Podcast Episode 1

Investment Believing

This past weekend I was treated to a bar brawl at my place of employment. A scrap here and there in a bar is not entirely out of place though most certainly I don't deem it acceptable behaviour for normal adults with a functioning brain. Yet from what I've observed in the past few months, and years if you count my out of character excursions to clubs, is that aggression and posturing in these settings has not only become acceptable but in lots of cases expected.

Popular 'causes for fights or angry inebriated altercations generally include: Frontin', dissin', disrespectin', stepping on someones shoes, having an opinion that differs from another person, claiming that your choice of beer is in some way superior to the choice of another, what race you are, what sexuality you are, where you come from, where you currently live. And the list goes on into dubious territory.

Last night in the middle of the large messy pigfuck of a human knot that occurred a large scared young man started screaming at the top of his lungs.

"Fucking Iranians!"

He repeated this statement many times before a staff member was able to calm him down. I believe that he was speaking this of some of the young men who were involved in the altercation. I'm unaware of their actual racial backgrounds and in the end it's irrelevant. What is relevant is that he was screaming about a race in general, as if that was the 'cause of the altercation all together.

As the initial fight was broken apart the crowd shifted to another part of the room where someone else started getting their head punched in. The pack wanted blood and they were out to get it. I'm not sure what the 'cause of any of these fights were but as far as I was told it wasn't over anything more than someone being bumped or someone being briefly verbally rude.

I managed to circumnavigate the crowd and make it to the bottom of the stairs where I told everyone below that there was no way they were going up until we sorted the whole mess out. At the top of the stairs the group of young guys who had been involved in the first altercation were yelling at the remaining opposition upstairs. Things such as where they were from, and that they'd been disrespected. One of them wasn't wearing a shirt, and it wasn't because it was Halloween. Totally unwilling to back down for fear that they'd be considered lesser men.

I'm not going to be so brash as to come straight out and say that all of this is the Jersey Shores fault. Ok I'll admit that earlier I may have posted something to that effect on someones facebook wall, but I was a little angry. What I really mean to say is that media influences, such as the Jersey shore, on young impressionable people give them the idea that might makes right. As long as, y'now ,some asshole was talking shit, or you didn't like the way someone was generally behaving. It doesn't help that reportedly each cast member makes thirty thousand dollars per episode. This seems to be a pretty widely known fact amongst people that watch the show and from what I've thought about it this just further reinforces that the behaviour exhibited on the show is not only acceptable but something to be aspired to. They make a lot of money for being ignorant assholes, so I can understand the logic people would use in exhibiting that same behaviour. It also seems to give people licence to justify doing nearly anything based on nothing more than the fact that they may disagree with the principles at hand. I've used the example of Jersey Shore here but examples of how impressionable we really are can be found all over the place. I remember when that grandaddy of garbage "entertainment" known as "The simple life" first came on the air. I was shocked and appalled, even as a stupid sixteen year old, by how many people thought that not only was Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie's behaviour acceptable because it was entertaining, but that they thought it was something to be emulated as well. Two relatively useless people who have more money than they know what to do with behave poorly in every single facet of social interaction they have whence removed from their comfort zone. I'm really glad that young women had these kinds of projected role model to emulate. It's cool though you act like a bitch that the world owes everything. Keep it up long enough and maybe you'll get your own fragrance or a line of designer something. There are lots of poor male role models out there too but for the sake of time I'm only going to discuss the UFC. I see nothing inherently wrong with the actual sport of UFC. Guys have been testing each other in the art of physical combat since we learned how to make a fist, and while I don't condone violence I can certainly see the appeal in the "warrior" nature of the sport. But that's pretty much where it stops in terms of reality. See I like the idea of some zen warriors without ego duking it out with their finely honed skills but to watch two cro-magnon lookin' guys climb into a ring to brawl after months of declaring themselves stronger than the other just to hock some material goods that promote hostility, punishment, brutality, and brazen encouragement to the "might makes right" doctrine.

So for all my complaining and observations what's the point right? It's real easy to turn this into an "us and them" argument. It's easy to blame it on the corporations and the big scary "they", that floats around ubiquitously through the conversations of the paranoids and the aggressors. What to do right? Wake up. Pay attention. Skim off that thick layer of bullshit that gets heaped onto everything we see, do and manage to believe in. Make up your own mind about some stuff. What ideas do you have that you believe in? What is your reaction when you disagree with the ideas of someone else? What ideas are you being sold every when you leave the house, turn on the tv or go to any website? Seriously think about it. What did you buy into this week? What beliefs do you invest yourself in and, perhaps more importantly, are they going to pay off in the long run?

The next step

As some of you might be aware, that is if you follow the writing that I put up here on the internet, I haven't been as prolific as usual with new material. There is a reason for this. I don't want to use the internet as a crutch. I started thinking about it mid-way through the summer . I've been writing for what feels like a long time, six years, and I've documented a half decade of my existence within various forms of bloggery and facebooking and at some moment this I decided that I didn't want to exist on the internet in such a heavy presence any more. I didn't want to feel like a wiener every time I told someone to go check out my blog, or even worse direct them to my facebook feeds. But what next right? If I wasn't going to use the internet how was I supposed to do to get my work out there in the world? The answer was so staggeringly simple that I found it amazing that I hadn't thought of it before. Make it real. Just make a physical copy of it and do.

