there's a Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin is talking about old people, how they seem to slow down as they age. he questions this: surely as you get older, you are aware of how your time on earth is diminishing, hence wouldn't you want to speed up to get everything done while you still can? Calvin predicts he'll be buzzing around like a maniac when he's an old man.

when i was closer to Calvin's age that thought process made a lot of sense to me. but today i was thinking that maybe that's not really how it works. i think maybe as we get older we start realising the things that are more valuable than "experiences".

when i was younger i really wanted to go into space. i was hugely envious of the handful of people who have had the surreal experience of seeing this planet from the outside, or floating around without gravity, or whatever else astronauts do while they're up there.
when i was a little older i realised how vastly improbable it was that i'd ever experience that. but by then i'd done the reading & come to the conclusion that it maybe isn't worth it - all the hyperintensive training, getting sick, risk of malfunction or miscalculation, etc. so then i really wanted to jump out of a plane with a parachute in a backpack.
now i'm a little older, & that has lost its appeal. i mean i'm sure it would be fun but would it really enrich my life so much overall?

i think the reason older people slow down & don't go nuts over everything they haven't seen of the world, is that they understand that maybe those things aren't so important. yeah, it would be cool to see Antarctica (another high school dream), but if i never saw it, i don't honestly think it would show up in my thoughts on my deathbed.

i'm thinking over my main ambitions now against my main ambitions five, even two years ago. i wanted to do a lot. i wanted to establish a good, well-paying career, and do music & films with friends on the side. then i would retire into a nice rural area, & run a cute little farm with my honey. swell! that's straight out of a novel. let's throw in a lakeside property & pretty sunset while we're at it.

all that sounds nice, wouldn't it be lovely if it turned out like that? (ps. you're all invited to my lakeside farm.) but it's not such a high priority anymore. right now, in the minutes that i'm writing this, my ambitions are thus: i want to be a good friend. i want to be a friend to strangers. i want to use art to make space for kids to escape the shitty places they were born into (this is in the works...).

when i'm old & flipping through my memory book (tangible or metaphorical), i think i will feel more personally validated by the pictures of me & friends & strangers sharing a community meal in the park, than the pictures of me in front of a statue in some tourist trap or something.

//

heaven is usually painted as this celestial, palatial place. i'm thinking that's all metaphorical talk. i mean i've never been there so this is all speculation but i'm wondering how great it would really be if all of it was literal. really, what good is gold pavement? while we're at it, what good are roads? do we have cars in heaven? i feel like the idea of physical gold pavement & palaces & crowns is kind of contradictory to the Jesus who was homeless & had tea with lepers.

i think heaven smells like an old house & has soft hands.

i don't know if i've written about this before. here it is again maybe.

being amongst the university crowd, the most common question everyone asks & is asked: "so what are you going to do with your life?" (or some variant). & some people know & some people don't. "i am going to be a lawyer." "i have no idea, do you have any ideas? i like working with kids."

there's this implicit assumption that "my life" & "my career" are synonymous. & for us students i suppose that makes sense maybe - the majority of our time is being spent on education so we can get a career that we want. theoretically at least.

but isn't there more to life than whatever job you do? i mean it would be rather lovely if we could all only do things that we are passionate about & still be able to feed ourselves, but the fundamental reality is that the majority of people work shit jobs to pay the bills & never really get that opportunity. so what is their life?

this came up at house church. near the end of term, a lot of people were graduating & facing that "i have no idea what's happening in september" crisis that is apparently inevitable for most of us. but we left with a bit of peace of mind & here's why.

my friend David said his mother is an office worker. it's not something she loves (or hates), but it has afforded him an education overseas. her passion is not in her job, but in her family.

my friend Alex said his parents own an ice cream factory. they're not crazy passionate about factories or something. they don't wake up in the morning & think "yeah this is exactly what i dreamed of when i was four." but it pays the bills & they have two kids through university & one kid soon to be. their love of life is their kids, not their jobs. (though owning an ice cream factory has its perks. ps. buy maypole ice cream.)

for sure, i'm really hoping to be like the rest of my family & land a career that i enjoy. i'd love to be like my mom, who basically saves babies' lives all day. i don't particularly envy my dad's career but he has fun with his computery writey stuff, which is nice. & i'll be honest, i wish i could make a decent living as a musician like my brother. people ask me & my pat answer is "i'd rather keep it as a hobby" but that's just a way for me to tell myself that what i am doing is exactly what i should be doing. really, i would be pursuing that if i knew that i could pull it off. or if i were making music that was a bit more normal.

