Restraint

The answer lies in seeking

June 14, 2003 – 11:16 pm

I used to spend my time on people who I know aren’t going to listen, on the off-chance that maybe, maybe some of what I say will make some sense to them, that I’ll make a difference, somehow.

In my heart, I know it doesn’t work that way.

I remember years of frenzied activities, stressful conversations, flamewars, debates, all of it. I remember throwing myself at countless brick walls, trying to knock them down through sheer force of will.

But still, stone remains stronger than flesh.

…

At my worst, at my most vulnerable and drained, I found someone to teach me, to help me cope with the world. Three lessons above all else: We are all responsible for our own happiness, whatever I put my efforts into will increase, and to choose my battles.

I try to keep these close to me in all things. I try to make sure that any cause I devote myself to is positive, just, and not outside of my reach. We can spend forever fighting on the ground to see who will be first to reach the stars.

I still feel these things are true.

…

There is a solution here. There is an answer, somewhere within these words and these walls.

There is truth, if I can find it.

Also posted in LiveJournal Imports | Comments (4)

Words, again.

June 3, 2003 – 12:28 am

This death is a slow one, this death is friction.

Listen:

There is a wall, made of language and logic and reasoning that I cannot penetrate. I cannot tell what the rules are beyond this wall, I cannot tell how it is that what I do is always so improper, so problematic.

I stumble and fall time and time again, thinking that what I am doing is correct. Appropriate. Just. In this, I cannot help thinking that I live alone.

I bloody myself via action and inaction, trying to make it to the other side through sheer will — but stone is stronger than flesh, and every scar is forever.

I hear them, speaking to me through the skin. They whisper secrets and truth in another tongue, and I cannot make myself understand.

..

All things are a process; on a long enough timescale, the probability of any action will approach certainty.

The process of life will always resolve itself; the process of learning has no guaranteed resolution.

There is no comfort here.

…

The only things that seem real are half a lifetime away.

Also posted in LiveJournal Imports | Comments (2)

Toronto.

May 18, 2003 – 9:00 am

…and we crossed the street as fast as we could, the familiar words of hatred in the air.

Bitch. Cocksucker.

They had already knocked the girl down in front of traffic, and she was screaming, sobbing, screaming. The man who almost ran her over had tried to help, and he was on the concrete, three times my size. That left two of us, and six of them.

We got her out somehow, fighting to protect a young lady the size of a twelve-year-old. She didn’t even know we were there, I don’t think. Only that she wasn’t being thrown around anymore, and she was getting away.

By the time security and the cops arrived and dealt with the others, we had made it to the underground parking and out of sight. Leslie kept the police looking elsewhere long enough to share a few cigarettes, and eventually she could talk again. She was from Ottawa, her name was Diane, and between the drugs and the crack of skull on asphalt, she was in pretty bad shape.

The squad car found us eventually, of course. Her boyfriend had already been arrested, and she managed to tell the police that he had her money, her ticket home, her everything.

The security guard asked me if I was alright, and I said that I was. Then she waved to us as the police car pulled away, and by that time it was daylight.

Also posted in LiveJournal Imports | Tagged , | Comments (23)

hmm….

April 8, 2003 – 7:38 am

An Open Letter to My Insurance Company:

Dear Company,

This is Jairus. You may remember me from a claim I filed over two months ago. As you may recall, I injured my leg while I was at work, and although I am not seeking workman’s comp related damages for this claim, I had asked for coverage under the ‘Short Term Disability’ coverage that I have with your organization.

This is taking some time. In the interests of resolving this situation quickly, allow me explain my situation to you.

As you may know, I earn twelve dollars an hour. After deductions for EI, CPP, taxes, insurance premiums, and various other costs, I receive an average of twelve hundred dollars take-home pay. I don’t know if you are familiar with the costs of living in Ottawa, but this income rate puts me beneath the poverty line, meaning I live month to month, or am ‘poor’. Having been without pay for over two months, therefore, is a problem to me. Not having any money would be my first problem, most of my other problems follow directly from that.