So over the course of the summer I produced two issues of a 'zine. About three hundred copies per issue released. It cost me about a grand all said and done. It was a this point that I realized that I had found a way to do what I wanted on my own terms. That I could progressed my future as a writer without having to compromise any of my entirely self righteous beliefs about the pursuit of writing as a career. That being said choosing this new way of life required that I change my status of employment. Back to bartending for me. My new world order, as I continually refer to it, is comprised of a self imposed schedule which I've already found to be a challenge. Saying that I'm going to wake up and read and write for six hours every day is one thing, actually doing it is another. But that's my goal right now. My mission is to live, and write. It's as simple as that really.

I've spent the past four years of my life getting really wrapped up in living. I think it's been good. Had I not gotten into a large amount of shit messes, personal and otherwise, I never would have gotten to this place where I am right now. Where I'm able to provide for myself everything I need to preform the task I've assigned myself. I'm writing this here and now to say that if you've been following me heavily, or at all, on the internet? Don't wait up for new posts. I'm not saying that there isn't going to be anything hitting the worldwide web, I still want to widely share, but at the end of the day I think that a medium that requires I put some hard work and ingenuity into it will yield a better over all product.

If you haven't received a copy of my 'zine yet and you've requested one, either via mail or face to face with me I apologize for not getting you one yet. I'm going through a hopefully brief process of getting my shit together with this new world order. If you're still interested send me a facebook message, or e-mail, or just get in touch with me somehow and I'll make sure you get a copy. I appreciate everyone's support and will take the time now to thank anyone and everyone who has ever read my work while it's been online. Without you I never would have made that next crucial jump into a work that exists outside the all too easy .com.

There's always Kraft dinner.

A chef once told me, "at the end of the day? It's just food". I took a lot from this. Like at the end of the day? You could be eating Kraft Dinner instead of anything else that will taste a million times better. Let me see if I can elaborate on this a bit for you.

I started working in the kitchen of a busy fine dining restaurant about five and a half months ago now. Prior to this? I'd work front of house my entire "career" in the restaurant industry. I'd bussed tables, hosted doors, ran and expedited food, served tables, tended bar, and managed. I've loved many of those jobs for many different reasons. Serious, there was a point where I thought that bar tending might be one of the coolest jobs ever. That all changed the first day I set foot "in" the kitchen. I'll get to that but I need to give you a bit more background information first.

I like to work in restaurants in ways that most of my friends ,and people in general, that don't will probably never understand. It is a high intensity game of chess that requires meticulous understanding of a variety of variables at any given time and the skill to execute the tasks required in the certain allotted time. A well executed "slam" in a restaurant from a front of house, and back of house perspective is probably one of my greatest addictions. If you do not and cannot understand the concept of "moving with hustle" you will not make a good restaurant employee. The intensity that exists in the front of house is all about being in the right place at the right time, knowing what is happening in places you can't see, and knowing when exactly you need to be where. People have only a limited amount of patience and as a front of house person it is your job to do what needs to be done to make them happy, even thrilled, before their patience runs out. If you can go above and beyond the call of duty during your shift? If you can pull out all the stops to make someones experience that much better? Then you are a great front of house employee. If you can do that without maligning, undercutting and while helping out all , and I mean ALL, your co-workers? That makes you an extraordinary front of house employee. When you can achieve your own success without compromising, and even aiding, in the success of others? That makes you someone that genuinely cares about the concept of service as a job. I like to believe that I am one of those people. I like to believe that before I ever worked in the kitchen? I had the kitchen's back. It's not that I chose the cooks side over the servers side. It was to me that we were all one and the same. That there should exist no division between us because fundamentally the best of us were all their for the same reason. To put amazing tasting food into the mouths of people. That's about as simple as it gets for me. No cooks no food. No servers, food doesn't go to the table. It is a symbiotic relationship of two entirely different skills and personalities that are required to exist, if not in harmony, then at least a loose allegiance. This being said I will now turn my attention towards the kitchen.