but is that the end goal for my life? i'm pretty sure it isn't. i didn't want to attend Queen's but i've found some lifelong friends here. i didn't really like Kingston & now i'm discovering things on an almost weekly basis that are making me increasingly fall in love with the city. (montréal i still love you baby.) just today a friend brought me to a bank where there's a guy at the entrance serving lemonade & cookies, and making small talk with you while you wait in line. a bank. yeah i'm serious.

my point is that i had the blinders on & i was pissed at life. it took me three years to realise how to become happy. there's so much more to living than "doing".

//

a challenge for you: the next time you're meeting someone new & they ask you "what do you do?" tell them something other than your job. tell them you fingerpaint with your kids, or you write screenplays for lame romantic comedies, or you make music by splicing construction noises into beats & playing guitar on top. i mean, don't tell them that, tell them what you do.

something that happens frequently after my mom & i argue about something: she'll tell me that she just wants me to be happy & not worry so much about the things that i typically get all tangled in. e.g. not buying from mega chain-stores or not eating meat, etc.

something that came up a lot when i officially stopped eating meat was that people told me how much they admired me for "giving up" meat. &ofcourse similar (though less frequent) conversations have arisen over my decisions to not wear pricey fashionables or eat at fastfooderies or drink coke. often something along the lines of "i don't know how you do it" or "i would die without mcdonald's". it's always made out to be some sort of immense sacrifice or (worse) a courageous act of heroism.

the thing is, i don't feel like it's a sacrifice. i feel like it's a natural progression from my thoughts to my actions. it would be morally inconsistent to continue living life as normal given what i know about these industries & institutions. i mean, does everyone feel like it's a big sacrifice to never try cocaine or heroine? when we know of the horrid effects they can have on us & the horrid violence backing the illicit drug trade, we are not particularly compelled to participate in these activities in the first place.

likewise, i've read some things about some institutions which i believe to be true, & that colours my understanding of the product they create. when i walk past a vending machine, i'm not immensely tempted by the giant picture of a coca cola can & it's only by some supernatural injection of self-control that i turn away. rather, when i walk past a vending machine, i'm immensely tempted to graffiti vulgarities over it & it's only by some supernatural injection of self-control that i turn away. or maybe the prospect of getting fined. or maybe the fact that coca cola ltd wouldn't lose a dime while the convenience store owner would have to pay for the clean-up.

//

when you talk to parents, they usually won't go on & on about how much they've sacrificed for their kids. i mean maybe as a joke or when they're really frustrated, but normally it doesn't come up. if you do the math, you'll realise that a single person or childless couple saves a whole pile of money (& time & headaches, any number of other things really) by simply not having any kids. yet parents don't care about all that, because what they gain in their children is infinitely more valuable than any quantity of material goods they've had to give up.

new screens. see it here or here.

this one is my favourite:

a few nights ago there was a huge rainstorm. no thunder or lightning, just piles&piles of water falling from the sky. it started at 11-ish but kept going for awhile.

i was working on some screenprinting & listening to music, and i just took a peek outside. &then i couldn't remember the last time i'd actually been in the rain. i don't mean walking in the rain en route to somewhere else, i mean actually going outside to be in the rain for the sake of being in the rain.

i think when we need to grow up & be adult etc. we lose sight of the little pointless things that are fun from when we were kids. i don't think it's wrong to become adult & be mature & shoulder responsibilities; it's more that a lot of adult culture is bullshit & we get sucked down into it.

for example, i got a great set of corduroy slacks today from the thrift store, but being the fashion newbie that i am i have no idea what goes with brown cords and nothing in my closet seemed to match. so i went to the internet (of course). &on the internet i came across a website with all sorts of fashion tips for men... i spent about 20 minutes browsing through various articles, and everything was so fake. wear these to make yourself look more thin than you actually are; buy all this stuff that will keep you warm without needing a bulky ugly winter coat; this is how to dress if you want to get laid; etc.

have we really been reduced to this? our entire identity lies in fitted jackets & hair spray?