I cannot afford to take a cab to my doctor’s for continued monitoring of my injury. I cannot afford to purchase a leg brace which I have been prescribed by said doctor for treatment of my injury. Food supplies are reaching critical levels, and most of the food I own I cannot eat due to a pressing dental surgery need, for which I have no money. I am receiving threatening notices from my utility companies in a variety of colours which state in no uncertain terms that I must remit hundreds of dollars. This, although quite threatening indeed, is overshadowed by the fact that I owe my landlord a sum that is orders of magnitude larger, which if left unresolved will eliminate any need for paying future utilities, as I will not have a house to live in.

In short, this knee injury is ruining my life. If this pattern continues, it is not unreasonable to expect that I will eventually end up homeless, without the ability to receive the medical attention I require to recover fully.

The fear of a chain of events of this nature is what led me to purchase insurance coverage, some many months ago. In the event that I was unable to work, I thought to myself, an insurance policy will take care of my immediate financial needs, while allowing me to take care of my injury, so that I am able to return to work.

Listen.

This cannot be allowed to continue. Every day that you stall for more information, hoping that my claim is frivolous or without grounds, hoping that I’ll tire of endless calls, faxes, forms, and touch-tone telephone prompts, my chances of permanent damage rise to approach certainty. Perhaps worse, every day that passes is another day where I lose access to critical resources, and accrue unreasonable and unnecessary debt.

This has to end. Soon.

…

I hear my bones grinding, the sound of dead wood escaping my skin. My reflection isn’t who I think I am, eyeballs looking out from grey, boney sockets, and a week’s worth of growth when I swear I shaved yesterday.

Seven in the morning, and another night without sleep.

Also posted in LiveJournal Imports | Tagged | Comments (9)

Not pretty at all

March 25, 2003 – 11:57 pm

5000 people marched in Ottawa on Saturday, while more than a quarter of that
number were arrested in San Francisco during a peace rally.

In Baghdad, “Salam Pax” (a pseudonym composed of the Arabic and Latin
words for peace) writes:

23/3
8:30pm (day4)
we start counting the hours from the moment one of the news channels report
that the B52s have left their airfield. It takes them around 6 hours to get
to Iraq. On the first day of the bombing it worked precisely. Yesterday we were
a bit surprised that after 6 hours bombs didn’t start falling. The attacks
on Baghdad were much less than two days ago. We found out today in the news
that the city of Tikrit got the hell bombed out of it. To day the B52s took
off at 3pm, on half an hour we will know whether it is Baghdad tonight or another
city. Karbala was also hit last night.
Today’s (and last night’s) shock attacks didn’t come from
airplanes but rather from the airwaves. The images Al-jazeera is broadcasting
are beyond any description.

[Presidential Documents]
[Page 12565-12568]
[DOCID:fr14mr03-106]

Executive Order 13289–Establishing the Global War on Terrorism Medals

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the
laws of the United States of America, including my authority as Commander in
Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal. There is hereby
established the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal with suitable appurtenances.
Except as limited in section 3 of this order, and under uniform regulations
to be prescribed by the Secretaries of the military departments and approved
by the Secretary of Defense, or under regulations to be prescribed by the Secretary
of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard when it is not operating
as a service in the Navy, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal shall
be awarded to members of the Armed Forces of the United States who serve or
have served in military expeditions to combat terrorism, as defined by such
regulations, on or after September 11, 2001, and before a terminal date to be
prescribed by the Secretary of Defense.

(Presidential Sig.)B

THE WHITE HOUSE,

Pre 9/11, the Taliban were officially invited to Houston, stayed in a five-star
hotel and were chauffeured in corporate minibuses. The Taliban representatives
“were amazed” by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons, and invited
to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal.

America gives aid to the Taliban, praising its draconic anti-drug laws. This
is, until the Taliban refuse to build an oil pipeline that best serves the needs
of America.

Unocal exec John Maresca
to the House: “… we have made it clear that construction of our proposed
pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the
confidence of governments, lenders and our company.”

