choice

It’s our anniversary today, two years to the day.  I’ve always said that this day is the most important day in my year, because it’s the only occasion where we really celebrate our choices, our lines in the sand that we’ve drawn.

We can look back on our anniversary over the 365 straight days that we chose to stay, to make a stand and to stand by each other, to endure the hard times and to enjoy the great ones…  and we can commit again for another day still, another hour, another second.

There are no rules in love, no contracts, no court of appeal, we are free to wrong each other and hurt each other with no real recourse or recompense, to lie to and betray each other with little defense to be seen to such assaults.  And yet…  left to our devices, those aren’t the choices I’ve made.  They aren’t her choices either.

She chose instead to make my life wonderful, to support me when I’ve taken risks or taken turns for the worse, to celebrate my success and to endlessly believe in me, to build me and carry me and treat me better than I wonder if I deserve.

I hope my choices sit well with her too.

We’ve chosen two years of love, two years of commitment through two very, very busy years.  It seems absurd to my mind that it’s only been two years, considering both how much we’ve been through together, and how much I still have yet to learn about my beautiful girl.

I believe, sincerely, that I’ve only scratched the surface of her patience and good will, her endless desire to do right and do well.  I believe, sincerely, in her.

I believe in us, and I don’t believe for a second I really have a choice at all.

If the price of love is everything, well, I pay it, and I’ll take out a loan if the rates do go up – it’s one vice I can’t afford to live without.

I chose you every day for two years straight, and today, I choose you again.  I love you, I adore you, you impress and inspire me, and I beg and beg and plead for you to not ever change.

You are the girl, my woman and wonder

And I’ll wonder forever if I ever can be

Half of the man that I see in the mirror

You’re nearer and that’s right where I need you to be

So just let me hold you, in my arms, your sweet charms, I won’t harm, I swear it, you’ll be safe with me

I’m here for an hour, a minute, forever, whenever you want me, whatever you need

I love you baby.  You make every day special, your kind of kindness reminds me why kindness matters as much as it does.  I couldn’t live without you, and if I have any sort of say in this at all, I won’t have to, I’d never choose to be away.  You’re special and perfect and I need you to be mine.

Thank You For You.

~ James

so glad you answered

I envy the resiliency of the friendships I enjoyed when I was much, much younger and nobody had any mobility or options.  When I was little, once you’d made a friend, that was the it and the all of it, you could fight and bicker and play around and sleep over and get into all sorts of absurd twists and turns of social norm, and there wasn’t much give and flex with that bond, your friends were your friends, and a careless word or a foolish power struggle were impotent to cast any sort of shadow at all.

I vividly remember wondering wildly why my parents never had their friends visit like I did.  Now I can only guess, each guess more likely than the last.  One insecurity, one miscommunication, one hobby taken up by one party and not the other, one flirtatious glance in the wrong direction, one bad joke, one empty apology, one petulant argument, one failure to trust, one failure to care, to love…  these infinite, unchecked successes at being too, too human add up to an infinite failure to be decent in the least.

The love of my life recently returned a brother to me, a friend lost to time and the everyday for infinitely poor reasons, and I’m enjoying every minute of our now new time together.  It’s not the same as it was, but perhaps that’ll come.  Perhaps it’ll be better?  Or worse?  Exciting in any case to explore a future where one’s already been so prolific in writing one’s past.

Hope is so frightfully resilient, I fear I may never in my life be found without it, and it’s hard to hate our humanity when I know such very good humans.

I’m so glad she called, and so glad you answered, and I’m so glad we carry on now as we do, dear friend and family; brother and peer.

Love,

~ James

innocence

Photography is a beautiful weapon and fundamentally pointless medium;  it fascinates me, for all of the clever angles and soft lighting and candid captures of the best possible subjects never even come close to mirroring out to me what I understand to be the essence of these people I love.  The moments I sharply carve across my memory, these sometimes subtle and always sublime clips and sound bites that take purchase are never in any form captured in the four walls of the frame – no, it captures something else entirely, like a provocative quote taken well out of context, or emotional code weaved in between pixels and paint to charge otherwise meaningless snapshots with hidden value.

