist.
You gasp for help, reaching to anything.
"Not this", "not this".

You can't do it anymore, you're going to explode and nothing will be left of you.
"Not this", "not this".
You've fallen to your knees, begging it to answer what it needs.
"Not this", "not this".
You try to get angry, you have to feel something, anything.
"Not this", "not this".

You lay dying, nothing left to keep going, defeated by yourself.
"Not this", "not this".
 You remember, in the past, how you lived.
"Not this", "not this", "I need that".

You drag yourself to that old place, it's dusty, but it's safe.
You see remnants, what you needed, but not anymore.
You go to the unopened door, there always is one, always.
You enter, finally peace, you begin to stand up,
Those long forgotten words shake your mind and body "thank you".

You see yourself, your mind, your soul.
It's broken, twisted, injured.
It isn't right, you can see it, something is off.
You grab ahold of yourself, and it takes you a step to the left, not allowing its feet to follow.



Confidently and Honestly,
D.

TL; DR: Sometimes freedom is simply a change in perspectives a way.

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

I’m a terrible human being. Oh well.

Okay, so thinking it about it retrospectively, I guess the third grade was a good year for me. Maybe good is a strong word. It was an eventful year.

First girlfriend √

First kiss √

First time stealing √ (a sweater from our school’s lost and found box)

First “fight” √

First time lying to the point that somebody gets suspended √

What? Just me?

Okay, in my defense, I was young, dumb and didn’t know about morals yet.

I can’t exactly remember what happened that made this whole thing start, but one day I just didn’t feel like going to school, I guess. So, as the school bus came, I hid behind this green electrical box. The bus just drove on by. Now, not knowing my parent’s schedule, I guess I just assumed that my parents left RIGHT as me and my sister went out for school, because I was extremely surprised when I got back to my house and my mom was still home.

As a relatively nice and rule abiding child who never skipped school ever, meeting my mother’s gaze was extremely terrifying. I just didn’t know the consequences of doing such a terrible thing. So when she asked me why I didn’t go on the bus, instead of saying something practical like… Oh, I don’t know… I missed the bus or it never came… I said the following: I’m scared, I’m being bullied on the bus.

When I realized she was home, it’s like time stopped. And all the options went through my head, and that seemed like the most logical. I answered in maybe 10 seconds.

In my mind, this whole thing played out very smoothly. My mother would acknowledge this ‘horrible situation’, let me have a day off school and that would be it.

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

My mother jumped on that shit so fast. She wanted to make sure that I got avenged for the months of being bullied, I suppose. The next day, she drove me to school where we talked to the principal… Now, normal people would have given up here and told the truth. But I was way too stubborn for that. I knew that what I said to the principal had to be my official story. So I told him how, when where and why these two kids were harassing me in the bus.

This lead to them being summoned to the principal’s office. Next to me. As I lied about them bullying me.

They looked at me like I was a complete idiot. They weren’t wrong.

The whole situation lead to their parents getting informed that they have been bullying a kid in a bus, and one of the two kids got suspended for three days.

Needless to say… Those two didn’t talk to me much after that. Not that they really did in the first place… but you know.

That’s life, I guess.

You live, you lie, and you die.

Sincerely and wholeheartedly,

K.

TL; DR: Got a kid suspended for imaginary bullying.

Brakes can't stop me

I haven't posted anything in about a week. Here is part of the story about why. I would like to start off by apologizing for leaving you bored and unsatisfied, but worry not I am back to satiate your boredom.

My girlfriend and I decided to drive down to California to see her family for thanksgiving. For those of you who don't know, this requires driving over some mountains. Now the Siskiyous mountains are hardly difficult to drive through. There's some up and there's some down, as long as your brakes work no problem.

However, brakes were in fact my problem. I'd noticed that I had to brake harder than usual to stop my car and keep it stopped so I wanted to get them checked our before driving 1,000 miles. I take my car over a mechanic recommended to me by my room-mate. He has a look at my brakes and says that there's fluid on them indicating a small leak and that I need to replace my rear brake cylinders. He gives me a quote for $300, I can't afford this.

Now, I know next to nothing about cars, so I ask him how urgent it is that I take care of this as I'm driving to California the next day. He says just get it fixed in the next few months but that he wouldn't drive over the mountains before taking care of it. Unfortunately this is right around closing time so there's no way he can get to it that day. He wouldn't be able to get to it until Wednesday and I need it done by Tuesday morning. So I run over to good ol' Les Schwab before they close and ask them if they'd be able to get it done by mid morning. They say yes and for only $200,I have an appointment for 9 am.

