Faithless

faithless
i leave to fate, this
strangle hold
clutching me like a bracelet
i need to change the mould
with haste
like a face lift

Eagle vs. Shark

Anyone can be intelligent, not everyone can be smart. yet, i meet smart people everywhere and far too few intelligent ones. somehow so many i've met with great i.q's aren't very intelligent at all.



i'm not the smartest person i know, far from but i am intelligent. you need good genes to be smart for a start and you can obviously work at it but let's face it, the guy with two dimwits for parents will most likely not be the head of his class no matter how much he studies. all the information will not stick and some of it will be lost along the way. however this doesn't mean one should give up and throw in the towel, that would be unintelligent.



not being smart doesn't mean you're dumb, not exercising intelligence does. no one has a valid excuse to not utilize their intelligence. intelligence is what we all have inside us to transcend whatever situation we've been dealt with. intelligence is striving to become better. intelligence is a key ingredient of happiness. intelligence needs your entire being to progress. mind. body. soul.



soul. is the more simple of the three in my opinion but somehow the hardest to perfect. it's also a figment of our mind... to me. i know most people believe it to be its own entity, something weightless in themselves, perhaps closer in feel to their heart than to their mind.



intelligence touches that part of the brain where soul resides that all the smarts in the world can't. soul feeds intelligence and intelligence feeds soul. purity and selflessness feed both which brings on REAL happiness. TRUENESS. therefore ignorance is NOT bliss. intelligence is.



truth. unflinching. unbendable. impenetrable. glorious. happiness. transcendent. freedom. REAL.



conflicts whether inner or outer are unavoidable. exercising intelligence greatly minimizes the appearance and duration of these conflicts, which in turn minimizes the affect of them on yourself. being true to yourself gives you no choice but to be true to others. not an easy feat and very difficult to accomplish but it would be unintelligent not to give it a shot. i'm working hard at it and making very little progress but progress nonetheless.



i FEEL indestructibly unstoppable because i try to glide with grace on the clouds of intelligence. not because i've read a book. i'd rather fly with the angels than swim with the mermaids any day.



suggestion for new year's resolution: exercise intelligence

Rising Son

I woke. I rose.

I decided i was going to walk to china 1 crisp and dewy, stark morning. the sun absent.

no backpack. no luggage. no baggage. no looking back. no half steps. no stumbling. no stops. no idea. no failure.

all thoughts, wants, needs, desires, goals combine to make; 1 mind. 1 body. 1 heart. 1 soul. 1 hunger. 1 horizon. 1 vision. 1 love. all combine to make 1 lumbering weight on two shoulders. all encompassed into 1 word.

i rise.

along my walk i have picked up beautiful baggage, i have looked back in disgust, i have stumbled foolishly, i have a better idea. NO FAILURE. NEVER FAILURE.

and still i rise.

i walk. i stare at the horizon. beaten but not beat. fatigued but not tired. the horizon never nears but the grave i woke from fades further and further away. that's the idea. china is not the oasis. china is the mirage. the walk is the oasis.

all thoughts, wants, needs, desires, goals combine to make; 1 omnipotent mind. 1 indestructible body. 1 enormous heart. 1 passionate soul. 1 unrelenting hunger. 1 illusion of a horizon. 1 stead fast vision. 1 enveloping love. all combine to 1 feather of a weight on two iron clad shoulders. all encompass to 1 word.

freedom.

Blog's New Year's Resolution

Dates are out, b! i'm no longer going to pay attention to them when i'm posting. i used to pre-occupy myself with how often i post and i went from worrying about posting once a week to trying to get at least 1 in a month. i'm freeing myself from that thought. i'll just write when i write.

i've never been good with dates. every year i vow to remember my mom's birthday, it's never stuck. yes, i realize that is abominable. amman the abominable. i've never been good with telling time. five years ago may as well be three years ago maybe as well be six months ago. i don't know. the dates will stay on precisely so i know when i wrote it.... just for kicks...

i think i want to get all anarchy with this blog now. i don't know exactly what that means but i think i want to disregard as many rules as possible. including rules i've set for myself. you might or might not have noticed my love for short choppy sentences. there. will. be. more. of these. or will they? did i just make a rule for myself and then break it?

