Metamorphosis — Volume 2: A Case Study on Consciousness // Book 1 — Youth // B journal — UBC 1st year (2005–2006)

October 29

I keep forgetting this. Shmeh. I can’t decide if my life is good or not. Its non stop, and i love it, i love living and acting, talking, partying, but its shallow, has a taint over it. Last night, by societys standard, was a good night. Piss drunk and dance with hordes of hot girls. I hated it, gettttttting drunk was fun, but the actual party, just fucking horny girls fucking on the dance floor, that is, ummmm, fucked, get it, fuck, fucked, what genius use of the word. so what do i want in life? I’m not sick of people, i do like being alone, but not chronically, but i suppose i need a best friend of a wife, somebody to look at the sky with and think we’re falling off the planet. Make sense? UBC, i dunno, i love the knowledge, but it feels like its false advertising, this isn’t real living, real learning, its a farce, a way for us to be directed my the market. Money controls everything how depressing, so what do i want from life then? To escape money? No, that can’t happen, it doesn’t work, we’re not wired for it. A second golden mean to civilization, it exists. Its on the horizon, i have the potential to bring the world to it, get in on a path of joy and maybe even righteousness. I am not devout, but waves of corruption and hate emanate from everything I see. My city is beautiful, but at what cost? I am wealthy but at what cost? If success is ever my hallmark half the world will tear me down simply since they don’t want somebody higher then them, the other half will kill me with neglect while they stare at themselves in the mirror. K. Im paranoid, illogical, makes no difference. I am Me, thanks Ashlee, u say it the best, with your genius title. I write to myself with sarcasm, that is fucked, but it doesn’t bother me. Nothing bothers me, that thought doesn’t even, while it should make me feel doomed, it makes me feel happy. I will meet every test when i need to, master it or fail, i’ll prepare to master it, but sometimes life throws a curve, ill deal with it. Why don’t the poor go live in the jungle? I brim with ambition i need direction. where can i direct it? Somebody use me, i need to be used! Thinking for myself is hell, thats no joke, but maybe thats why the world is like this, everybodys letting somebody else think for them. I’ll rise, and keep climbing, and hope for the best, always hope for the best. and love my family, and myself. Everything else can rot, see if maggots come from the inside. I love life, why do i want to change it. its unjust maybe? Africa shoved away, our politics brutalizing it over and over again, over and over and over, no pride, dignity or sense of self left. We europeanized them all right, poor bastards. Its unjust, that i can have a life like this, while 6 billion people out there suffer, and they know it, thank you tv. Fly away into a dream, if only it was possible. Ill make the dream earth, i need to fucking stop lazingaround and take action. how do i start tho? Join a club, ya, im sure ti exists. And now im good, must be bipolar or something. But this journal is lame, oooooh, i suffer, oooooo blah blah blah. Its an overstatement, im a teenager, im allowed to, gotta be a bitch at somepoint in my life. My life is so good im smiling. Vancouver is amazing, i love the feeling of being able to do something different every day, its …inspiring? Uplifting? theres just so much potential, i love nanaimo, but a metropolis deffinetally has some attributes. Im lonely, not from friends, but from family, there is a void i suppose, and i think i could fill it, but my lifes good now. Its a mental practice, just enjoying everything. But i g2g, ttyl self

[undated — early November 2005]

so barrett of the future: happy november, maybe itll be a good month, no mads bad. now i jinxed it tho. shmeh, so heres the dilemma, don’t want a relationship with her, i want her as a friend, but now we’ve both “come out” (no not in that sense, not yet), its kindof underlying tension. Jill makes me so happy to be around which is something i want to look into, a person who all they do is make me happy, that is fucking amazing. JMUSELOVERs the most complicated, i really do like her, and i know she goes off and on in love with me

