it's raining outside and it's obliterating all the beauty the snow had wrought. Snow, when looking at rain, is clearly an amazing thing. Getting pelted by rain and soaked to my bones reminds you of how fast and simplemindedly it gets to the ground. It's a sort of rain that constitutes the apocryphal Chinese water torture. Rain just drips, it's pleasant patter is really like the relentless chewing of a beaver through a tree, it breaks things down and seeks the lowest point. Rain would probably be happiest if it could just keep falling, if it could mindlessly follow gravity into an infinite, galactic hole.

Snow is not like rain, snow is alive and diversionary. Descartes said that intelligence is in detours, and rain is as stupid as snow is brilliant. Snow hardly even falls from the sky, it floats. If you watch a flake, a flocon, as i learned earlier today, it falls no more reliably than a swooping bird. It is leisurely, carried by the wind. Snow is delicate enough to land on your nose or the tip of your tongue. Snow is balletic and lacey and distractable. It is also constructive. When snow does fall it piles up with the same genius with which termites build those gigantic nests. They know how to fall on each other, they have a collective intelligence each flake is much too flakey to have alone. The soft curves of snowbanks are magical accumulations, they follow the contours of a tree branch or a garbage back and in so doing underline the whole physical landscape, or outline, depending on how you think about it. everything is special when its shape is replicated by immaculate snow.

and so it's awful when rain pelts those drifts, leaving them scarred like a face with bad acne.
apparently rain isn't even an artful, bullet shape, raindrops really look like miniature hamburger buns, a clunkiness equal to their doings.

snow is perched delicately, it's in moving it that it becomes regular old water.

also,

Yet, it was beautiful, a single ugly form is ugly, but if it’s replicated, or spectacularly enlarged it becomes something to reckon with. If the dirty wrinkles of a garbage bag were enlarged to be the size of a mountain they would command your awe, in the same way that if you shrunk a mountain to the size of a soup can it might just look like a large turd.


snow is as hardy as a mountain climbers fingers. earlier this morning i walked past an old church that's been converted into apartments. but it still has the old, heavy building blocks that protrude out in the middle of them. they aren't flat like bricks, they have extruding, natural bits. and the snow is perched on any of the most meagerly graspable bits.

playing war

It's really fun to pretend you're at war. Brandishing a banana at your invented enemies makes the world a very exciting place, everything becomes a prop. When you point your banana and shoot to kill, that you yell "boom" or "pow" rather than actually shoot doesn't make it any less fun. When you start using a banana like a gun, the world instantly becomes an exciting place and you become a man with clear motives and fears. When you have a banana gun, you have reason to run uncommonly fast, to dodge behind cars and get greatly increase your blood pressure, you suddenly start seeing things in high definition.

The physical movement that pretending you're holding a gun and that the world is full of danger entails is probably a large part of what makes it so fun, pumping adrenaline makes it impossible to not get caught up in your imagination. If your body plays its part your mind will join in.

Pretending your banana is a gun and the world your enemy is also terrifically entertaining because it lets you construct the world even more egocentric than usual. Buildings and shrubbery and the anonymous pedestrians that populate a city are cold in the sense that they have nothing to do with you, you don't matter. When you play war, you make what was an impersonal structure into a prop in your life, a random person is now your threat and the ferns are their cover. You supply them with a motive that revolves around you and you engage them insistently.

The drab scenery of McGill campus on a rainy, unseasonably cold September Sunday is thrilling when you populate it with nameless assassins and their hideouts. Its perverse and morbid but nonetheless true that a tree is much more exciting when you imagine there is someone ready to kill you (kill in the lighthearted sense, but it would still be disappointing) hiding behind it, you observe it minutely and that care is rewarded. When you are looking so concertedly and suspiciously at something and it moves, it is as rewarding to kill it with your banana as I imagine it must be for a bird watcher to see their bird. The experience is charged with the fear of the murderous world. Even if it turns out to have been a bird, the anticipation of the surveillance alone is animating.