Things are good, I continue about getting ready to go and take my car in when the time comes. The man says they'll pull it in right away, excellent. My girlfriend and I go to the store to buy some food so we don't have to stop too much while driving. I go back to see how the car is coming along around 10:15 and they haven't even pulled my car into the bay yet. Great we aren't gonna get to her parent's until midnight. I talk to the guy and he apologizes and I watch them pull it into the bay.

A short time passes and he comes back and says that they found nothing wrong with my brakes or brake cylinders but they'll do one more check since I did notice the braking issue. It's probable that I'll just need them to flush and fill my brake fluid and that it'll be fifty dollars. Wonderful, things are getting better. Ten minutes later he says the rear brakes just need an adjustment and that I am good to go for twenty dollars.

My brakes felt much better after that and I was feeling good about it. Fast forward to driving down the mountains. We're coming up to a corner that says 45 MPH, the cars in front of me are slowing down for the curve so I press on my brake pedal. And believe it or not, the car slows down beautifully.

Confidently and Honestly,

D.

TL; DR: Got a $20 brake job just before driving over mountains and they didn't stop me.

Grand Papa Raymond

PART I

“And I got this black suit on, rolling around like I’m ready for a funeral.”

-Frank Ocean’s ‘Swim Good’

I don’t remember what I wore at my grandfather’s funeral. Definitely not a suit. Probably a T-shirt and some winter boots. And pants, obviously. You’d have to be really depraved to go to a funeral without pants.

My grandfather’s name was Raymond. Well, technically, that’s not true. His actual name--along with my dad, five uncles and every other catholic male in Saint-Paul, AB at the time--was Joseph. Raymond was just one of his many middle names. But, in a town full of Josephs and Maries, I guess calling people by their middle names was the only way to keep insanity at bay.

I think my grandfather was born somewhere in Quebec, where he got married to my grandmother, Gertrude (Marie, actually, but…you know). They had their first kid (Joseph) there, before moving out to Saint-Isidore, and finally settling down in Saint-Paul. My grandfather was in construction. He wore one of the white hats. Big shot. He was a skilled carpenter too, as a considerable number of handcrafted wooden items displayed in family homes will prove. Apparently, he had trouble with alcohol, and my grandmother hated seeing him tear himself apart like this so bad that she wouldn’t live with him for the better part of his last year here.

But this is all second-hand information: things either mentioned or overheard at tables at family reunions over the years and carefully assembled into a vague, incomplete and pretty useless jigsaw. A jigsaw which I feel my grandmother has little interest in approaching, let alone clarifying. So, here’s the real question: what do I personally remember about my grandfather? Well, aside from a lingering impression of a time he came to Edmonton to help my dad re-paint our house’s siding, I remember his funeral. I guess that’s kind of blunt. But at least it’s honest.

November 11, 2000: News reached my parents that my paternal grandfather had just passed. My mother was pretty pregnant with my younger sister--any day now--when the call came down the line, so, when our forest-green minivan hit the road for Saint-Paul to attend my grandfather’s funeral, it was only my dad (Joseph 5.0 (or 6.0, depending on who you ask (he has a twin))), my sister and myself on board, meaning my dad would have to deal with both driving and discipline all by himself. Lucky for him, my older sister and I got along pretty good, even at the ages of seven and five, respectively. In fact, the only form of ‘discipline’ my parents ever had to use on road trips at the time was essentially bribery: in exchange for a stuffed animal or some other small gift, we’d keep busy and quiet. But this time around, my mother wasn’t involved in the selection of offerings that would be presented to her children.

About halfway through our trip, as my sister and I slowly became increasingly restless, my dad motioned towards a plastic bag on the van floor, indicating it was okay to open it. We’d already guessed this was where our presents were, but we had been awaiting a signal to find out what was inside. Looking back, I kind of wish our gift would’ve made sense. Something sentimental or touching would’ve been nice. Ultimately, I guess I just wish it had at the very least not been something aggressively incomprehensible. But, the way it goes, aggressively incomprehensible is exactly what we got.

Inside the bag were two Star Wars action figures, which really isn’t that bad. What’s bad is that they happened to not only be twin Jabba the Hutts, the obese space slug, but twin Jabba the Hutts, the obese space slug equipped with a tub of translucent lime-green slime which could be squeezed from their mouths to mimic vomiting. One for my sister, one for me. I don’t think there are any scenarios in which a vomit-Jabba would be an appropriately sentimental gift, but using it as a “behave-during-the-funeral, son” gift is definitely at the other end of the spectrum.

As we rolled around, Jabbas in hand, we were unequivocally not ready for a funeral.

Not that it mattered. Nothing would stop us from paying our final respects to the man who conceived the man who conceived me…

To be continued in Part II: A Tale of Cousins and Corpses, in which we are set to examine the full extent of the misbehavior that took place at the funeral parlor.