[undated — November 2005]

so who am i today? different then yesterday, different the day before, what an amazing emotion. I’m (tryingO to study darwinism, but isn’t my own intellectual evolution proof? who cares if humans had 6 toes a million years ago, yesterday, i was a different person, and the change is invisible. My fires are so bright, i could change the world to cinder if i wished, but what a complicating world, where I idealize napoleon, but if i were to recreate his exploits i would despise myself. I applied to volunteer for a year in Africa or China, either would be the same. Identiry crisis, i should’ve gone through this when I was 11,but maybe its not identity I lack, I know who I am, or even goals, but the lower down goals, and I think a year in a foreign wasteland struck head on by the implications of my lifestyle and the social direction the world is going, I will arise. Who knows. fuck. what a cage, why trap a mockingbird. let it sing, do what it does best at, what it loves. We think we are so great, exterminate us god and free the world of the most abhorrable plague ever conspired. Life is so beautiful though, how can such a beautiful state cause such misery, such desolation and pain? I’m the most centered I’ve been in weeks, truly a pendulum rather then a mountain is a way to describe life, and mine is one of extremes. Alcohol and weed, they’re vices, but i’m in control, they’re not shadowing me, I can cast them off, I want to cast them off, fucking the whole world does this shit, why do i need to follow? My dreams are strange, usually I don’t remember my dreams, but now they’re vivid, and scaring me with their vitality. Last night was the worst one yet, asymptitically higher then when I was shot meaninglyless on a mans birthday. T degenerated into an addict of something worse then heroin, some fantasy chronic. it was so real, my pain, i tried to ide it, fix him, but i couldn’t, he was a sinking ship, but i loved him. misery what a way to live, i remember his wild fits, while i hugged him to the ground. fucked up. I have such big sails now and no boat, i’ve come to a turning point, luck ambition and talent will raise me right to the top, but there is no institution i care enough about. maybe volunteering will resolve that. my second choice is the army, going from life saver to murderer will be about as wide a step as possible, if i gain no pereption or world view out of that, its a lost cause. Girls are messed up, guys are messed up, I’m messed up,m so then whats the norm? I love so many girls, I do, I think i’d marry some right now, just say a fuck you to my aspirations, that what i believe in, and devote myself to family. Keep girls away from me then, I have a different purpose then my own happiness. Why can’t i have both? could I, is that fair to her i named wife, i will not cause any flower to wilt for lack of sun, but my rays are only so much. time will tell. i put it off.procrastinate. but this does not mean i won’t act, it just means that i will act fast fast fast when the time comes, a tornado covers a little area but it is the strongest storm on earth, elegant in its destruction. So, the big question, the mother question. shit. i haven’t thought of what that question is. i have beard, the fuck. i’m going bald, i don’t think so, but everything happens eventually, i’ll turn into the moon if i wait long enough. time is infinite, doesn’t that make experience infinite, i’ll degrade and turn into the air that isbreathed and absorbed by a man going bald. everything will happen. im turning into an antisocialite again, but i think this is more an elevation of who i was rather then a reversion to any past loner practices i had. My charms and humor are still there, if i throw modesty out the window (and emracejinx) i could state they’re stronger then ever. friendship is tiring, i don’t want to be friends with the whole world, i want to love the whole world, and i do. i do. Goddamned crazy romanian radu and me had a “debate” for blood fucking 2 and a half hours. We’re both ignorant idiots, but dear god neither of us would bend, we’ll likely continue it again. Will I ever be a father? little son i could have, my own blood, id love to teach the world, crown with love, but not spoil. Not in this life, it has the ring of dream, no semblence to reality. no life sounds real.N. said journalism i could do, and what a life that would be, so much pleasure, so much potential to bless the world. I could do it, I have that talent! but i won’t, not in this form,maybe next metamorphisis, now i think i almost subconsciously pray for a shallow grave, a pointless cause to imbue with righteousness and passion. The false advertising world has me mastered though!, with just enough ability to rebel to make us happy, enough entertainment to satisfy us, etc, yipee industrialization. What question do i have of the enlightenement? Is this a world the philisophes desired? maybe its not the world that is the plague but european thought. Enslaving the world to grow sugar, wow, i love logic. and somehow we think they are the idiots. cynicism is an ugly art, but the worlds shifting away from color, all i see is black and white and the red sunset. Thank the supposed god for the snaity the rising ball of fire gives me, appreciating after the pure black of night a new day rises fresh. Nigght is beautiful to though. why am i so pessimisticnow? I feel like murderer, a wife beater, anything that my actions make possible even if its just my impartiality. I could stop the pain, and focus on the vibrant colours that exist only in my world. Is that a noble goal? Does that even make sense? on some plain of my head i suppose. Likely i’ll give up and become a cubicle workercounting how many immigrants are working with me and watching my funds give away to inflation and death looms closer as every day i get that much clsoer to my own demise. Ultimately all i want is as everyone wants, their own happiness. What makes me happy? sad? etc. etc. etc i’m done here. im figuring it out. and im feeling brillian.