from working with kids at camp these past few yrs, & more recently at the hospital, the main thing i love about hanging out with them is their lack of pretense. young kids say what's on their mind but they aren't typically judgmental. they don't care about properly matching thier socks with their pants. in fact they often don't care about properly matching their socks.

i don't mean to say that i wish i were that age again, because i don't. i also don't mean to say that we should all be more immature & watch more Disney. what i wish is that we could be the socially responsible adults we need to be without having to buy into the whole stupidity of self-aggrandizing. i don't want to build up a fake, better self for job interviews or first dates or manly keggers. i don't want to become an advertisement.

a few nights ago there was a huge rainstorm. i threw on a pair of long johns, old shoes, & a hood. i went for a run in the rain & definitely did not avoid any puddles.

i did a little experiment this wk. i tried not spending any money. to see if i could actually do it. i had enough food to last me, it just meant that i could only eat real food, no desserts or candy or sugar drinks.

i realised i probably needed some more vegetables, & also that i hadn't sold off my textbooks from this past yr yet. so i sold one book for $20, & also headed downtown with a small pile of CDs to sell to the record store.

of course, while in the record store i saw the new Erykah Badu for eight bucks. the store took two of my CDs for seven, so i used my debit to pay off the one dollar difference & tax.

just like that. it took one look from Ms. Badu. i couldn't say no. it bothers me that spending money on non-essential goods is actually a habit that i can do without thinking about. but it's a really good album.

i don't normally write the "this is what happened this week" type of entries in my journal, mainly because i don't think my life is all that interesting. in fact i think i once wrote an entry about why my life isn't all that interesting. because writing about why my life isn't interesting is more interesting than my life itself.

well anyway. good news! interesting life story!

so, on Monday i caught Anathallo & Dosh in concert, both of whom are amazing. last wk, i'd thought to myself, "they are playing in Montreal on Wednesday. maybe i should go see them twice!"

so i did. i caught the noon bus to Montréal, ambled through the Mile End district for four hours, got dinner at a lovely vegetarian/free-trade ("equitable") coffeeshop & a small bakery, saw Anathallo again, caught the midnight bus back to Kingston, walked home, & fell asleep on the couch at around 5 in the morning.

it was more adventurous than i've ever been before. & now i'm closer to being broke than i've been since elementary school. but it was worth it!

Mile End is a really neat place. it used to be mainly old & run down industrial buildings, so rent was always super-cheap. and where rent is cheap, starving artists flock. so piles&piles of artists congregated in Mile End and built themselves a culture & community. there are plenty of old-timey bakeries, cafés, indie record stores, & cute little used clothing shops (favourites: Local 23 & Preloved). very little intrusion from megachainstores, though some upscale high-class restaurants are starting to poke their expensive little heads in. most notably, Mile End has given birth to a thriving music scene, centered around the Casa del Popolo / Sala Rossa, &ofcourse the now-famous Constellation Records.

speaking of which, i think i located the Constellation Records headquarters. if my stalking skills led me correctly, they're located in an abandoned-looking building near abandoned-looking railroad tracks, next to a definitely-abandoned industrial building. it's all very nondescript. no gigantic "GODSPEED WAS HERE" murals. no obvious entrance for that matter.

anyway. Mile End. it's just a really unique place. it has this neo-hippie kind of vibe. you get the feeling that everybody rides a used bike & has a meaningful tattoo on their shoulder & plays Silver Mt. Zion at their house parties. basically, i want to move there.

it bothers me that house centipedes bother me.

i've encountered three of them in my house in the past two wks & i killed all three, each time with the corner of a tissue box. they creep me out. they have far too many legs. they crawl too fast for something that size.

the thing is, i was just reading about them. they're actually very nice creatures. they help keep house pests under control and are typically very low maintenance - in fact the only reason i'm seeing them now is because it's spring time & typically they come out in spring. usually they just stay out of the way, quietly munching on other, more harmful insectoids, & living off small quantities of loose water.

but i'm pretty sure i'd still kill the next one i see. because they're creepy. what does that say about me?

what would the world be like if we killed things because of how they look?

hm...

i haven't share my screenprinting with you livejournal folk. so here it is:
go here for the website.
go here for better descriptions of the designs.

something to stare at while i conjure my next philosophical meanderings.

an update for you folks who keep track of these things. the place where i really want to work, to whom i gave not one but two hand-written cover letters, has given me an interview next wk.