The Dude Abides,

S

TL; DR: Dead grandpa, yabish/ Vomit-Jabba, yabish

Chess: Modern Warfare

A friend of mine is going to be writing tomorrow's post, so I decided it would be fitting to post a game me and him thought of back in ninth grade. Here you go:

Played on a chess board with all the chess pieces.

Pawn: This piece can move one in front OR shoot 2 squares in front of it.

Rook: This piece can move up to an entire row, non-diagonally, and when it kills another piece, it takes the peace directly behind it as well.

Knight: This piece can move in an L shape of four spaces OR throw a grenade, up to three spaces, that explodes in a square made up of four squares.

Bishop: Can move any length diagonally. If he dies, flip a coin. Heads, he remains dead, tails he lives. If he gets attacked by the rook and survives, the unit behind him also survives.

King: He can move one square in any direction.

Queen: Can move in any direction OR fire a bullet in two diagonal directions.

It is impossible to shoot with less range than indicated.

It is impossible to throw a grenade over people.

Sincerely and wholeheartedly,

K.

Motivational Speaker?

I decided I wanted to try to write a "motivational" speech for some reason. Here goes nothing.

Greetings fellow humans!

I've decided to take this presentation to talk about a kind of identity crisis I went through a few years back. 

Just for a bit of background information, I lived in a small town in New-Brunswick at the time with a populace of around 8,000 people. I didn't fit in, not even in the slightest. Everybody was really into cars, motorcycles, fishing and hunting. I was more of the video game kind of guy. And even with the difference of hobbies, I just wasn't an interesting person at all. I wasn't funny, popular, creative or interesting in any way, really. On top of all that, I was an extremely shy person who didn't like to take risks. That was just basically who I was for the first, oh I don’t know, 11-12 years of my life? I had always accepted this as who I was, because, well, it was who I was. But I was never satisfied. I felt like I could be more than just “that guy”, I guess. About half way through the year I thought of an excellent idea. That I would stop being just… that guy. Or, at least attempt to. Not immediately, but the upcoming summer. So for about 4 months I couldn't stop thinking about things I would do that summer. It was this magical idea, and being a procrastinator, I was actually thinking in the back of my mind that I wasn't going to go through with it. But when school ended, for the first time in a very long time I felt motivated to do this thing I had the idea of doing. Thus spawned the most productive summer of my life.

(On whiteboard, write Yo-Yo, juggling, Rubik's cube and Tae Kwan Do)

I had plans, and I set those plans up right away. The first plan of action was to learn the basics of magic. I had a deck of cards, and I just taught myself magic with online videos, but mostly just books. [Quick demonstration of simple magic trick]. I actually still have, at my dad’s house in New-Brunswick, a deck with hundreds of signatures of people I performed tricks for. On top of that, I learned the Rubik’s cube, because when I was a kid people who could do that were like the greatest ever. I could complete it in 1min20secs. What goes well with magic and the Rubik’s cube? Why juggling and the Yo-Yo, of course. Juggling was much easier to learn than I thought it would be and the opposite for the Yo-Yo. I learned to do a bunch of high level tricks and even taught myself two tricks that involved 2 at once. That summer, on top of all that, I was able to convince my dad to put me in a Tae Kwan Do class.

So what, right? Now, instead of a boring guy with not much going for him, I was a boring guy with not much going for him who knew a few party tricks. I may not have known it at the time, but it wasn't the actual thing that I was learning that was important, it was the process of learning it and applying it to the real world. To be honest, the best thing for me that summer, by far, was magic. Before that summer I was the shyest person ever. I was terrified of being the center of a crowd. And to this day, every sign of confidence you see from me is essentially a stage act. But performing magic in front of random people every time made me learn to have, or try to have, a vibrant personality and to learn social queues. And from that, a sense of humor, of which I had no idea existed, emerged. Everything about that summer was just fantastic, except for the fact that it flew by like nobody’s business.

(Write control for yoyo- balance for juggling – self-reliance for tae kwan do – analysis for Rubik’s cube)

All of that shpeal to basically say this:

I was young and decided to have one productive summer. Two months of not being lazy. And through that, I taught myself so many great lessons. Control. Balance. Self-reliance. Analyzing situations. And mostly, I gained a personality. (hold cards in fan)  But life has a lot less tricks and mirrors than magic (turn cards towards audience, so they see each card). The options are clear, no illusions. It’s up to you to make the first step. So, I ask again, pick a card, any card.

Sincerely and wholeheartedly,

K,

TL; DR: One summer is all it takes to change person's life. Get on it.