i'm different. this blog will represent that in however i can make it represent that. i'm going to confuse you. this will sometimes and other times not be on purpose.

this is a product of working graveyards leading to very awkward moments, more, others expressing themselves to me and me expressing myself to others in rather awkward ways, more, awkward sentences formed of words, much like this sentence, awkwardness would be the key word for the past 24 hours. i felt i absolutely had to write something to end it and this is the best i could come up with. on this hour of five in the a.m. on novermber the 13th of 2010.

this post may or may not be deleted in the near or distant future... just for kicks...

oh, i al.most

I Liked His Earlier Stuff Better

It's been a year, can you believe it??? i can't! so much has happened since i started this blog and well, you know a lot about it. my journal for the masses! and by masses i mean lori :)

i started strong, didn't i? i was brimming with zeal and anticipation and anxiety, good anxiety. and of course having a brain over flowing with things to write about coupled with aforementioned anxiety, i spat those motherfuckers out like excess pork fat. you have no idea how much control it took me to take my time in posting. like a virgin, i was all rush, rush... think of baseball, think of baseball.

i really feel like fucking swearing a lot right now. happy fucks, not angry fucks. so here we fuckin go...

the fuckin sophomore slump, that's what they call it in the music biz. when you start strong and have nowhere to fuckin go but down for your second outing. i say fuck that! it only makes sense, when you start you have a lifetime of work ready to go after which you're just working with where you fuckin left off. which reminds me, i lost that story i was working on. how can something you spend time on and stare at with adoration disappear off the face of the earth right in front of your eyes??? the cyber world giveth and the cyber world taketh away. i was going to re-write the shit out of that thing anyway but damn did i have some fucking beautiful gems of sentences in there. you'll never know. moving on...

if i have to write about cancer this year, i'm going to be FUCKING PISSED!

if i don't get in at least a couple of more evolution pieces, i'm going to be FUCKING PISSED!

if i'm not able to crack a few smiles, i'm going to be FUCKING PISSED!

if i don't get deeper into my own head, i'm going to be FUCKING PISSED!

if anyone else dies on me, I'M GOING TO BE FUCKING PISSED!

in my own charlie brown; typing furiously; smiling incessantly; loving tremendously; heart on my sleeve; too amorous to be bitter; too jaded to be enthralled; overwhelmed; fuck it; peaceful ass way :)

you might wanna hide your cats though.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, BLOG!

I'M OUT! SING IT ELLIOTT!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Man, i've been busier than i've ever have been in the past. not finding time to blog as much as i'd like to. hopefully this just means the quality of it kicks up a notch because the quantity is definitely lacking. i have some good ones in store that i'm waiting to unleash but i don't want to rush them. i'm never satisfied with my posts when i rush them, well i'm not satisfied when i don't rush them either but the satisfaction exceeds that of the rushed ones. you know what i'm sayin'.

so i've been working a hell of a lot more which is good but it comes with set backs like posting less and i've taken a pay cut to work the morning shift so i can still have a social life. those cheques get a lot smaller and the savings dwindle because i go out after work on an almost daily basis. it's summer though right? gotta enjoy it while it's here. i miss watching movies all the time but i get to read at work, in fact i don't even read at home anymore. so there's the pros and cons of work right now. boring, boring, boring, boring... moving on...

THE FUNDRAISER! now before we get all excited about that exclamation mark, let me clarify that the punctuation mark represents a little bitterness for me. the whole process has somewhat soured me from wanting to do it again next year. i didn't think it would be easy but it's definitely harder than i thought it would be. well, not harder either, more like frustrating and stressful. there's not much to it really, the hardest part, the only hard part is getting people on board. ya, i know, you thought that would be the easy part. IT'S NOT! stressing, stressing, stressing, stressing... can't move on...