after almost three wks of silence i thought it was over but it turns out they're just starting interviews now. hooray! here's hoping.


on a completely different note, my friend Kamal made an interesting observation yesterday. a few of us were sharing a tub of ice cream, just eating straight out of it, & someone made a joke about how gross it is that we're not using bowls. he said:
"i don't understand how you can meet a stranger at a club, & just because they're hot you're willing to swallow each other's tongues... but people freak out about sharing a spoon."

your thought du jour.

well, this post was a little pointless. i'll try to get back on track writing deep & meaningful stuff.

i've figured out why no one wants to hire me.

you see, i assume that other people think the same way i do. so when i handwrite a cover letter, i think that's pretty nice. i like handwritten stuff. when i get a handwritten letter or card i think that the sender must actually care about me to do something that takes that long. not that it takes so long to write a letter but just that it would take so much less time on a computer or something.

of course, my handwriting is a mess & looks horribly unprofessional. or just plain horrible. either way, i'm an idiot.

a winsome, endearing idiot.

without a job.

i think i may have written on this before. but even if so, i am newly inspired! so here it is (again): "on rags & riches".


i was thinking today about the whole simple living thing again. the usual anti-consumerist internal monologue bus-ride.

i mean, i do think the whole "simple living" thing is real & true & a legitimate bringer of joy. i don't quite know why tho. the stereotype is the Catholic nun who hates life but suffers through it because in the end she'll get, i don't know, a gigantic crown in heaven or something. so for Jesus's sake she hates everything about the world & rejects material wealth, & her reward is a celestial mansion. something about that doesn't quite sit right with me.

today, while mining my thoughts i uncovered (more like rediscovered) a conclusion i'd reached about a year ago. essentially, that the riches themselves don't actually bring happiness but rather more trouble.

in two cliché phrases:
1. money can't buy happiness
2. mo' money mo' problems

i think of my parents in a lot of this. (brief history: came from very little & have worked their way into financial security over several decades). so now they have savings & stocks & bonds, considering purchasing property, & there's so much stress. my dad is always lamenting the fact that he sold too many of his Apple shares too early, my mom & dad are always arguing over which property to buy & how much they're really worth & how much we're really willing to pay & do we actually know for sure that property values here will increase?

i mean, you look at our world, & half of what we do is store up shit, & the other half is locking it in place to make sure it doesn't get lost, or that we can get it back if it is lost. if you own a car, you need insurance, make sure you lock your doors good, avoid parking in those neighbourhoods, keep the alarm on, maybe even get one of those things that locks your steering wheel in place.

but even me, someone who owns no property, no car, no jewelry, etc., i noticed these patterns of anxiety in myself too.

for example, i got my dad's old iPod for Christmas. it occasionally needs a bit of work. it died yesterday & i spent most of this morning trying to get it operational. i mean, it wasn't constant work - you have to set up the program that wipes the memory clean, and just let it do its work - so i got some reading in too. but the point is, all this stress & annoyance which wouldn't exist if i didn't even have the thing. & is it worth it? does portable music really enrich my life substantially, or does it just give me something a little more immediate with which to wile away the time while on the bus? as opposed to thinking up blog posts like this?

or, today i returned from a friend's house & got off the bus at around 11PM at the same stop as someone else. we were walking in roughly the same direction on a street with only one light. i thought he was going to mug me. he didn't look threatening at all. but he was taller than me so he was walking faster than me & his shadow was kind of creeping me out. but i only had a handful of dollars in my wallet & Alms by re:, which i'd just purchased for 12.50. my heart was racing over the highly remote prospect of being mugged by a skinny well-dressed man for a CD & some spare change.

it was the stupidest thing.

it seems like our world is built on a mountain of locked doors, insurance policies, contingency plans, emergency phone numbers, knives strapped to ankles...

but of course, we can (to whatever degree) be free of that. & i'm pretty sure that will make us happy. i dunno tho, i haven't tried it. but i have tried buying stuff that is collectible & valuable, & that just makes me worried that it isn't as pricey as i thought it was, or that it will get stolen; i've tried clothes that look really nice but actually that just makes me stand in front of the mirror longer than usual & be self-critical about my general lack of good looks, or even just worried about laundering a nice shirt properly; i even once tried to have a nice haircut (well, "nice" by my standards... $20 is a lot to spend on dead protein growing out of your scalp), but that had the same effect as the nice clothes, getting me all self-conscious & checking myself out in every reflective surface while walking downtown.