December 3, 2005

Last night, I couldn’t decide why I never turned my sight inward, making decisions. Laziness, I concluded, so I planned out tentatively the next few years. Hell, I planned out life. Now at least I am conscious when I deviate, rather then it just being the gray of offness. My plan is to next year, go to Africa or China, after that, join the military, after that, go to school of journalism. Yippee, next decade decided. Will any of that happen? It could, I have that potential, and what I would learn would be immense: a true life. Rules are meant to be broken, and I am not restricting myself, these are not my lifes ambitions, merely a possible framework in which my ambitions can be realized and my potential raised. There is so little passion left in life, it discourages me. My fathers life is so full, I would live like him, or my grandfather, yet, I must make my own path. They have set a high bar, but challenge is where I perform best. The last few weeks have been good, some of the best in my life, I suppose; there has never been such a thing as a bad week. My fathers being audited, my grandmas in the hospital, and suddenly the untouchables are mortals. Not mere, but titans, their humaness is inspiring. A trashy formal, my brother on the phone with my mothers description of a university event. What a summation of life in this day and age. Exclusivity of such things as formality, and by process prestice and grandeur, have been leavened to the masses, and any beauty left in the terms has disintegrated. How do you express yourself reasonably in a room of screeching, self centered, self righteous people. You scream too, but I won’t. Demeaning myself, never, I may be an idiot in half the worlds eyes, but they can rot, its my self-perception I care about. For the first time in my life, I look forward in the future, and I don’t see impossible dreams, I see possibility. There is hope of satisfaction without me having to be in isolation from the social structure. Life is good

January 8

Tides they’re pushing but the rock of my solace still lies uncovered and basting in the sun. The last three days were some of the best in my life: team Canada, grandparents, S., alexia and Sugarloaf Mountain, Tra, Denman and Walker, the Hookah, Munich, and the world. Each moment is a moment that reminds me that life ends and a conclusion will be reached. Now it is time to fight, I am not ready for this brawl. Money is not a motive but I need it. For Europe, for Africa, I can get the money, but I don’t know how to do it, how to sell myself. School needs to be worked at, I am reaching new heights, but its time to remind myself that potential is something that is a sin to waste. Perhaps I am a cold person in matters of humanity, I feel like I need to ask S. out, and she is lovely and an admirable person, yet theres this fucking chivalrous code that should not exist seperating me from her. Maybe I’m just scared. I will beat everything and everything will beat me. Lifes a ride I will win at since even if I’m losing I have nothing to measure it to and I can just lie to my sole with black truths. Halleluja the world ends around me.