I thought that working the floor was intense. I thought that running around like a madman while maintaining a smile and appearance of calm was a job not for the faint of heart, the following is not to say the contrary. But you will have no idea until you do it. In the kitchen during a standard day I do the following: Reach into a five hundred degree oven at least a couple hundred times. Use knives sharp enough to take off a finger so easily that you don't notice it until you're bleeding all over the floor. Keep track of up to (right now though I'm sure the number will rise the longer I stay in the kitchen) ten different pans, all with food cooking at different speeds. Contend at times with physical and mental exhaustion, dehydration and extreme heat. Coming into the kitchen I accepted two things, if nothing else. A. That I WOULD cut myself. B. That I WOULD burn myself. These two things are an inevitability and anyone that works in a kitchen and tells you otherwise is full of shit. A standard menu consists of a multitude different components that require a cook to assemble them in a proper method in a set amount of time and to a certain standard. Unless you're serving food that comes directly out of a package, which I think is one of the greatest travesties to be committed to food, it goes like that. For example to even make the basic tomato sauce used at my work? The tomatoes first need to be cooked down, then they're cooled and stored for later use. From here I, the cook, cook garlic, wine, hot sauce and Worcestershire until it has been reduced enough so that the flavours are all at maximum potency then I add the already cooked down tomato sauce and allow it to heat all the way through so that the flavours combine. This takes about a half hour. This just the tomato sauce for one item on the menu. Consider that many other components take much longer, in some cases over twenty four hours, to be fully prepared for use in the final product which we sell. If you didn't do it right, you don't use it. It's as simple as that.

There has been much already said by writers and chefs that are far more learned than I on the culture and society that exits within a restaurant kitchen and I won't go into that too much. What I will say from my observation is that good cooks, and good chefs like to tell you what they know, or at least what they think they know about food and cooking. I'm pretty much still a moron and I mean no judgement in this observation at all. I've just heard a lot of contradictions so far. If you know something, then you know it and that's awesome. It is a way that cooks and chefs display their appreciation for food, by letting people know that they understand the many faucets, uses and sciences behind the food that they prepare. Yet I have seen cooks and chefs face off in a old style western gunfight, slinging their knowledge like a Smith and Wesson loaded with tricks and details that the other guy just might not have. When a cook or chef really shines though? When they're on their A-game and dishing out inspiration and power like it's amuse bouche? That's when they're talking less what they know and more what they love about food. To see two people with such complex understandings of stuff we put in our mouths put aside all their accrued knowledge and skills, and simply talk about why they love certain foods so much? That an expression of something so positive and powerful that it goes beyond all the combined line cook pissing contests that those two people may have had in their life. It can still be a challenge. It can still be something that creates room for growth, education and experimentation. But it is not a challenge to the other person to know more than another. It is a challenge to love food as much if not more than the other.

Food has the power to unite.I've eaten a lot of meals standing up in the past six years. I'm usually too busy to do to much more than wolf down a hastily thrown together linguine casserole, or a bowl of staff shelf slop. That's the food that keeps you going, the food that you don't really have time to enjoy you just need it otherwise you might find yourself dumbly staring at the sous chef while he's asking you if you were the one that fucked up blanching the baby carrots. There's a helluva lot of difference between that food and the stuff that someone takes the time to make some love to. Love apparently is a spice and from what I've been able to notice? It's more important than anything else. When a group of tired sweaty, burnt, sore and often disgruntled cooks sit down together in a narrow hallway on some milk crates, if they're lucky, and get a chance to eat something that someone put some love into? That can taste better than all the foie gras stuffed quail in the world. Food is the best excuse in the world to bring people together.

"What do you want to do tonight?"

"Oh lets go out for dinner with so and so and whatshisnuts"

The simple act of doing something that we have to do anyway when made exemplary and with the correct company?That can make connections that will last a lifetime. Why do you think Christmas dinner is always such a big deal?

So after saying all this about how important and magical and wonderful food is, how can I possibly say that at the end of the day it's just food? Because well...it is. You're gonna eat. I'm gonna eat. Like I said we've got to do it anyway. I've spent a good portion of my life eating crap. Sucking down bowls of canned soup with reckless abandon and letting myself believe that it was doing the trick. It wasn't. It tasted like shit and I knew it. When that chef told me that piece of advice so long ago now? I was near tears sucking down my third cigarette in as many minutes and physically shaking. I didn't even work in the kitchen then. I was pretty caught up in how everything in service didn't go perfectly that night. Some tables got screwed up. Some orders were done wrong. A table had to wait over an hour for their entrees. We didn't have any bread! Always with the goddamn bread! It was in that moment as he told me that piece of advice, that it really all made sense to me. The food we have in our lives, for those that care enough? Treat it with respect. Love it. Care for it. Nurture your relationship with food the same way you would a family member or loved one. If it doesn't turn out perfect? If you can't meet yours or other's expectations? If you fail it? If your sauce splits? If you turned your green beans into mush? If your rice is over salted? Well, you might be knee deep shit if you work in a kitchen at , I know I have been, but you need to know that if you truly love food and you want nothing more than to make it better? It's all ok. We don't all cook for a living. If you do and even if you don't, you want it to be the best every single day, or at least you should. You hate it when you're put in the position to have to choose between quality and having it ready to go RIGHT NOW. Food will always love you as much as you love it. Even though sometimes you just might break it's heart. Whatever horrible things you've done to food?It's ok, it's always willing to give you another shot because, well food knows man. Someone might tell you that whatever it is you just cooked for them isn't up to their standards. But you know you cared, you know you tried, you know you put that love into it. If you did all these things and you still couldn't make that person happy? In fact they're a little bit pissed off that it's not the way they wanted things? I'm sorry whoever you are, but at the end of the day it's just food buddy and you need to know that there's always Kraft Dinner.