Observe:

This is for all intents and purposes a pretty awful picture in it’s composition, it needs photoshop work for colour correction and you might think the focus here is the dog; it’s disorganized in pose and posture, poorly lit and hard to like.  This is a picture of two brothers deliberately posing for a shot.

It does not tell you the long, winding, painful path of personal change and change of mind that made this picture possible.

It does not explain or well capture the brilliant smile that spreads over my uncle’s face every time he laughs with his brother, every time *his* brother comes over for a Sunday BBQ.

It does not remind you that the threads that bind and wrap together the spirit of this photograph are gossamer fragile and ever ready to be rent by a misplaced word or wordless glance.

And it definitely does not teach you, as it teaches me, that our choices do matter, that our efforts are not always in vain, and that if you’re going to decide to be glue, you need to damn sure be ready to never let go of that which you decide to pull forcibly together.

—

I was told today that I’m a good man by my uncle.  My only response to him was, “Hmm, well, *we* are good men, let’s put it that way and aim to keep trying to be good men.”  I’m just as dark and damaged as anyone else, with my own 16-piece set of axes to grind.  I’m no better than anyone I know, no better at all than anyone I consider good men in their own right for their own reasons.  Choosing to minimize one’s faults and failings is a fault and failing in and of itself, I’m not better, I’m just a little different in my application of myself to the lives of everyone else.

But then Nietzsche says that there is an innocence in admiration, for comes usually from those to whom it has not yet occurred that they may someday be admired as well.  And he’s right.

And that someday was yesterday and two weeks back and as long as I’ve know him:  I hope my uncle understands that I admire him as well.

Love,

~ James

so often; too often – you’re beautiful

I can handle it, all of it, and that’s a fact.  I can deal with the ebb and flow of the everyday, with the thorny everyday which pricks and scratches at my paint and wears down my luster to a deep matte by week’s end.  Those slings and arrows don’t scare me, I keep my spear and hammer close, and I slog into the warzone with cold eyes and clear disdain.

On the worst days, where one comes to wonder why the cards are still even being dealt at all, I can take the insult, the detriment and decline of soul, the defacing and defamatory and denial and dissolution of resolve, all the many cat-tails of the barbed whip of business and chore, wildly slung around the room and invading my self-less personal space, my hair-thin line a hair’s width off my skin.

I have patience, and I heal like anyone else, and I sit quietly in the eye of that storm.

But let me tell you know of a wraith that works in ways I cannot endure.  His name is Doubt, and he creeps into the hearts of too many of those I love.

I have no patience for his presence and I with all violence and sweeping strokes will dash him vengefully away and in broad arc, wildly away, far away from the few wonderful people I am so privileged to know, and whom he curses in unhallowed ways that I cannot allow when these curses are so categorically untrue.

And powerless we are, so often, too often, to aid each other with Doubt’s unflinchingly horrible embrace,  and so often, too often does he enter unannounced and unwelcome, placed there by a careless, callous word, cast with ill favour and with disrespect at it’s sails, shoving it onwards against even the word’s will, for it too now doubts it’s ability to cease flight while airborne.

And these words find their target in the dark places we don’t talk about at parties and with friends, the sad places where we all hate ourselves and every mirror without exception only seems to show us the very worst of our angles with all corners chipped off and every one of our failures laid out and catalogued along the side like the menu of a restaurant who’s food you can’t stomach, and all the while Doubt feasts monstrously on the very stuff that makes us glow with radiance like the angels we so honestly should understand ourselves to be.

With every quivering fiber of my heart and mind and tears on my cheek let me express once and for all, with force and resonance and a hoarse, charged voice thrown out to the warm summer wind like thick raindrops are hailed down from the thunder, I swear it and swear it and swear that the following is true beyond honest, and honest beyond Doubt:

You are beautiful, and we are all so much the better for that simple fact, and in this argument, let me sit quietly on watch as your torchlight in the mist to remind you there is a counterpoint to those quiet, awful whispers you hear all too often.

You are beautiful, and if the world comes to ruin, I’ll still be screaming it to the winds with my very last breath, that more souls might lend an ear and drink of this simple, wonderful truth.