jan 20

nananannananananana batman, batman, batman BATMAN. this “journal” is gonna piss me off one day, i feel like i should delete it, but shmeh, maybe i’ll get a laugh out of it. so, yes, life is good. this journal really chronicles nothing but whatever emotion i feel at the exact second of writing, which I suppose defeats the entire purpose of having a journal. what can you do, my memory sucks, maybe its intentional, every moments the best i’ve ever lived; this is a satisfying way to live, if it lacks solidarity. So, whats the action of the second? I’m thinking of joining the army of all things, just untill the end of the summer. My hair would have to be cut. What an experience that would be! Knowledge, in my opinion (who would have thought it would be my opinion in my journal) comes in the greatest quantities when one is most out of their element. Throw somebody in the water, they will eaither learn or drown. Throw me into life, and i’ll swim because I have zero intention of drowning. Appppppparentally, I need money, thats the reason I’m thinking of the forces, sinceit would be one hell of a part time job. Hopefully it would provide enough money for this africa thing next year. Who the fuck do I think I am, university, army, africa, they’re all heavy duty, and they’re all converging. Bedrock, thats what I need, somewhere that will always be home. My parents move to vancouver next september, and kudos to them, but then where do I belong? Nanaimo? My family is gone and friends will be scattered. UBC? My peers will be across the world and in a different stage of their life. Vancouver? My parents would take me, but this chick fears his nest. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to think of and know that this is a place to throw down my bags. Already, I fear this cosmopolitan future. Perhaps I will get engaged before I do this next trek of life. Sure as hell, I am unready for that commitment, yet if theres the right girl, I would do it, I would be happy. Thats not going to happen though. Finding a girl who I love, yeah, they’re around every corner. Does she exist? I hope so, its fun to flirt, to make out with random girls, to string girls along, but I think most ‘relationships’ are a fallacy, an illusion of love and contentment, How could so many people claiming love find their soul just randomly in a small enclosed environment? Perhaps they are right, and my eyes pass through those that I should take. There is no way to know. My life is such a spectacular balancing act. The vision of walking a knife edge is used often, but it fails to adequatly describe my situation. I am a bull trying to jump through a needle hole, and am suceeding repetitively. My luck can’t go on forever, eventually, I will miss, until I do, however, I shall keep the jumping. If there was ever any doubt of a higher powers existence in my mind, that confusion is cast out. There is a god. How else could I explain the miraculous fortunes of my life. So much wonder, and I forget it instantaneously. The point of this journal was so I would remember the experiences that define me, yet not a one has been listed. Just since my last entry, theres been sheesha, S. and melanie, denman, canada world juniors, pictures, modeling, hobos, class, and so many other events, and non are explained. To explain one would warrant the explanation of an entire life, an act I will not do.

January 23

Im not a speaker. I don’t know what to say. You bodies rebelling against you. Its the mind that counts. A world awaits you, it does. it does. read. write. learn. this is the most advanced time of the world, a cure might come, but don’t wait on it. Write and write and write. change the world, its your job. u need a task. so my cousins go muscualar dystrophy. I remember finding that out. years ago, when i was playing the sims, to my mothers tears, and an angry phone. I prayed and he got better. as best as he could get. but time changes and all things change with time. hes sick. goin in a wheelchair. he is only 14 years old. 14 goddamn fucking years. what. the.fuck. my god. my god. family is everything, a friend is a stranger who lives near you. there will be a cure, there has to be. hes only 14.

stagnation of time, so much swirling to keep everything in place. won’t the apoaclypse land to end this farce, end the the lies of hope covering dread and despair. there is nothing to build on but the rotting site of the autopsy on how humandignity died. kill me death holds no threat but that there is somehow a world more terrible then this. a though to haunt the nightmare of a nightmare. monsters so evil they revile of themselves. kill every tree, every plant, every virgin deer, just kill humanity too, before our contagian spreads to the universe.

i will pray for you to the secret god i claim doesn’t exist.

such a great life. at what expense. my demons are closing in. and the wall is being built ahead of my road.

fuck fuck there is no such thing as light, its just a lack of bitter shadow with a bitter grease in its stay.