When I was in the south of France I "played war" often with the kids. Theo, 14, and Jules, 8, in particular. Theo had made machine guns out of discarded plywood with which we would hunt each other. If "shot" we had to sulk back to our "base" before resuming the game. You "shot" someone when you yelled out your unique bullet noises while pointing at the other person before they pointed and yelled at you. I suspect everyone has instinctual bullet noises inside of them ready to erupt when they have the chance to point and and yell, we're probably born squealers or boomers, pistols or bazookas. Knowing that Theo or Jules could be anywhere electrified everywhere and made piles of wood or giant "bobines" into props and part of a thrilling, murderous narrative rather than the sleepy, meaningless stuff they really are. It was like a video game.

Video games are the obvious thing to relate all this too, playing war is like being in a role playing game shooter, rpg shooter. But its also much better and I think much more innocuous because your body is the motor and locus of the excitement rather than the visuals of a TV screen. There's no blood and guts implied in all the electrifying narrative world I've been describing, it originates from and is fueled by a more general notion of "getting" him or her before they "get" you which makes the heart pump and, until physical exhaustion, a self perpetuating excitement.

people have to have independent corroboration of their worth, at least i do. family's not enough because they are your family but even a robot could theoretically suffice. just thought of this watching luke skywalker and c3p0 be best friends.

episode 6 was terrible
star wars films were shockingly bad, I was taken aback.

the blob

Alexandra is a large and unpleasant person. She is really cool in the sense that she is really aloof, Alexandra is loath to engage other people. Instead, she drags her heft around the store reminding herself that she comes from a European country and speaks french. Alexandra is the first person I have met who has been anything less than helpful in helping me learn french. This is not surprising given Alexandra's general opposition to learning, she is much too aloof and snooty to have anything to learn for learning requires an earnestness absent in the vast plains of her elephant flesh. I think when anyone is quite so large and wears tiny shorts it is probably inevitable that its looseness and flaccidity will appear. Her massiveness is evident in the way she moves her feet. They are the last thing that moves when she takes a step. She lurches forward and her clodhoppers belatedly join her. She wears these fat black shoes called desert boots. I have a pair, though in green instead of black. They're really nice shoes in theory because they have an excess of material which extends up towards your ankle. it doesn't really serve any purpose but adds structure and novelty and attractiveness to the shoe. On Alexandra's foot, however, there is no excess. Her Desert Boots can barely contain the evidently enormous thing therein, her ankles and toes bursting alike. Bursting might actually seem like a problem for a gigantic person like Alexandra if she didn't have quite so much skin and wasn't so lacking energy, zeal or anything to demonstrate that she is happy to be alive.

mother Joon-ho Bong

this movie was really beautiful because it humanized and made comprehensible and believable things that are too often the stuff of grotesque tabloids and cursory disgust. it makes a murderous mother into a sane and beautiful individual, well maybe not entirely sane. it was also really amazing because it was about a person following their heart, truly their heart and guided by nothing more than the passionate, awe inspiring love of parenthood and the horrors that arise from that unfaltering, uncompromising love. by the end of the film, i even believe the insecticide thing. i believe it all. what a dangerous and awesome power. its like if the epic mama bears of the forest could think and feel and do beautiful things, could live with nuance, maybe they could some day be like that incredible woman. jin tae is a bit absurd. but still, full of so much mysterious magic. i loved the way it ended with the dancing on the bus. what a terrific film.

courtship

men have a funny look on their faces when their in clubs. its a very focused look, staring straight ahead at something. its a blank stare, however, and they are never actually looking at anything. rather, its a look that endows them with purpose. this far seeing stare, across the crowd, towards some hypothetical person or thing on which has caught their attention, is an attempt to deflect attention from their not having any purpose. they glower morosely into the distance because they cannot and must not admit that there, right in front of them, they have no rationale for being there. this is essential in a club because the rationale is an unspoken and desperately avoided one, they are there to rub themselves against other people.

cellphones and other little meaningless devices are also pivotal tools of avoidance and deflection of the rubbing themselves against other people rationale. in theory, a cellphone provides an infinite portal into a whole other world in which the man is invested. it supplies him with a structure against to lean, a world full of motives like love, beauty and friendship which theoretically occupy his interest, much the same way he would like you to interpret his staring into the distance. there, you must imagine, he is preoccupied with beauty love and friendship and such motivates his intense observation of that neon thing on the other side of the room. he does this because he is terrified that you will look at his base, horny and utterly straightforward self and so tries to foist attention onto auxiliary objects in which to find meaning (or, importantly, make conversation and further obfuscate his obscene simplicity).