With love,

~ James

 

a very sketchy week

First sketch in a long time.  35 minutes start to finish, had to get it out, felt like sketching for whatever reason tonight.  This has been a long, absurd week, rife with drama and all the making of good stories; betrayal, insult, clairvoyance, hope, death, dreams, family, love, pain, judgement, schism, loss.  Great words which paint great pictures.

I still very much can’t wait to write my next piece for this white backed canvas of Ex Movere Two, but this piece is not that piece.  This piece is the exhausted chickenscratch distraction of a mind too far wandered away, too lost without compass and clock, too strained and stretched thin and rolled out with a firm pin.  I have no more cabinet space to file away the wonderful and terrible memories, no allotment left at present for the catalogue and arrangement of my tab-marked manilla stacks upon the desk.

I’m not even sure that I will tell the story of this week when I sit down to tell stories again.  I think this one might be just for me, my own little dervish of details and all of it lacked good common sense from most everyone.

So a simple good night then; we’ll trade words again when my words find their wisdom.

And to the beautiful someones who did keep me sane this last little while, you wonderful family and friends who I took the time to speak to about things that needed to be said, you know who you are, I love you and I thank you.  You lot give me real purpose and a great, brimming, unspeakable sort of hope for the next thirty years of my life and I cannot wait to wake up tomorrow to carry on and forward and round the next bend.

But there’s no set course charted here though, oh no.  No pretty maps to guide us through the maze ahead, no sirs, no ma’ams.  We’ll ink those up as we go for the next ones to follow, and in this endeavour I expect you all to do your part.

~ James

pyre

My grandmother is dying.  She’s something like 162 years old now, and I’m way too young to put that into any sort of perspective.  People handle death in such fascinating ways.

From what I understand, some parts of my family are seeking to control the proceedings and the ritual of a death oncoming in the family; as if their holding the holy scepter at our tribal meetings gives them some sort of real authority to speak.  But then, parts of my family seek to control anything and everything they can.  I’ve found that to be the most alienating element of my family get-togethers at the usual appropriate times, birthdays, christmases, and so on and on and off the pages fall from the calendar and eight months go by without my seeing my extended brood.

“It’s about her, she’s the one dying!”

“No, it’s about us, we’re the ones who’ll be left behind.”

Two of maybe fifty opposing viewpoints.  I suppose this is my sacred space, and my empty screen, so I get to lay out my perspective on the issue here.

Which is, perhaps predictably, a lack thereof.  I don’t know this woman who lies in a hospital bed, scared of and impatient for the impending passage she will soon undertake.  I don’t know her at all, who she is, what stands she took in her life, what she was passionate about, what values she really upheld as fundamental and unassailable.  What I’ve learned of her is the value of my grandmother as a symbol to which we all relate and reflect off of, the oculus that casts it’s overhead light over our little family and it’s lynchpin and foci for it’s conventions and ceremony.

She’s the everpresent anchor to our status quo.  I know she means powerful things to the people who mean powerful things to me, and that’s an awkward relationship to have.  She’s simply not one of the main characters in my story though.

If I’m being sincere, I confess that I see these winds of change twisting up and I can’t help but be a little inspired.  With the passing of our matriarch, each and every one of us take tangible grip of the reins of our generation and find a few more forks on the road to choose where we’ll drive our chariots next.  I don’t know anything about this woman who’s about to die, nothing of substance at all, and I suppose if I take anything away from that I realize very clearly that I won’t allow myself to head down that particular road.

Pretty soon now our little  tribe is going to be gathering again and I think it’s high time to cut the wheat from the chaff, cast out a few lifelines to the good souls I’ll see in the black-shrouded crowd and bid a blank-faced farewell to the rest.  I want to be bringing some beautiful little lives into the world soon enough and I’d like to have a decent idea who they can expect to actually *know* as they grow up in this oft scary world.

I don’t want them to find themselves at 25 years old with a grandmother on their deathbed and feeling little to nothing at all about that sinister little sliver of life.

This is our time, and our generation, and if we’re going to have a meaningful relationship my dear, sweet, over-extended, extended family… we ought to be working on that.

