blank page. sometimes you just have to start with one. ideas flow out, within you without you. i cannot get excited. i stare and i wonder and i have had this writer's block but the man on the television tells me there is no such thing. this is easy for him to say, he has gone through it all. he enjoys doing the dishes. he is from the same place i am and there is no reason that i can't be the man on the television, telling people there is no such thing as the enjoyment of washing dishes. he probably doesn't even own dishes. he looks like a paper plate type of guy.
i want to make a film about the excitement and the thrill of it all. the thrill of making films. that is what i want to capture. i think it has to capture that. most films don't. they feel automatic. i want spontaneity. i want mistakes. i want fuck ups. but i want to stick to the script. i want my friends to be involved. my friends are always involved. i told off all my friends. shit, i have to find more friends. where do you meet people when you're twenty five? i'm not in school, hanging around at school would just seem weird and awkward, it did when i went there, no reason it wouldn't still. i can't go to work and meet people i don't have a job. should i get a job? maybe i could write a friend. i could recycle an old idea. i could go out and go to a meeting. you always see people at meetings in films, AA meetings, cancer survivor meetings, every kind of meeting. meeting in a park. i have never once seen any kind of small flyer saying "meeting tonight". these to me seem false. maybe in winnipeg there is no one to help you. maybe you just have to help yourself. hands open, helping hands, something that does not exist here.
everybody likes to ask me these questions, what are you doing? i think that i hate talking about myself. i like telling people about something that i have done because maybe that is more interesting than something about my actual self. i can tell you an opinion on a song or a film or a collection of works by an artist in their entirety while leaving out EPs or student films or simply their early works, but it wouldn't stick. it always comes back to me having to talk about myself. maybe i don't know it any other way. maybe i'm secretly wanting to be the center of attention. me me me. i try to be selfless. i actively say "i want to help people". i hold doors.
sorry, had to go to the bathroom. i spend most of my time there. anyways, where was i?
i had a point. either way. my stomach hurts. some people think i have a gluten allergy. others believe it to be an intolerance towards lactose. my thoughts are that it may be somewhere in the middle of this whole mess, but also a stress related problem. it could be no one will ever know because i will not go to a doctor. i stay up all night worrying. i can't sleep in my bed so i use the couch. i eat whenever i feel like it and then am thrown off when i have to attend an actual meal with people. i suffer for my art. i am not faceless for my art, though i do hide behind the camera, except when i am acting and in front of it.
some days i sit and do absolutely nothing, even though i know i have a long list of things i should be doing. but i get so overwhelmed and can't figure out which one holds the largest priority that i panic and i don't do any of them. as a result, dishes pile up, jobs go un-applied for, deadlines get missed, emails and phone calls and texts go un-answered, did i mention the pile of dishes? when i go to eat my peanut butter directly from the jar i cannot as i have used all of my spoons, forks and knives. all of them are gone, gone gone. well, not gone, they are in my sink and covered in stuck on food stuffs. if they begin to smell i do not notice, i have no real sense of smell. i do, i'm exaggerating slightly. i just have really horrible sinuses. most people have so much room to breath with but i only have an eighth of that. it's called non-alergenic rhinitus, an inflammation of the mucus membranes. yes, there are pills to take and sprays to spray but they all give me headaches and do nothing to help. i sniff and feel sick all the time. between my stomach and my nose i don't know whether to cut off my nose to spite her face or cut off my ass to spite her toilet. either way.
the finding of the film has been a difficult one. the art is lost on you. you didn't know i painted. i did at one point. my art teacher died a month after my grandfather. the first and second funerals i ever went to in my life. i was twenty two. i felt strange that spring, i was single and alone for the longest time. i rode around in a car with a girl who sang along to daniel johnston. she made me lose my temper for whatever reason. i think because she was sleeping with her thesis advisor. philosophy students make horrible muses. the girl that played her in the film was from a small town, one that my grandmother emigrated to when she came to canada as a young girl. the actress who played the girl was also a girl that i liked but she went to australia after dating my friend and now i don't see either of them anymore. there was also a french girl who has a common name of girls that i date. there was a girl whose name rhymes with date. i think that i pushed most of them away, though some of them drove me to it. i think i counted it out once and i've dated something like forty girls. this could be an exaggeration, but i don't feel like really counting it all out right now and the number would be inaccurate because i am getting forgetful in my old age. i don't think i was the right person for each girl at the time we dated. i have some fond memories of certain girls but overall i don't think i liked very many of them. or, in hindsight. either way. it always goes that way, you have these fond memories and thoughts of "what if" but then when you really think about it, you remember why it all ended, why you walked away, how they made you crazy for the wrong reasons more than the right ones. you fill in the blanks that time has erased. you believe in yourself once again.
the game of memory lane and catch up can only be used for a few good reasons, none of which are coming to mind right now. if i think hard enough, maybe something will stick. i suppose curiosity is as good a reason as any. the simple fact that you are curious as to what someone is up to. someone you once shared a few moments with. a few intimate moments, a few humorous moments, a few hard moments. the curiosity can get to you. fortunately, the curiosity usually comes in the middle of the night. unfortunately, people have access to things such as email and the telephone. then you find out that this person is engaged. they got engaged the exact same day you decided to think about them. you have a slight mind fuck. you cry a little inside when you think about the moment on the driveway in the cold winter air, the way the fake fur collar of her coat felt against your face. you think about the phone calls. the letters. the music and the films. you think about all the things that mean something to someone and wonder if that person feels the same about those things that you do. maybe they've forgotten. it's too hard to forget that though.
there are only a few that have hit you this hard. the thing is though, you know that everything happens for a certain reason. you would not want to be with her now, you are different people. though it still hurts you to think about how she is with someone else. sharing these new moments. songs take on new meanings, whether she holds on to the old ones or not. places, street corners, hallways, beverages, all have new meanings. something in the way she moves me. you had that window and it was open. the window is now closed. it is alright with you.
the moments are still fresh in your mind. where they really that great? did they really matter and happen and did each girl feel each thing that you did? is it a possibility that they still romanticize each and every thought that you do? have they moved on in new and different ways? you have, that's for certain. but you still get a little smile when you walk down a hallway, hear a song, breathe in the cold winter air of winnipeg and its surrounding municipalities. you smile a little and think that you are building a new life for yourself in the here and now. be here now. don't believe the truth. definitely, maybe. within you without you. i. me. mine. i am mine.
the poster on your wall is staring at you to come inside and let it hold you. let it add you to the ways in which it hangs.
a reference needs to be provided. the more the better. four at the most though, please. proof of your education. a copy will do. the names of the courses that you have previously taken. the ways that you would be an asset to us. not how we can be an asset to you. this is obvious. we will provide you with money when you provide us with a service that we deem appropriate of said terms. please agree to them.
i used to read a lot of fiction when i started university. i hadn't read a lot in high school. i didn't even read the stuff i had to for class, and that did not change when i reached a post-secondary education. i read what i wanted to. then i wrote things. i wrote so much. one of my binders was stolen in a back pack that also had a really cool weezer patch on it. i was devastated. either way, i wouldn't go back and look at it now for any kind of reference. no help for us now.
now i read only non-fiction, almost exclusively. it's difficult for me to latch into characters and things that have been made up. perhaps this has attributed (or the reverse) as to why i have been feeling extremely non-creative as of late.
it's true.
coming to a theatre near you. my stomach ache. in technicolour surround sound with a free pack of the fun size candies of your choice.
excuse me while i am ill again.