(2,792 WTC Workers, 3400 Afghani civilians and one regime change later)

Bush:
“Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan develop its own stable government.
Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan train and develop its own national
army. And peace will be achieved through an education system for boys and girls
that works.”

BBC: “Afghanistan
hopes to strike a deal later this month to build a $2bn pipeline through the
country to take gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India.
Afghan interim ruler Hamid Karzai is to hold talks with his Pakistani and Turkmenistan
counterparts later this month on Afghanistan’s biggest foreign investment project,
said Mohammad Alim Razim, minister for Mines and Industries told Reuters [...]
Mr Razim said US energy company Unocal was the “lead company” among
those that would build the pipeline, which would bring 30bn cubic meters of
Turkmen gas to market annually.”

The news is silent as to how quality of life for the average Afghani has improved.
But we know it’ll work in Iraq this time. We only have the interests of the
Iraqi public in mind.

American Propaganda Leaflet: “Do not destroy oil wells.”

The Washington Times: Halliburton awarded contract for proposed ‘rehabilitation’ of Iraqi oil resources. Former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney unavailable for comment.

Also posted in LiveJournal Imports, Ottawa, Politics | Tagged , | Comments (11)

Something softer

March 25, 2003 – 1:58 am

Hair between my fingers, I screamed to make the noise stop to just make it quiet in my head, if only for an instant.

She couldn’t hear me this time; she was crying, she had to be crying, the way I am, with how I deal with these things. I don’t know how she could know me and not cry.

I can’t tell how long I’ve been like this. Months? Years? Everything turns blue when I try to remember. Nothing makes any sense, nothing tells me what I need to know, what I need to do to just turn it off.

Two hundred miles away, I was the one being wronged.

…

I’ve never been able to express how strongly I feel about her, and so I shy away from the attempt for fear of misrepresenting myself. By doing so, I misrepresent her.

How I feel can only be expressed in the space between words.

…

I walked with five thousand angry people to protest the war on Iraq, but it was an impotent anger. As a Canadian, there’s no real target for me to direct my rage, no culpable authority to subvert.

I watched Iraqi mothers and Israeli citizens alike scream at the American embassy, but the five RCMP officers that were there to keep the peace and take photographs made it difficult to maintain any sense of imminent threat; just five tired men working crowd control, and an empty grey monolith with the American eagle on the door.

Also posted in LiveJournal Imports, Politics | Comments (0)

Decompression

February 27, 2003 – 3:52 am

The last two days have been madness.

Leslie and I just finished the third two-day Dark Carnival festival, and while it was a resounding success, it has left us feeling quite drained. There were a lot of technical problems that we had to overcome, in addition to the more mundane stresses of putting on fourteen hours of event time in two days. There were seven different musical acts (not including Leslie and myself), and at least a dozen artists involved this time around, and co-ordination took a lot of time and effort.

Plus, we have another event in a week or so that we need to start polishing up, and perhaps another two in the month following that… and another half-dozen in the works, with plans stretching as far as October.

We’ve been doing pretty well with the finances for the events, which means that we haven’t lost more than a thousand dollars on any given show in the past half-year. Being able to support ourselves full-time with promotion work would be nice, but I think at this point we’d kill to break even two shows in a row.

…

Leslie’s birthday was yesterday, but with everything going on, there wasn’t much celebration time. I feel pretty bad about this, she made sure that on my last birthday, I had my every desire fulfilled, and not being able to do the same for her doesn’t sit well with me.

I think we’ll take a day off sometime soon-ish and do a belated birthday celebration, but it would have been nice to be able to give her the birthday proper that she deserves.

…

Work continues to progress on our not-so-secret Cafe project, and while things are slowly coming together for it, my inability to attend work over the last month has really hit us financially. Almost all of that lost income was earmarked for use by the Cafe, and my insurance company has yet to rule on my application for short-term disability.

While the disability would be retroactive to the day of the injury, the possibility of my application being rejected is very real, and very upsetting. The temptation to try to attend work regularly, even at the cost of permanent damage to my knee, is overwhelming.

I’m really not sure what to do about this, except for work full-steam on our business plan and funding applications, and hope for the best.