Back in the Saddle Again

I've got to be honest about some stuff with you.

I feel like the past year of my life has been one tremendous tangential loop that I went and got lost in, almost like a detour in a parallel universe. You ever see Back to the Future 2? Where Doc Brown is explaining that they're in a tangent time line where their current "reality" is a result of things in the past being changed? Well if you haven't I just explained it so now we're on the same page. Essentially I feel like last year when I was at high operating levels for what I wanted to be doing, writing, I made a choice that 'caused me to veer off into this parallel universe, chock full of negative stuff that incrementally weighed me down. Meanwhile the rest of the world I knew before continued on without me. As some of you know I got out of that parallel dimension. I quit the job that was the center of the universe. Got another that wasn't. Hurrah! I thought I'd done it, I thought I'd saved the day and that life was gonna be all fine and dandy since I'd removed that major glaring problem from life. Such is simply not the case. It was like I'd escaped some sort of mental car crash without completely obliterating myself and I'd assumed that just 'cause I wasn't dead I was totally ok. I wasn't. Frankly and without any sort of ego, I tend to live my life a little on the edge. The edge of my mind, the edge of my potential, the edge of my skills, the edge of my heart. Sometimes I feel like it's all on the edge of my sanity.

I compulsively attempt to push boundaries and take new challenges and problems head on. In the past year I've realized that I am someone that thrives on conflict. I hunger for it. When my life lacks any discernible challenges, problems or struggles? I go out and I make them. Because that is how I learn and grow. This was made most apparent to me this past Christmas. What is all the more startling about what I'm about to share is that I did not do any of it consciously and it was only in retrospect and through self reflection that I was actually able to realize what I'd done. The status-quo of my family often goes undisturbed until some sort of conflict forces the people and relationships to change in some way. Growing up this is the only way I'd ever learned to come to new solid ground with my family. Having been away from their, our, constant state of being for so long I felt largely unsettled with my relationships concerning my family. So what did I do? I went home and I picked a fight. I had no good reason to pick a fight. I didn't need to in order to discuss my issues but I did it anyway. It didn't dawn on me until weeks later ,once the problems had found resolution, what I'd done. Once this smaller realization came into focus I applied this new found theory to the larger scale of my life. The job that I was working? It was conflict of scope so large that I found it, this time only partially consciously, as one of the most taunting of riddles I would ever have the chance to solve. I look at life problems and conflicts and people so much as riddles and it is part of who I am as a person that drives me to make strong, sometimes sanity shaking, attempts to solve these riddles. Once the problem is solved the knowledge that I've acquired is forever retained. I failed to solve the riddle of that job. I was incapable of success. I have since accepted this because I view it more as an exercise in extreme failure and extreme failure can lead to as much and even, in my experience, more enlightenment than success.Success feels great, but as I see ,it only leaves a harder yearning for the next level of achievement. I now view that failure as a success all unto it's own. I was supposed to fail. There was no "winning" scenario for me there.

What came next was me gathering myself and my thoughts once more and scattering them on the table to take a good look at which parts of me needed some serious work if I was going to get my life back on track.

My employment status came right away as the immediate concern. I went from being a bartender earning roughly $3000 every two weeks to working in a kitchen and making $2000 a month. This, strange though it may , was not such a hard pill to swallow. I've come to learn how much money means in this world we live in while at the same time how very little it matters. When you have more money you spend more money. When you have less money you spend less money. It is all relative. When I had money what did I spend it on? Partying. When you're bar tending you party every night. Even if you're not drinking. You're still partying. It is your job to be the best, most attentive host who can keep the energy of a room up at all costs. For the record I was drinking for the majority of that time. I have no problem admitting that I thoroughly wasted the opportunity of wealth that I was presented with. I also must awknowledge that I was not living healthily for those many months. I was not taking care of myself. I had a lot of money but not much else and I wasn't happy, so well you can pretty much see the lesson in that. Aside from the dollar amount I was being paid the actual physical job I was doing at my new place of employment was completely different. I was so used to being good at my job that entering back into the role of near complete idiot was not so easy. It's taken a long time for me to declare myself "competent" at my current job. The kitchen has brought into my life a good number of very positive things. They are, in no order, : Eat food, drink water, get sleep. As a bartender you don't tend to do a lot of those things based around the commodity that you're presenting to the public. When you're a bartender you eat 'cause you have to, you drink water because it's too early for booze and you've already had a coffee. Sleep becomes something that you'll just get around to whenever the opportunity presents itself or whenever the kegs run out. With the new job it no longer was possible for me to show up to work hungover on an empty stomach with three hours sleep. I had to come to understand that pretty quick, otherwise I was going to go from being an idiot with the potential to learn to just an idiot pretty quick. I think that I've managed to find a balance in my relationship to the life and the ongoing party.