so all of that hasn't worked. maybe it's time to try something different?

my dad started bussing to work! for those who don't know, my dad works for the man & wears a tie & can totally afford the gas etc., but for the past few wks he's been using public transpo. for about a year now i've been telling him that it would definitely be worth it, because it would save him money &also he can bring a book/laptop on board & get reading/work done along the way too. now he's taking my advice.

father taking advice from son. take that, social hierarchy! i hold you in derision!

recurring themes in my entries (usually in this order):
1. rant about how fucked the world is.
2. own ideas about how to fix everything.
3. rant about how nobody cares.
4. observation of own hypocrisy.

//

i was thinking lately about the futility of what i do. you know, the whole "IT'S NOT WORTH IT" rant. i mean, my not buying Wal-Mart/Coca-Cola goods has maybe dented their collective revenue a total of a few hundred bucks over half a decade. my pro-bike propaganda hasn't taken any cars off the road that i know of. & so on. that kind of thing.

i had an email exchange with my mom a few months ago about this kind of thing, and it got really emotional & at one point i dropped an f-bomb (yeah, with my mom... it was pretty tense). anyway, she was telling me that i need to read more history, less propaganda & manifestos. she told me i have to accept that the world is a fallen place and it's not upon me to "bear the burdens of the world" as she puts it. i got really frustrated at how dismissive she was of everything i believe in, but beyond that i didn't quite understand what her point was.

i do read quite a bit of history and i'm not entirely sure how that changes anything. there are a number of conclusions you can draw from reading history:
"this is how the world has always been, therefore this is how the world will always be."
"this is how the world has always been, therefore this is how the world is meant to be."
"this is how the world has always been, therefore we should know how not to do things."

or maybe you have a different reading of history which isn't so pessimistic, i don't know. in any case, my conclusion is the last one, and my mom lies somewhere in between the first and the second.

i just can't bring myself to believe that. i'm hesitant to believe that the current world order is inevitable, and i entirely refuse to believe that it's anywhere close to the best order. i'm hesitant to believe that G-d makes people stupidly fucking rich and i'm near complete certainty that Jesus doesn't want us to buy big-screen TVs, regardless of whether it "stimulates the economy" and in the long run somehow helps poor people in poor countries. i don't believe in "enjoying life" if it requires the reduction of someone else's quality of life, nor do i believe that that's the only way that enjoyment can be found in life. maybe this is how the world always will be but it definitely is not how it is "meant to be".

on some (many) days i'll find myself in that first conclusion, that this is how life is and always will be, that greed will always overcome generosity, hatred will always be stronger than love, and rates of divorce & suicide will only go up until they hit some obscenely high plateau. oil makes the world go round and it doesn't stop no matter how many bikes i fix.

what i sort of came to today is the fact that, well, all of that doesn't matter. the goal of anything i do or believe in isn't, in fact, a goal. it's not an ideal. it's a way of living within non-ideal circumstances.

i like Food Not Bombs. we take waste food from local businesses and then cook up a free meal for the community. that is not an ideal, because the ideal would be that no food is ever wasted. instead, Food Not Bombs is a way of practicing active anti-consumerism within a consumerist society. in an ideal world it would be obsolete.

i'm coming to understand that the lifestyle i want to live is not rewarded by some grandiose global change or Bono-esque celebrity status, but rather it is its own reward. what would happen if i only ever wrote music for the purpose of selling a million records? i'd write shitty music, that's what. the music i write exists for its own sake, as a celebration of the beauty i (want to) see & experience. similarly, reducing every mile i don't ride a car, or every meal i buy for a homeless person, or every Coke i don't buy... reducing all of that down to how much quantifiable effect it has in bettering the world... that would be like keeping a tally of how often your mom hugs you.


it's all futile. entirely. i'm okay with that now.

one of the admin staff at my old church still has my email, and i like to keep up to date with them so i haven't asked to be removed from the email newsletter. well anyway, she occasionally sends out chain-letter type things, and the most recent one was a little bizarre, a little funny, and a little saddening all rolled into one.