Life is not ‘fleeting’, as I so commonly see it described in cheap literature and poorly written TV.  Life is rapidly rushing over us faster than we’ll ever perceive, past our ears and whipping through our fingers and showing no sign of slowing down whatever.  We’re born, we have a few laughs and we’re staring at a matte white hospital ceiling wondering where all the time went and how many loose ends we used to care about leaving unravelled.  I have no designs on a neat and tidy story, but I’ll damn well have something identifiable of an character arc by the time I am done.

I’ll be my own little overexposed rainbow; my own little parabolic song, and I’ll be at least crystalline and clear in that display.

And I’ll know my grandchildren if I’m god-touched lucky enough to earn any at all.

~ James

oasis

The sky is inked up in a cruel shade of midnight tonight, with the beautiful brown hues cast by a sun still setting dashing a gentle swirl of colour into the deeply blue otherwise of the candlelight that danced behind the ceiling of the world.

Wind is rustling over the lake before me, rippling and swerving the current’s path to what looks to my eye in every direction and none at all, just a gentle vibration – so fitting a visual feast to match the rumble and cascade of the clockwork rattle dripping down over the lake and resonating outward from the bridge that hangs overhead as the cars scream by across it.

There’s the little area near where we live that I’ve only just begun to explore, but I can already tell that it will, this summer, become my absolute favourite piece of the planet to visit.  I’m sitting here on the end of the pier as I write this, my face lit by the glow of my tiny computer screen, it’s brightness turned down as far as I can to least and little disturb my little wind-whispered silence and dark. It’s a beautiful night, if I’m being honest, just sublime, and I’m so glad I dropped in to visit it tonight.

The little patch of natural scar consists of a short conduits of paths jutting in and out and under the bridges across a well travelled road, connecting in and between an urban lake, a set of boat locks, and a waterfall and rockscape that sits so out of place in the urban whirl that it can take your breath away with it’s very existence, if not by it’s generous aesthetic.

I wonder what on earth this is all doing here, this beautiful little oasis in my corner of the city, and why aren’t we all out of our homes tonight to sit out on this pier with me to watch the auburn hues slide out of the deep blue sky and the clouds all fade to black as time ticks on into the evening.  I wonder when I sing aloud, my voice drowned out by the roar of the rapids and small falls, why there’s no one else out here in chorus.

Of course if my little dock were actually bustling with plebes tonight, I’d have a wholly different complaint, but am I really the only one who needed a little fresh air and holy space tonight?

I must be, for those paths had but two feet upon them tonight, on the best of all nights to tread paths.

~

~

I spent the weekend so far with my friends and their children and I feel revitalized by the experience.  Anyone who knows me knows that I simply adore children and I am so seduced by the prospect of fatherhood it brings a soft warmth to my soul when I grant myself license to dream about it. I feel as though when I look into their proud and beautiful eyes that I have little else left to do with my life but to spend a lifetime with my woman and our children to be, and bring these new lives into the world to teach them to explore as I do and find for themselves these little, wonderful secrets within their lands, and help fight the hardening of their little hearts as life imposes itself upon them, taking base pleasures in disappointing their young souls as I can full well expect it to.

This is unquestionably the most interesting time to be alive, and I’m giddy and garnished with grin when I dream my dreams of life oncoming with my loved ones.

I can’t wait to show them everything, and better still, to watch them create beautiful moments that will sit proud on the pushplates of  the scales of fair fate and ply all the more of it deeply to an unfair imbalance and tip; to gather all the beauty and wonder that we may experience together in this life and grant it upon gently over the apex of my mountainous and unyielding recall; to top-down dress me from head to toe in all too many wonderful memories and stock my plate and pantry with well too much and much too more than my fair share of happiness.

I see that path that lays before me as I stare down this pier from where I sit on the end, at it’s very edge, feet dangling, one slip from a kiss from the waters below. I see where I am meant to go, board by board to path to sidewalk to front door to bedroom to the next day and beyond.

And then a duck quacks sharply from somewhere out on the black lake, and so I pack up to head for home.  Too much of a good thing is too much for me, and I’ve already had more than my fair share tonight.