What came next on my docket was coming to terms with the relationships in my life and how those people had affected me, and I them. I've had to realize that sometimes we all just need to know when it's time to say when in regards to certain relationships. Is it wrong to move away from a relationship when that person no longer provides you with an equal to if not greater amount of "support" than you provide them? I don't think so. I think it's an honest thing to allow relationships and connections to come and go from your life in a way that makes sense to you. I don't believe that all these relationships are done forever, but I do believe that at times a certain amount of space is required to give the separate parties time to grown and learn unto their own without constant supervision of one and other. Upon freeing my time up I set out to re-connect with relationships that I had let drift.With this in mind I started to look at how my interactions with new relationships had left me as a person in the past year. My friendships during my time of obsession with the riddle were very solid, if overly saturated. However I was limited by my compulsion to solve that riddle so much so that the only relationships I allowed were those that fit into the convenience of the situation. Some of my past relationships I was able to reclaim with fervour and triumph. These relationships were let go simply because the logistics and priorities I made in my life did not condone the time to connect that would be needed to to maintain the entity of these bonds. I regret letting some of them go in the first place. Other relationships, whence returned to, I found were not stimulating in the slightest. It is a sad thing to see and speak to someone that you knew perhaps a lifetime ago and recognize that the change in their life has not been positive. That rather than evolve as a human being towards reaching a certain degree of self enlightenment and freedom, they've regressed into their own hearts and minds reinforcing all that they've decided they are and always will be, rather than looking forward to all that they could be. Finally I had to confront the situations where I as a person had not acted in a positive manner. Where I had leeched more than I had provided and in doing so had left others, often very new connections, drained of their energies and then abandoned. I had tremendous guilt in this. However, guilt is like money that has no worth only weight. I feel it should be acknowledged, understood and then let go lest you start hating yourself.

With my mind free and my relationships stabilized I started to let go of the achievement in all that I had done and became obsessed with all that I had not done. I set out like bolt of energy determined to make up for lost time. The result of this came after two months of piling more on my plate than I had any ability to fully digest. Accruing a grand slew of ideas and projects was wonderful but facing the commitment of each and every single one of them became a horror story all unto it's own. In concurrence I was: in a band, pursuing visual arts, writing and managing a heavy load of relationships all at the same time as working a brand new job where every day was a solid eight hours of work and education. In the end I had to realize that I was once more compulsively gathering riddles that I could easily lose myself in, and that if I continued to take on the world in every faucet of my considerable interests I was going to run myself dry. I'm not superman. I can't do everything all the time and in that, I've found sometimes more is certainly less. To do it all would have resulted in failure on all fronts. It took acceptance in knowing that all of those riddles would still be there for me to solve somewhere down the line. I have since chose to take that which mattered most to me and make that my focus. I believe that it was required that I go through that overexposure to ideas, people, interests and passions so that I may well come out the other end to once more focus on that which I wanted the most. Which is, and always has been, writing.

In many ways it feels like I've gone full circle. I'm back to that happy place where life is not easy, though it is not harrowing in it's difficulty. I have goals once more that are clear and are my own. I'm not obligated to anything farther than I choose to be and in that I am free. I think I needed to take the time in my life to understand my obsessions and passions and abilities. To control my obsessions. Pursue my passions. Strengthen my abilities. I don't regret what I've gone through, though at times I felt it hard. But we're always going to go through some hardship and some challenge. In my darkest moments there's usually someone there, thought not always right away, who can remind me of what I believe in.

To finish this I'd like to address why I do this. Why I take my cumulative life experience and offer it up to all you people. I've been accused of being egotistical and self congratulatory for doing it. I've been asked if I expect people to care about what's going on in my life and for the most part I don't. What I do here? When I talk about my life, my perceptions of it and how I've read into the fundamental and consistently altering aspects of who I am as a person? It's because I feel compelled to get it out. I can talk a blue streak about all this stuff because I find it fascinating. I understand that sometimes people don't give a shit about my epiphanies, and that's perfectly fine. My one on one time with people should be spent allowing others to share themselves as much as I share myself. This right here is where I get to empty my brain. It's resolution to a degree. I think a lot. What am I supposed to do with all these thoughts? When they're left to rattle around in my brain their combined noise becomes too much to handle and I start to question my sanity. Once they're out, once there written down? They don't have to stay in my head any more. If I want to revisit those thoughts or ideas in depth I can. I don't have to worry about losing them because they're here. Writing it all down lets the past be the past for me. If you're reading this and you've learned something from what I've talked about here that's great I'm happy for you. If you learned something about me and my life, and you're someone that I care about or who cares about me, but maybe we're just not so in touch most of the time? I really hope that one day we can re-secure our connection to each other.

In any event? It sure feels good to be back in the saddle again.

All the Lonely People

I recently signed up for an online dating service. I'd always looked at such things as a cop out. I had the opinion that I was more than capable enough to meet women through conventional means and that I didn't need the helping hand of the internet. It's come to a point though where I've found my life wrapped up in so many different activities that I simply didn't have time to reach that all important first step of actually introducing myself to someone and from there building a foundation of a relationship, romantic or otherwise. So I ended up browsing profiles and searching for if not Ms. Right, Ms. RightNow.