…

I need to spend more time doing nothing, sometime soon.

Also posted in LiveJournal Imports, Music | Comments (0)

-28c and sucking.

February 10, 2003 – 9:59 pm

I’ve been inside my house for three weeks straight now, having made it outside only three times. My knee shows no signs of spontaneous recovery, although I hold out hope.

…

I’ve began working on a remix of an Iszoloscope track for an album to be released in the near future, but I’m not very happy with my work. I took a heavy noise/gabber track, sped it up, and tried to turn it into what is essentially hard techno. Instead, I think all I’ve done is make 7 minutes of dull, uninspired trance.

To be fair, I’ve only been working on the track for two days, I’ve only been working with these music-creation tools for two days, and this is the first time I’ve tried to make music in any serious capacity since I was sixteen (when I was quite prolific within the tracker scene), but I find it incredibly discouraging nonetheless.

I have three weeks until the remixes need to be submitted to Ant-Zen, and I may or may not continue work to try to have something by that time.

…

Most of my hair is in a garbage bag in the washroom. I’ve shaved a good portion of it, leaving a wide strip of blue hair along the top of my head.

Rarely have I been so immediately happy with a change in hair style/cut/colour, but I’m really pleased with the way it looks. With that said, I have not discounted the possibility that being indoors for a month has caused me to lose all sense of style.

I hope to have added a piercing or two before I go outside again, and perspective returns.

…

In other news, I’m very happy with Restraint’s recent facelift, even if most of the non-journal material isn’t currently available. Having a new look does wonders to motivate me to keep writing.

Also posted in LiveJournal Imports, Music | Tagged | Comments (8)

79

December 29, 2002 – 7:16 am

Sometimes I really, truly, almost give up on this rock.

It’s not the girl suing because she was given detention, or the ’scandal’ that The Washington Times’ Sayed Anwar of Bethlehem is really Paul Martin of London, or the FDA’s decision to allow food makers to list ‘health claims’ on packaging before they’ve proven.

It’s not the fact that a new appointee to the US Women’s Health policy panel recommends “specific Scripture readings and prayers for such ailments as headaches and premenstrual syndrome”, or that a new appointee to the US Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs condones only the rhythm method because “medicine is permeated with attitudes toward sexuality and fertility that are incompatible with Christian values”.

It’s none of these things. It’s the fact that none of these things are shocking, or will be challenged with any success, because this is just one day’s worth of depressing news. Every day, I could make a post like this, and have just as many (if not more) fucked-up America stories.

With a tide like that, what the fuck is the point, right?

Living in Canada, things are much better here, but it has come to the point where I question how much longer I can ethically spend twenty to fourty thousand dollars a year in a country that is America’s largest trading partner. Some of my money makes it there out of every dollar I spent, and it is not an insignificant sum.

I fully support Canada’s movement towards drug decriminalization (and heroin safehouses), I support healthcare, our tight-as-a-nun’s-ass food and drug standards, and what looks to be an national desire to distance ourselves from the USA… With that said, we’re going to have a new Prime Minister soon, and most of the candidates with any chance of winning have been very pro-american, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see a Clinton-to-Bush style reversal of policy and procedure.

I love my country, and I will continue to work towards its betterment, but I’m thinking it might be time to plan, seriously plan for the future, and decide if a North American climate is where I want to spend the next 23 years.

I don’t think that it is.

Also posted in LiveJournal Imports, Politics | Tagged , | Comments (3)

now where did i put my flux capacitor…

November 23, 2002 – 2:54 am

Have you ever had the feeling that somewhere out there, there is an another you? That there’s another life for you, one perhaps not dissimilar to your own, being lived at this very moment?

Have you ever felt that right now, that other you is experiencing something very real, very profound? That you are, in some way, within sacred space?

…

Canal and Broadway, New York City.

Street lights reflected on wet pavement, and a murmur of cars and conversation that is somehow more solemn than silence.

Also posted in LiveJournal Imports | Tagged | Comments (6)
Page 7 of 9«123456789»