~ James

pariah

Exile is a strange thing, be it an exile from the heart of another or simply banishment off of the ground you keep under your feet; it breeds in the soul a sense of assault and poor patience with one’s judgement and the jury that handed down the sentence.

Even the most patriotic soul will erode in the tides of time, our great memory washed upon and washed away by tick tocks of the clock; the cruel master that cheapens our resolve towards good and kind act and gradually gives way to indifference when faced with no difference at all, in the day-to-day communique from soul to sister and back.

Even the most certain and loving hearts beat only so long before they kick off and step out for a walk, out by the pier and the winding waters where we hold our breath and just forget to breathe again.

You take great pains to forget I exist, all the while, with each passing day, how easy it becomes for me to forget why that used to matter at all.

Time enough and time again will pass and pass and pass, and no longer will I simply no longer know you, but no longer will I still care to learn.

I don’t want to say goodbye; but I’m forgetting to say hello, in my heart and in my mind, and your precious face is losing precious space to the crowd as it comes into view.

~ James

still-life on a kickstand

Every brick of every building I pass by was actually put there by somebody.  Ever pillar and every tile and every inch of concrete was poured or installed by someone in a noble attempt to gussy up our hamster cage a little more, to move in and make a home of our surroundings, to draw in the familiar and roll out the rug.

Every thread of every fabric of these brightly coloured and wildly varied hats and pants and bags that cover and hang off every shade and tone of skin imaginable, all of them woven and wound and twisted up together so we can call ourselves different and paint on a personality.

But if you’re going to really see someone, my humble recommendation is that you should look past the sunglasses and shade cast by their silhouettes and look to the look on their face as they look, look to their honest shamble and proud gait and how they carry themselves, how they move in the world and move through it.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I hardly move around once I arrive, and I’m either leaning against a pillar or standing tall and erect and trying to fight for good posture.  So what does that say?  Prideful, sedentary, and in need of support?)

I saw a woman today that stood with her legs fired down at sharp angles and hips rigid in posture, feet ram-set into her cork-base wedges, legs crossing one another at the knees and drawing her form into a sharp, wide-based X.  The pose was so striking and she stood so central to my field of view, I wondered if I wasn’t watching a papertoll coming to life – for an instant there was a clear outline and separation between her ruby coloured jacket and the rest of my life.  What presence; what a stance.  She must have been a fascinating human being, I’m certain of it.

I try to see people, I think that’s what I’m essentially doing here, I’m just not engaging them in the way I’d want to.  If I was, I’d have told that girl with the wonderful stance that she’s convinced me that she’s going to do amazing things in this life, and that I believe in her, and she gives me some small source of hope.

I’d tell the fifity-five year old man with the thin, zipperlike eyes and the strawberry jam in his beard that he makes me ridiculously and beautifully uncomfortable, and I have no idea how he’s doing it with just a small patch of red condiment.

I’d tell the girl who crossed the entire bus station so that she can walk by right in front of me for the 50th day in a row that yes, she does have extremely firm thighs and a very exotic hairstyle, and yes, I *did* take notice, but really, if she honestly wanted me to think she is pretty, she can leave the intensely tight jeans at home and simply smile once in a while.  Smile trumps thighs, pretty girl, and that’s a fact; I care if you’re happy, not how sharp the creases of your jeans build up around your ass, I promise.

Just stop forging ahead for one moment and tell me you’re happy if you’re actually happy, or miserable if you’re suffering, and we can go from there.  You walk past me every day, you always alter your route to ensure you brush right by me, and I promise – I swear it, I see you, you’re noticed by me, despite what you may think.

I’d tell the sad fellow that picks up garbage with the long claw-picker that he’s ironic to the core; children buy those tools as toys and enjoy them immensely.  The red claw with the black shaft and the yellow handle, remember those?

But I don’t tell people these things like I used to, I don’t tell them because there’s no framework for passion amongst strangers and you can’t live an unconventional life around conventional people without hurting the people you love.

But speaking of the woman I love…

—

My saving grace is my own woman, my pretty girl, the one I get up for and go home to.  I tell her everything she needs to know about me, and that will just have to do, because the sun rises and falls with her every breath and my life with her is sunset and colour and scarves of love wrapped all around me.