They way it works is you find someone's profile you give it a healthy look over and then you can either decide to message them on the site. Or not. The profiles range from very detailed write ups about personal needs, expectations and tastes to people that define their interests in the simplest terms, such as "music" or "movies". Those that fell into the latter category tended to interest me very little. The site also offers the handy information age innovation of profile pictures, which allow you to determine whether or not you may be interested in a person physically which is obviously a fairly important part of the whole process of dating someone in the first place.

About the third or fourth day on the site I contacted a girl, lets call her Jane, because her profile listed her position of employment as, "Whisk Enthusiast". I thought it was cute enough, silly enough, and witty enough to provoke some sort of communication. The message I sent included comments concerning the best way to clean a whisk (whisk it!) as well as the Disney specific Robin Hood, which was listed in her profile as one of her other interests. From here a text based line of communication was formed, both of us sharing baroque commentary on life, and each others interests as a way of feeling the situation out. Eventually after a few more rounds of turn based conversation, which focused on cheese, our opinions concerning denim on denim, postal codes, and The Velvet Underground, we decided to meet in person and have a few drinks. The date was set for eleven on a sunday night in the West End of Vancouver.

I was early or she was late. It hardly matters because both of us showed up. I had already been sitting for at least a beer, scribbling in my note book attempting to appear scholarly in case she came in when I wasn't looking. She arrived and we launched into conversation without hesitation both of us smiling and attempting to feign any residual awkwardness by being completely forthright and loud about who we were. There was no bullshit factor of pretension that I could feel which was fairly refreshing. Too often there is the deadly trap of falling into a concrete status quo of personality long before we have a chance to give an accurate display of who we are and what we've got. We got straight to the meat and potatoes of the situation though. She told me of her relative satisfaction with just being. How she had worked at Canada post for years. How she was currently working at a hotel as something akin to a concierge, which wasn't as boring as it sounded. She referred to herself as a lush and the honesty of such a proclamation I found to be quite endearing. Perhaps that's because lush sounds so much better than drunk, or piss-tank. While talking about this she shared her love of sweet beverages muddled with fresh fruit and in particular Sangria. Reciprocal conversation was not an issue, which I was thankful for, as so many early stages of getting to know someone often involve one of the participants being quite stilted in their dialogue. She was, for all recollections, quite enchanting. She was very pretty with large eyes that popped even in the shallow bar light. She laughed loud and often. She had no apprehensions as to sharing just who she was and what she was all about which allowed me to do the same. The loud music of the bar proved to be too much of a detractor to our chin wagging and we decided to leave.

Once outside she asked me if I'd like to make a pit stop at her place for a jug of pre-mixed Sangria, a pair of glasses and a blanket before heading down to the beach. Such a proposition seemed to good to pass up, if anything it could be a good opportunity to drink some more, if not make out. We stopped at a drugstore along the way for club soda. She likes her Sangria with fizz. Inside the drugstore she began to tell me the stories of the people inside. Who they were, how she knew them or didn't know them. Several of them, whom she had not had extensive conversations with, she'd decided to make up back stories for. I carried the club soda and we made our way back to her place. A beaten old apartment building that had added charm for not falling into the clique of housing that accompanies Vancouver's West End. It was old and tattered around the edges like a long lost library book with the lingering odour of cigarettes from the long past days where consuming a pack of Marlboro's inside was not unheard of. She kept her apartment door unlocked, reasoning that there were two other doors that would have to be houdini'd through before someone would even have an opportunity to chose her door from all the others in the hallway of her floor. She also did not like the idea of the cat that slept inside dieing in the event of a fire, even though the concept of the cat being able to open the door was preposterous.

Inside her apartment I was treated to what may be one of the single most interesting experiments in housing decor that I've ever had the opportunity to see. Stacks, multiple, of books littered the apartment. Their style and contents completely undiscerning. VHS tapes littered the apartment with reckless abandon and had about the same amount of cohesion as her taste in literature. Jewelry salvaged from a thousand garage sales of a thousand people's grandmothers hung from the walls. She first apologized for the mess and then informed me that despite the apparent chaos she was able to find most of her belongings with relative ease. Her bedroom contained one slouching futon mattress with a set of beleaguered looking sheets akimbo on the bed, along with a non-flat screen tv, tremendous in size, that loomed forward towards her bed. The VHS player was attached to the TV and several more towers of celluloid tape video cassettes were stacked around it, some without their cardboard sheathes. The bedroom was not explored much farther than the curious gaze that I snuck in there. The kitchen was filled with a menagerie of dirty glassware. I wasn't appalled or anything though she allowed her insecurities to show for a moment asking me to excuse the mess, she had thrown an impromptu party the night before. I commented that that must be why there was a half drank Texas mickey of vodka sitting in the corner. There was, and that was indeed the reason. She pulled a tupperwear juice jug out of the fridge which was redolent with cheap red win and citrus. Perhaps the most interesting thing about her apartment was the vast collection of antlers which hung from various walls around the room. Deer antlers mostly, though there were a few sets from the Elks of north strewn with little thought upon other areas of the room. My memory fails me now as to the exact specific reason for why she had so many of them. I do know that she found them to be quite wonderful and on that satisfaction with her collection alone I was quite enamoured.