pain pain pain pain rage and pain. look at the board game of our lives, striving to roll the dice high to just do another loop of the board while existence is just one step away. naivete is kind but kindness has no place in a universe destroyed by our ignorance. end the plight of man. end the plight that is man. there is nothing left but the taste of ash covering my sight. and the memory of beauty on my lips. kiss me once and remember beauty, then stare in my eyes and no that we are slowly rotting in the graveyard of humanity. i can see your maggoty flesh undeneath those clothes. kiss me once. hug me once. end this dejection misery once. let me find hope, it exists, it is there, but so fragile, like building a snowman with a blow torch.

February 1

I just found out its february and its always a garganutam mistake thinking about the past. so many memories how can i add to them and ive forgotten them all. a million jokes, a million smiles. is that the defininition of yesterday? past kupots. shit happens. why do i bring everybody near me so close to me, i need seperation, my own thoughts my own life. so [name redacted]’s gay. so im a hippi in the worst sense. so i have no one to love since i love anyone. am i depressed, i don’t really know. i know i smile a lot, and i mean the smiling, but the mood im in when i right is always omnipresent, like the subtitles of my life. my brain spitting out innuendo constantly: judge that, be pissed off, thats stupid, thats beautiful; i listen to it so much i don’t think it exists anymore. perhaps im a good person in my own books. isnt that the point? a reason to wake up. but i walk on the edge of an abyss, i genuinely dont know how i dont fall. creator help me. all seperate now. stars in the sky, abyss between. we were close as touch. as love. i see your starshine. billions of years to be seperated from you. i can’t feel your heat, smell your lusciouness. the best life in the world. for those first 5 minutes, these 6 billion years of pain were worth those 5 minutes.. what is the point of a book today.

do i give up, go work my way up the wal-mart conglomerate, the american dream. N. dreams of wealth but i dream of it too. what an attraction, but is there any substance.live in the french country side with idealic kids and an idealic job and a meaningful job. i wish i wish i wish. the job would fuel a coke addiction for my stay at home wife as our nanny ruins my kids into shells of animals , the fat ceaser on a bench being fed grapes. while i work. fuck no fuck gfufkckckv. there is no option. mcluhan said we can’t escape, escaping was a myth and what an unhappy man. there has to be an escape, or a city within a city. whatever.ima liar anywase.

[INTERSTITIAL — draft for Barrett’s voice]

Sometime in February the journal stopped being a journal and became a notebook of poems — dozens in a sitting, dated only “feb 8–9 somewhere ish.” A fraction of them are kept here. They swing between crushes, God, Africa, computers, and the ground seen from a great height. That swing was the actual weather of being eighteen.

feb 8–9 somewhere ish

i have all these, seems like the more there are the worse chance of them being read.

A day before death Would last forever In your arms

⁂

Answer the mail with a key Order a drink with a click Propose with a camera Don’t call me human Never assume I have creativity It has been robbed I am the computer

⁂

i’m going home i’m getting drunk look out the window do i have an idea? one more shot, i’ll know all truth the pavement has the answer

maybe i’ll hit you on my way down and as a devil find my angel again, untainted with a smile i thought dead in the living world only shining in hell

⁂

the bag lady needs help with her shopping cart why does no one help her, walking past in an illusion of their own perfection, while inside they rot she escaped societys claws, and we hate her for it no master but her own, is poverty so rough another

⁂

infinite has an end i see it just over the horizon

⁂

great heights reached by a little hop coulda flown a little more force maybe from a higher cliff sound suicidal? is not annihalation of every sense worth that split second in the air of true gold and red living blazing as the sun before a cloud blots it into gray