things like waiting in line are actually great for this man. it provides him with purpose: something to follow, to cling to. waiting in a line, the man can even dispense with his distant stare, his waiting speaks for itself. he now has something to complain about, a waiting external to himself and hence ripe for commentary -- as anything external is very ripe for our ever deflecting man.

he has probably been doing a lot of furtive and diffident smiling at this point. openings often appear for something beyond the uncomfortable period of trying to get something from nothing. which brings us to what our man really wants. what he wants would best be satisfied without talking. talking complicates matters for our man because he could stumble and is altogether unable to speak very well right now because he's become so accustomed to his silence and his autonomous and disinterested staring. he will never look anything he actually wants in the face because he is so terrified of rejection or, even worse, exposure of his simplicity, which is why he is always staring at inanimate or otherwise neutral objects. this is his way of being cool and trying to be attractive because it helps establish a comfortable layer of indifference to his environment, "hey look i could totally care less about any of these individuals." if this was actually true, he could totally succeed in getting all the rubbing against other people any man could possibly want, but by and large it isn't. his blasE attitude and aloofness are unhappily belied by the seriousness and above all shyness of his demeanor. the stakes are high.

this is of course a hilarious thing to bear witness to. these men in clubs, hungry and abashed, are almost endearing in a way. even when they're armed with a brusque, unpleasant and often wholly contrived machismo (note the way people going clubbing dress, it is a special occasion), they evince an agonized, and very suppressed desire. he is a tortured soul, our horny clubber.

the brothers karamazov

right now the book is at jesse and patrick's house so i have to go get it. it's the most incredible book and i don't want to forget why i think so. it's got all sorts of unbelievably wonderful things, alyosha himself in particular. there's a passage where it describes how unreasonably affected and sad he is after zosima is "corrupted" and smells after he dies and his passion and how its beautiful if naive and that reason, for reason would have squelched his passion, is cheap for its the most common thing, we all have plain old reasonable thinking. and there's ivan when he says "i'm a scoundrel" as he's leaving on the train back to moscow when its perfectly obvious he shouldn't and his relationship to that cook who bewitches and strangely entrances him who he despises, its all so unfamiliar and still somehow strikes me as so true and wise and beautiful. and grushenka, the awful grushenka who alyosha really is stupid in thinking she somehow has a beautiful heart, i guess that's his boundless heart (soi meme) but he's totally wrong she's just sort of pathetic for acting that way. and fyodor pavlovich himself the total loony with all his cognac and the sad and spiteful and bitter little rakitkin who wants to ruin alyosha's saintliness and father ferapont the lunatic who sees all the little demons and wears the chains and is the stupid holy fool. so many terrific happenings in this book and they often seem so loosely thrown together, its really just a fantastical parade of the extraordinary goings on of people's brains and souls and how beautiful man can be in his thoughts. what a pageant! and the grand inquisitor is a truly majestic idea, the whole idea of man being free in this life is pretty stupid. gotta curtail us and live for the afterlife. great way of suppressing the crazy masses. i am going to go for a walk to take in all the hilarious sights of st laurent at night.

AA

its funny at american apparel how aggravating and insulting finding things can be. since you're always totally surrounded by clothes and headbands and thong leotards, whenever you're looking for something it's never more than like 5 feet away from you. the label is staring at you and you, blankly, can't find it. the only labels i ever manage to recollect or find again are the ones with the pictures of beautiful women. the others, in black and white, i can never seem to find. and while i whine and stamp the boxes must be ogling my shoelaces or my nose. its labyrinthian by sheer volume even though its all right in front of me, really stupid-making.