Down to the beach. The farther we moved away from the golems of housing that litter the West End the more it became apparent that it was a windier night than either of us expected and trucking down a hill we found one solitary tree on the beach that inexplicably offered us perfect cover from the elements. Once we were sitting and the adult Kool-Aid poured into our coffee mugs the conversation shifted away from our own personal quirks and quarks, of which we'd both had our fill of for the evening. We started to share, or rather she started to share, experiences of dates procured from the Internet past. I was quite interested, this being my first engagement provided by the Internet. She told of how she'd met a guy whom she'd dated for a while via the website in question. How they'd dated for about five months before he went back to his ex girlfriend. She brought up the nightmare date where she was trapped on Wreck Beach with a total jag off. For those of you that have never been to Wreck Beach, there is a monster set of stairs that one must take too and from the water. After going down, one does not want to immediately go back up. Once she was all the way down, their picnic set up, the guy proceeds to light up a joint knowing full well that she does not partake in cannabis. She made it clear to me here that she had no qualms with dope smoking, she merely doesn't participate. Later he attempted to kiss her and she decided against allowing him an unwanted smooch and pulled back. This on it's own would, I suppose, be awkward enough though she made a face as she did so. A "no don't kiss me, like ever" face. From here, half cut already, I took a slurp on my sangria and made some sort of leading question as to whether or not she'd make that same face if I tried to kiss her. She informed me that she wouldn't and that was that. We kissed for a while, talked for a while longer, kissed a little bit more and then I walked her home. I said goodnight to a young beautiful woman with a semi drunk cavalier grin and a laugh.

I would be informed several days later that while she enjoyed her time with me, she didn't want to pursue dating any farther. I was fine with this. While it had been an enjoyable evening and while I did find her quite lovely there had been no immediate spark. There was no jack-knifing flip flops in the pit of my stomach as I struggled to find words with which to impress her. She was beautiful though. One of the many beautiful women out there in the world. Looking for that same thing. That connection. That caring. That spark.

What happens to all these beautiful women I wonder? For that matter, what happens to all these beautiful people? All these beautiful lonely people. Online dating or no. What happens to all you beautiful people? What do you do all day? Where would you rather be? Have you loved and lost? Are you looking for first loves? Are you tired of doing it all alone? Do you just need someone to hear you? Are you bored? Are you tired of all the booze and bad music it takes to meet someone you may end up hating? Maybe you want to be loved. Maybe you just want to be fucked. Maybe you just need something to take the edge off. You are the ones that know what you're looking for yet, for whatever reasons, you're unable to attain it. Where do you come from? Where do you belong? All you lonely people.

Welcome to life.

Life, will always go on. My mother said it, my grandparents have always said it and it's something that will forever ring true. Life doesn't cease being a struggle, and often times just when you think you've earned a big ol break? That's when life asks you to suck it up just that bit more. Sometimes you're asked to face down a lot of what happened to you in the past. Decisions you made. Decisions you didn't get to make. Whatever happened next, that middle bit that invariably will always follow whatever cataclysmic shit storm that sparks the next course in your life? That's where life gets lived. Its in the margins. The creases. The ink stains. The blood smears. The scars. The tears. The people. The places.The love. The lessons. All those things are always going to be there. You're always going to be involved in something that carries you away and takes most of your attention away from that which you've decided so desperately that you want. And that's if you're lucky enough to have figured out what it is that you actually want in life. We all get degrees. Some of us get to go to school for them. Some of us don't. Some of us choose not to. We all earn some sort of cred eventually. One things for sure, you're never gonna stop learning about life. If you think you've got things figured out? You're dead wrong. Life gives and life takes away, but at the end of it, and believe me I know it's a big fat cliche but it's true, life only ever gives us that which we need in the worst absolute way. You're gonna fail. You're gonna succeed. Take pride in the latter, and lessons from the prior. There is no win or lose in life, because life just keeps going.

You're gonna meet some beautiful people. You never need to justify what makes them beautiful to you, to anyone else. Especially them. The loves that we take, the ones that really shape us and our hearts? That love carries over and it teaches us how to continue loving and caring for those that we bring into our lives, as well as the people that we keep in our lives. You'll never love everyone equally, that's what makes our greatest loves so dear and near to our hearts. Understand when someone is showing you love and how they show it to you. It's probably not the exact same way that you show love, but that doesn't make their love any less valid. Sometimes other people place love on you that for whatever reasons, believe me there are many, you're just not able to accept . Love isn't easy, but it shouldn't be treated as a guilty burden. When love comes your way I hope that you understand what it truly means to take an other's heart in your hands. Please, no juggling.