I wonder if she wonders when she reads my recent words why I’m not writing about her like I used to.  The truth is, with that topic, nothing’s changed for me.  Writing about her is like feasting on candy, I can carry on and on and on and I enjoy my description of her almost as much as I do her company.  She’s still very much the woman I fell in love with, which means I’m still very, terribly much in love with her, and that’s that, and sometimes you have to let facts stand on their own two feet and strike a pose for themselves.

Fact:  She’s the woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, have children with, grow as old as I can with.  Look at this fact in all it’s majesty.

Impressive, no?  :)

I’m scared of my shadow and a long sleepless night, but I’m not at all scared of *us*, I’m certain on this front beyond any doubt.  She’s the only real person I’ve met that my everdark heart can’t learn to hate; no matter what she does, she always makes me smile, at good times and bad, through pet peeves and quiet moments, and on best days and during long cries and I wear a sly half-smile of fully good cheer to find her still on my arm and still so very much the best 51% of my soul.

You want to know who I am, to see me?  These legs aren’t kickstands, after all.  Just look where they’ve taken me:

Right next to you, babe.

Love,

~ James

sing for the pockets

I’m never going to wish to experience these moments again and I pray I won’t keep them in memory.  This inertia, this static form and firm shape in an otherwise blurry frame, I can’t be that guy.  And I’m not asking for this with a stern look and a steel jaw for progress; no,  just motion, tangent, direction and speed, I need dynamics and inconsistent, maybe chaotic, shift.  I’m myself when I’m in the trenches with the rest of the deplorable mob, hacking it out from moment to memory to shiver to smile.

Action photography is such a lie, nobody has ever experienced those frozen moments of time where the shot is just about to be taken or the car is whipping around the corner at 75 miles a minute.  If you’re really engaged in those moments when the world is swirling right by, you’re more than anything just engaged in your own person, struggling to hold that strained and extreme, difficult note of the song as you belt it out under the hot lights and crushing expectations; you’re silencing that world by demanding an echo through action.

“Did you see me mom?  Did you see it?!”

We know who we are when we’re no longer able to impress, but while we’ve still got it, christ, we’ve got to sing it out, just sing until our voices rake to ribbons and we’ve got nothing left to sing about, just leave it all on the stage there along with the dead skin shed from who we used to be.  Through that song we evolve, every song we really sing, we evolve, we design our vector and take flight upon it’s end.

I’ve taken to playing Guitar Hero with my family.  Yes, I’m probably 13 years behind the curve on this, but there’s something special about it, playing it with family, our little performances, endlessly trite but really without end.

I don’t really think I can sing with any quality, my real voice is here, letter to letter, but I do enjoy singing, in much the same way I enjoy food.  I love to sing the words of a really excellent song and listen to myself push it out just a little farther every time I try it, just a little louder, just a little less timid, just a little more convinced that nobody is going to hate me when I raise my voice and just scream for a while, surrounded by the people I love most.

I like to imagine myself singing to someone, and maybe they are 15 years old and running from the world like I was, at 2:19 in the morning, and they haven’t slept in days and haven’t felt anything real in months.  Maybe they were just like me and it’s my voice and my words and my music and ideas and emotions and effort that they cling to as their one anchor to the world as their lungs burn and their heart aches and nothing makes sense at all.

I like to remember singing for my family and really caring how I sound, I like to pretend that I’m still singing for them as I’m 25 years old and I’m still running from the world, in terrible slow motion, with no waking life to brag about, remembering my voice and the words I sung and the music we played as one anchor I cling to when my mind feels burnt and my heart breaks and everything makes even less sense than before.

I love my family so much, they force some colour into these awfully grey days, and I know I’m onto something here.

And that’s the brutal truth of it too.  I’ve got my little pocket of family, my little pocket of music to work, from work, and whenever I can fit it in inbetween, and my little pocket of time with the love of my life, and that’s the only reason why I get up every day, for those three brief, beautiful fortunes afforded me as payment for the misery of my day-to-day parabola I’ve found myself in.

And I’ll take that trade any day of the week and six times on Sunday.

I’m the luckiest man in the world.

Love,

~ James