of course, getting close friends to come and buy tickets is not the problem. it's when you're reaching for the other ones where this becomes tricky. you definitely have to hustle and convince and harass and sell and then hustle and convince and harass and sell. you get a lot of "ya, i'll come." but in no way is that a concrete "yes". that usually just means "leave me alone, if i have nothing better to do, i might come." i'm a pretty "happy go lucky", "go with the flow" type of guy so hustling, convincing, harassing and selling isn't really in my repertoire. one of my friends on the other hand isn't having much problem at all. the guy can seriously shoot the shit with the best of them. i was with him one day, stressed about selling tickets and he got on the phone and sold like 5 in 5 minutes. i don't have it in me to chase people and bother them. i was naive in thinking people would just call me and ask for tickets. only 1 person, YES 1 PERSON! called me without me having to call first, asking for tickets.... and that was just yesterday, after about a month of promoting. now i realize i'm being a baby considering the eventual good that is to come from all this but dammit, can't things just fall into my lap!?!?!? the air on this page is getting stuffy with grievance. annoying, annoying, annoying, annoying... moving on...

i'm going through major life changes at this point and embarking on scary experiences that i know not how to handle. i will stress, i will learn, i will evolve, i will write, i will de-stress. i will stress, i will learn, i will evolve, i will write, i will de-stress. evolving, evolving, evolving, evolving... let's move on...

The Barber Shop

Us men, we have one person to brag about and endorse to others, our barber. women have their nail girls, their hair girls, their wax girls, their massage girls, their girly girly girls. we have barbers. our barber's are the best barbers in the world, ask any man that visits one. he wouldn't go to him, if he didn't think his barber was the best.

I remember going to the barber's with my dad when i was but a wee lad. this place in east van complete with that bottle thing that spins with blue, red and white stripes. i wonder what those are called, they fascinate me to this day. you don't see them too often anymore though.

I must've gone through a multitude of nameless barbers until i found Art on scott rd. art was old school. i would be shocked to find out he was still alive. he never used clippers, only scissors. that's an art in itself. the first time i went there was when my mom had to do some shopping and dropped me off for a cut while she shopped. thank god she left because art's coffee table was littered with PORN! and i'm not talking about playboy, i mean HARDCORE PORN! needless to say from then on i rode my bike for a half hour to get my fade and fix. i would hope for a wait on the way and once i got there, i would be totally nonchalant, give it a minute or two, act like i was so bored that i might as well take a look and pick up where i left off as discreet as can be. as discreet as a 12 year old boy ogling hardcore porn in a barber shop can be. there's a special relationship that takes place between every young boy and his first brush with porn. maybe not so much anymore, what with the internet and all. there's no excitement of the hunt and the eventual jackpot anymore. the kids these days don't know what they're missing, it's too easy for them, the thrill is gone. i digress, porn's a powerful agent of digression. art retired.

Now i was ready for the real thing, the lovely ladies of great clips. i learned women talk too much even when cutting hair. asking dumb questions, trying to sell me $20 bottles of shampoo and shit. peace out, bitches!

then came ali and jamaal, 2 brothers working out of a garage. probably the busiest barber shop for miles, these guys turned themselves into local celebrities and did quite well for themselves. ali moved to white rock and opened his own shop soon after, he being my go to guy, i stopped going there. jamaal too, recently opened his own full fledged barber shop on king george hwy.

My barber, vinny was a great guy working out of his car port. one of my friends discovered vinny because he lived down the street. vinny's make shift car port barber shop turned into a social hub for all the boys. my first experience of a barber shop part of a social scene (other than the one my dad went to but that social scene didn't exactly involve me). vinny was great except that he was a first class pot head and he usually insisted on smoking before cutting. he also loved his paan (an indian style chewing tobacco with spices and masala). your barber spitting in a bucket while cutting your hair doesn't exactly encourage your confidence in him. but he was a really nice guy, he'd even give me a ride home if there was no customers waiting. plus he would sing and if in the mood, he would invite you into his house to listen to him rock the tabla and sing old school hindi songs. and he gave me free haircuts in exchange for magazines i would get for free from my then place of employment, newsgroup. vinny was going to school to become a nurse. he did. end of another era.

finally, my current barber, bharat. bharat's not the best barber by any means. the best barber without a doubt is elmer, a vietnamese, soft spoken man. problem with elmer is he lives far (also working out of his garage), you have to make an appointment and he takes a full half hour but you come out looking like a million bucks. i'll go to him for my wedding or something special. right now it's all about convenience for me. bharat's basement barber shop is a 2 minute walk away. he's quick, he sings just as vinny did and it's also a neighborhood social hub but with the younger guys, a lot of my brother's friends go there.

for now, i'm satisfied with bharat. i'll save elmer for a hot date. this is my story and these are my barbers.