You're gonna be really pissed off every now and then. That's just how things go. Your anger is gonna be valid some of the time, but just the same? Anger and aggression doesn't really solve a lot of problems. Own your anger. Know why you're angry and sort it out before you let it do the talking, or worse the acting, for you. Sometimes you're just gonna get royally screwed and end up in a big fat wreck. That's where you suck it up and let all the blame fall as it may, get out of that crash, get yourself where you need to be and then you can figure things out. By then? Tempers may have calmed and your anger won't have to clash so hard with that of another person. We're all probably a little bit too repressed.Our anger can be an amazing motivator to make things happen, but don't let the gas in the car sit in the drivers seat. When you're seeing red your rear view mirrors tend to get a little cloudy. Watch your own ass before you get on someone else's.

You're gonna be afraid. Every single day of you're life. Our fears have the ability to dominate and control our minds and our lives. Living ever day of your life not taking chances, or completely avoiding anything that might look like a chance because you're afraid of the outcome, Good or bad, is not productive living. Fear is something to be conquered. Until you overcome those fears and lingering nagging doubts that often come from the minds of others? You'll never really take control of your life. I'm not saying that you're gonna run in there and take on an entire swarm of dragons with one shield, a busted sword, and some bow and arrow. You take your fears on at a time and you've gotta treat the biggest ones with a healthy amount of respect. Arm yourself well for dealing with those big old beasties. There's usually a reason you stayed so far away from that dragon in the first place. Until you understand why? You'll never be able to slay it.

Try to live with compassion. Understanding every single day that every other person in this world is living their life much the same way that you're living yours. They have the same fears, doubt, struggle, traffic, pay cheque, phone bill, partner (Or lack thereof), that you do. Everyone is trying to live their life the best way that they know how. They may not all have the ability to grasp what's going on with them or their surroundings as well as you do. Be thankful for all that you have and understanding for that which they may not. To truly live with compassion is to be without sympathy. Sympathy is useless. Empathy is a weight not often enough shouldered. To truly attempt to understand what someone is coming from, going through and living? Is to live the compassionate life. Exercise with extreme caution, and understand that people's issues as gripping as they are? Are not yours. Do not take someone else's weight without fully being able to commit it to them. No one likes a flake, or even worse an asshole.

I hope that you've got something to be hopeful for. Hope is the incarnate belief in that which you have naught the ability to control. When you're in a tight spot backed up in a narrow alley and you're runnin' out of warmth and light? That's when you want some hope. If you really believe deep down inside you at your core that everything is gonna be all right? Then somehow things will turn out all right. Don't let all your hoping run out though. Sooner or later you can run a debt of that sorta thing.Spend enough time hopin' it'll rain? It probably will. Doesn't mean you can't go get yourself a glass of water if you're thirsty. You've gotta keep your credit good on the wishin and prayin' by lending others a light when they're backed up tight in that alley. Hope is fueled by those who have the ability to bring fruition to hope itself. Make sure you always keep hope alive.

All these things that came before this? They ARE gonna happen in life at one point or another. You're all gonna be afraid. You're all gonna be angry. You will all love if you really choose to. You're going to feel compassion without even knowing it. You'll find yourself hopeful all the time. You can't really control a lot of this. Some of it you can, most of it you can't. But there's one thing that I think we can all agree on, if you really want to? You can control yourself. You are the single greatest mind that you will ever have a chance to control. Your willpower and interminable ability to shape the universe at your will is the most powerful asset you will ever posses. I don't care what skills you've got, how smart you are, what you know, who you know, how you came to know any of it. If you have the perseverance and dedication to whatever your actually care about? You CAN make it happen. You gotta have goals. You've gotta be able to keep your sights on them even when there's a billion different little clouds of bullshit fogging up your vision. You're gonna have to deal with all those little clouds differently. Use the array of skills that you as a person have developed over the course of your life. You're totally capable. Your methods might be different from mine. Your friends might think you crazy. Your teachers and "superiors" might tell you that's not the traditional way, but if you've got the willpower to reach that ultimate goal of yours? Give 'Em Hell. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. All these other things in life that you just can't control? Treat them with the adequate respect and care that they all deserve. But stay the course, keep that willpower charged but maximum, and kid? You'll move mountains.

Dedicated to my Sister Allison Matfin, Graduated into life 2010

Other Stuff that's just good to know:
-Keep a clean kitchen, people appreciate that.
-Take care of your feet, your cool lookin' shoes still need arch support.
-Sex, Drugs, and rock and roll are all thoroughly awesome, but understand when its time to say when...this goes for booze too.
-Sometimes an asshole is just that, and unless you like assholes? They're not worth your time.
-Drink way more water than you think you should.
-Cry when you can, suck it up when you need to.
-A little hard work never killed anyone.
-When you're both drunk? Figure it out in the morning.
-No one ever got pissed off at you for buying the beer.
-Someone has to buy toilette paper
-Be on time.
-You're gonna like some music that some people are probably gonna hate. It's not the end of the world.
-When you're sick? It's awesome if someone brings you something good. Remember to return the favor.
-Eat up, you're gonna need the energy.
-Write important stuff down. You never know when your computer or phone is gonna die.
-Tip, you're not sixteen anymore.
-Floss.
-Live hard.