you see, if you haven't noticed, gas prices have gone up a lot.
but the thing is, gas availability hasn't gone down or anything. there's more gas around now than there was 30 years ago, and gas back then was super cheap, like tap water.

so what's the deal? if there's so much gas around then why does it cost so much? well, it's not because there's more gas being used, no that can't possibly be it. and it's not because we need to invest substantial quantities of money into the military in order to sustain our current fuel demands, obviously not.

no, actually it's a price-fixing monopolizing conspiracy from the biggest gas companies. scandalous, yes?

the solution? well the thing is, (i'm quoting this part), "we all need our vehicles, so giving them up is not an option". that's right. don't go buy a bike, don't take public transpo, don't carpool... instead, buy gas from a retailer who isn't Shell or Petro Can. that will force them into a "price war", which will drive prices down, so then we can all drive freely and not give a care about how much shit we're burning and how many people died to fuel our transportation.

that will save our world and our economy. good thinking guys.

Anathallo - "Kasa No Hone (the umbrella's bones)"
from Floating World.
(listen or watch)

karakasa no hone wa
bara bara
kamya yaburete mo
take nisotaru
en ja mo
mis're nasaru na
nambo watashi ga
yaburete mo
us'te shon shon

"the ribs of the umbrella
have fallen apart;
the paper is also torn,
but with bamboo
tied together.
do not throw it away.
though i
also am torn
don't desert me."

i always imagine giving my kids unconventional names. i love names that people used to have & it seriously disappoints me that we're pretty dead set on the names we do have... or any unconventional names that come up are like, celebrities naming their kids after fruit.

but just look through a book of classic jazz players, y'know? Ornette. Thelonious. Ferdinand (Jelly Roll Morton). or like... Duke Ellington's real name was Edward Kennedy Ellington. which is "normal" i guess but still classy, yeah? i mean those names are just awesome. i wish my name was Thelonious. how many ways can you abbreviate that eh? Theo, Thelo, Thé, Lo, Loni... well, those are the best ones. & his middle name was Sphere.

first things first tho, kids come after mate, & mate comes after date. so i need to learn how to talk to girls i like & not be an entire jackass. or maybe fall in love with a girl who totally digs jackasses. that would require less self-reflection.

so i've had this secret obsession with stardom for the past few yrs & can't quite figure it out? for some reason i always have these pretend interior monologues where some guy is interviewing me for something. it's bizarre.

well anyway. The Masquerade Parade lost their singer recently & are doing an open call for vocalists to present themselves. i really like their sound & by the sound of their recent demos they're headed towards something good. i won't deny that i had this real urge to drop school, move to St. Catherine's, get a dead-end job, & sing for TMP. i mean it went away pretty quick when i realised that i'm not really in love with the band, i just like them &would support them if they came to Kingston. they're nice guys. but not gonna drop school to be their singer - & that's assuming they'd want me.

but i realised, of course, that this is simply the closest i've ever come to having a serious band, & i'm just kind of jumping at it. like when i wanted to be the new keyboardist for Circle Takes the Square, or when i wanted to move to New York to play drums with Kayo Dot. it's just this deeply embedded desire to... do interviews? yeah, still weird.

some self-psychoanalysis: i think what's happening is, i spend a lot of time just thinking to myself because i do a lot of things on my own. i mean i think i'm a pretty social person, &i have an even more deeply embedded desire to find&make community somewhere/somehow. but i go a lot of places on my own, y'know? i see movies on my own, i go to concerts where i don't know anyone, i bike up to the shop on my own... so in transit, i spend a lot of time in my own thoughts. & my thoughts just kind of let themselves wander, & i really have nowhere to unload it all except... here. which isn't quite as fulfilling as sitting down to coffee with someone.

i think, basically, i just enjoy having really long conversations about nothing in specific, &interviews are extra cool because it means i'm in a band.

i've been really digging the song "Why Me Lord?" by Johnny Cash lately. "why me Lord? what have i ever done to deserve even one of the pleasures i've known?"

even if the song isn't in my head, similar kinds of thoughts enter my head a lot of the time when i'm walking around Kingston. i biked up to the northeast end to drop off a resumé for a summer job, & for those who know Kingston & where i live, my path took me through the Rideau Heights area. so i'm biking past all of these broken down & boarded up houses, thinking: "why me Lord? what did i do to land a life where my greatest worry is failing number theory, while other people are struggling to meet their basic human needs?"