amelio's

tonight was apparently slow. i just started as a kitchen helper at this pizza restaurant not knowing what a kitchen helper was, i figured i would be comfortably ensconced in the dishroom surrounded by suds. instead, i am a skilled worker already, expertly manipulating and flouring and dancing with the dough. i am an artist. this was really hard at first especially because my initial teacher was amit (amin? amyth?), an indian or pakistani man with breathtaking expertise. it made me think of the grand sensei in kill bill, such coldness to incompetence. he only let me watch, whenever i tried to do something myself he intervened with the urgency of a man who cannot bear to see something done improperly. he is quite short and doesn't speak english very well and yet it is evident he is the sage of the restaurant, everyone else has come to understand and respect his brief, muddled and very wise utterances. working with amin i rapidly lost hope for my prospects as a pizza master. the situation was exacerbated by a shelf at eyebrow level. i banged my head near constantly into it, and whenever i looked directly forward i stared into a rather uninspiring piece of wood. it made me feel even dumber than my inability to handle the dough.

amelio's was hilarious in that a disproportionate number of people working there looked like mail order brides. so many of them were blonde and russian and spoke limited english. this other trainee, a woman named mitka epitomized this. she worked in earnest in spite of having evident difficulty at differentiating between some of the vegetable toppings (she was the topping girl, a lesser task, i like to believe than my own. i was building the foundation of the pizza experience). i got the impression she was learning the word zucchini on the fly.

another guy came to my aide of amin left me, a pudgy, friendly and average guy named josh. he was a little reminiscent of israel from that rideshare. he had been working there for about a year and a half and made me very happy when he told me that amin definitely was the pizza master of the establishment. i find it really funny that this little indian/pakistani man had somehow become the preeminent force in churning out delicious italian food, we do live in a big beautiful world. more later.

sitting in the library

sitting here in the cave of mcclellan i noticed, as never before, how the face of the kid sitting across from me is almost completely blocked out by his computer screen. save his hairline and occasionally a chunk of forehead, i can't see any of his face. i feel like it would be interesting to somehow document how much time we spend staring into computer screens, and how silly the screens look when we look back on them. have you ever noticed how whenever there's a television or computer screen in some home movie it always looks so obviously silly and boring and small and meaningless and yet the people in the video remain enraptured by the screen? how only through this new medium, this further distance can one readily distinguish how really flat and ridiculous such things are? i feel like i should try and make something that communicates how ridiculous that flatness is

Segal's

I worked at Segal's last night for the first time since this summer. My shift was from 6:15 until 12:30. I forgot what that place was like, that one indeterminate smell that's stuck in your nose within about 3 minutes of being in there. I think it might be from the fans. We had to wash and clean and squeegee and soak all the stands where the vegetables sit, Segal's is much cleaner than you would think. When the cooling fans underneath were turned back on, that musty, long-sitting-vegetables smell came surging back.

Handtrucks are the tool of the work. You can have a real swagger with one, they turn so quick and push so easy that it's easy to look really blithe even with sixty pounds of carrots. it's also really easy to crash into things when you have an unwarranted swagger like i do, i blithely, accidentally gashed a large bag of grain once swaggering by. Handtrucks also make the work sort of useless though. When I had first started working there I imagined that I was going to get jacked working there carrying stuff but it was made lamentably easy. I never got muscle-tired at Segal's, only the useless weariness of standing on your feet for 7 hours, it's a really underrated misery. When I worked there over the summer, the real difficulty had been not carting the yogurt but the feminizing, small and petty labor of depositing it in the shelves. Crouching and stacking and stretching out little fingers was the difficult part. Especially in the yogurt section; there, the fridges were covered by these thick plastic curtains sort of like in a carwash that would trudgingly push against you to retake their rightful place.

i feel sick and do not want to write anymore. i don't want to apologize to joanna, i am not a bad person, i don't want to see anyone.

sunday, february 28th

i am sitting in the library in a room adjacent to the cave. i have to write about this point "the living" by annie dillard. i want to create stuff. i have this funny idea about taking pictures of an orange juice squeezer and trying to make it look nefarious and demonic as it attacks the fruit of the house. it arrives up the stairs and enters. the fruit will play on the table by rolling back and forth. they will loll and stare at still lifes like de zurbaran's still life with lemons. the squeezer will try to eat other things but ultimately discover the oranges and lemons and destroy them or not