i saw "Up the Yangtze" a few wks back & it really reminded me how incredibly shallow i really am. the used bike, the thrift store clothes, the volunteer work... i certainly think they're good things but in the end they're still all very selfish, to maintain an image of selflessness (i think that's irony?), to get that good warm feeling when you know that what you're doing is right & everyone else is wrong, & fuck the politicians & whatever else i rant about on this stupid thing. i mean, i talk so much about justice & poverty & everything but in the end, what do i know about the struggles of that farmer's kid in China? nothing really... i'm just a rich kid who likes pretending he has the answers to life, & writes about them on the internet.

i bring this all up because apparently my parents invested some money in my name & they're letting me have it? it's a good chunk of cash & my dad wants me to invest it in my RRSP. but recently i was very challenged by Kurt (upturnedface), talking about how all these investment firms are essentially making money off of everything i'm against. like, what good is all my hating on McD's or Coke or Wal-Mart if my retirement money is based in supporting them?

but even before that, maybe a summer & a half ago, i was challenged pretty hard by a good friend Eric. Eric hasn't had a set course for more than a few months of his life for the past while; he takes or refuses opportunities as they arise, he gives stuff away spontaneously, he goes places spontaneously... i asked him about it & to him it wasn't a real radical lifestyle, it was just the way he felt life should be lived - living by & trusting in the grace of G-d. he challenged me about issues of financial security &c.; he told me about the analogy Jesus used, which in my words/life would sound like this:

we're so worried about what we'll eat or drink or wear. we spend so much time worrying & hoarding wealth & saving so we can have our safe, secure lifestyles. but look at the birds, do they amass great quantities in barns for themselves? &yet doesn't G-d take care of them? look at the flowers in the field; today they're here, tomorrow they'll be cut down or grazed. but still G-d has provided for them - the greatest kings are clothed less radiantly than the simplest flower. aren't we more valuable than birds & grass? won't G-d take care of us also?

that really hit me, because it seems my entire life is built around storing shit up for myself. get a degree to get a good job to get lots of money to get a nice house to retire at 50 &then golf until i croak. &there have been a number of times when i've seriously wanted to just drop out entirely &find a way to actually love people & not just myself & my stuff. also i hate golf.

well, big tangent over, the point is, i'm praying pretty hard about what i should do with the cash. like i said it's a substantial sum for me, which isn't a lot in real-life terms (i think my parents would make it in a day) but it's a lot in the sense that it could seriously save lives. interestingly it's one of the first things in awhile that i've felt really compelled to pray about. that's another story tho.

i've started screenprinting. you can do lots with recycled materials. i've spent maybe sixty bucks on all of the set-up equipment, another ten on paints so far. not a very steep investment considering that well-designed fashions can run for twenty, thirty papers for a single T. theoretically i could make back my money in two shirts, teehee. (tho for reals, i think i'm going to sell on a pay-what-you-can or sliding scale basis.)

i have some slogans & designs thought up but so far nothing really concrete. my first screen (mostly a success) is a cassette tape. i'm thinking of adding the caption "REAL" under it, kind of a rebellion against the MP3-digital age. as in, real music is not binary code in a file on your computer. i'm so clever.

i heard the line "music is my weapon" from some online music zine/blog & i thought it was cool. so i've thought up a design of a composite image of a violin & AK-47. we'll see how it turns out. i'm not sure if i just want the image to speak for itself or if i want to add the caption. or maybe even an extended caption: "love is my war, music is my weapons".

& one more, a raised fist made to look like the stem of a plant, with leaves & petals etc. added in somehow. i don't know. it's all rather very nebulous right now. it's based on a fragment of song/poem. "raise your fists/ with love on your knuckles". ("raise your voices/ with life on your lips". it goes on.)

oh &onemore for real this time, a burning match with the caption "stubborn lights keep shining". from one of my songs also.

does anyone do design type stuff? we could collaborate maybe? i'm perhaps a little bit awful at visual arts &mostespecially anything to do with computer graphics.

temporary website at the google pages. nothing is up yet. in fact you'll be hit with a lot of "missing page" error notes. right now it's rather like an old book with most of its pages torn out, as in, all of them but the first one. so you can read the title & be all "that's a cool title" but the prologue is still pending.