⁂

the discipline of a butterfly why try to fail when i can flap my wings

⁂

i stepped on an ant not to watch it die but to watch it live to the end

⁂

the logic is amputation is allowable to save the body self amputating the world a generation of rejects and their grandkids

we don’t want you taking our money our hopes and dreams shattered, by your gift of deadly dearth disease

you leave us no hope we got to amputate you cut off at the root we need your space anyhow

so slowly but surely we send you a dollar less then you need a year butchered like a dog not out of cruelty or savagery but intentional neglect

you’re black anyhow would you want to be here now think of the lives you’ll be saving no daughter gotta go through aids no son shipped off to war grandkids eaten, to scare every ounce of rebellion

save us the trouble, take your own life our third arm needless we’re used to only two never got to try three never got to let three try the world goes on i got kids too, they got hope

⁂

what happens when black velvet of night rises with the rooster darkness poured into a bucket of black swirled togethor mixing black with black and coming out in endless sleep

⁂

hello littlest one its time to wake up to start your day that is the rest of your life

it is as cold as it feels and there is no more physical connection to something greater then you

but its not all bad, theres beauty never seen a sunrise? is it worth a life of dejection misery and pain for seemingly endless decades of darkness for one pure sun rise

if you had the choice, would you wake up you could’ve had a life of a billion dreams coulda dreamed this world as it was supposed to be

sometimes I think, I never woke up that first morning this has all been a dream i was never let to wake up and it makes me so happy

⁂

god can be proven in the movement of a wave no accidental anomaly, freak of nature ever could have made the visual pleasing perfection of that rising swell

a higher power can be seen in every tree, its swaying oxygen giving branches with baby birds, yelling sanctuary from its nourishing crevices

science can be disproven as the killer of the heavens with one word life a thing that should not exist a thing that defies the cold empty nothing of the universe

we are here next to the sea breathing in the magic of air if we are some chernobyl of nature, then i choose to dream on the choice is between everything and nothing, and neither can be proven or disproven. how do you prove you’re alive? what is the definition of life. why would you choose to say you’re dead.

⁂

my plague i hold cradled in my arms like the softest child take a sip and forget memories were ash in the begginning the red of blood strenthening what the creator forgot about i am a man i am a man i taste my destruction i taste my destiny as it swirls to my brain sinking the reason destroying chivalry a flood of ill gaity a carnival during a hurrican all the festivity is there but broken and dangerous and i drink my sorrows are ash but they are gone tonight

⁂

It was thou who thought thyself a sin, Praying the change, caterpillar to butterfly, Yet ere thy time is up, time flies to the coffin.

As your time passes, your importance states so clear, It was you who made me, guided me, bade me, Gained me that which I love, all I hold dear.

Life moves on, and it is a joyous road ahead, But cruel fate made but one of you, Childhood was but once. Future, cannot be read.

The day draws neigh, thy drinks but one last sip, Then over to the gray abyss that is life, Your memories have to drive me, like wind to a ship.

⁂

And Jesus said: Look, I walk on water. all assembled laughed the important laugh of those in control of their lives, as conscience seep through the floorboards of tortured souls, into the eating of nature. Till winter we laughed at the idiot, We disproved him, with the bible of science Then science destroyed the world, except for Jesus and he said to the cockroach: I walk on water. Only silence greeted him

⁂

theres nobody named barrett nash just a confectionary of others lies and a stagnant soul

⁂

(these next were written on the ferry as i left home.)

The city lights are burning But whose city is this It was mine while on shore But I am on shore no longer

A sky to write a portrait of Whales leaping playfully Forever youthful This was my home

I have no home now No friends, no family If this is life, to hell with it I never want to leave the nest

Surrounded by playful doves, With I the chief of playing But when does playing become fear To hide most raw emotion

You aren’t mine You are part of the city You are part of the city You aren’t mine

[INTERSTITIAL — draft for Barrett’s voice]

Pasted into the same document, out of chronological order, are emails I had saved from the week I left Nanaimo for university in September 2005 — “some emails that make me happy.” They are the other half of the conversation the journal only has with itself: evidence that people saw me, at an age when I was certain nobody did.

and some emails that make me happy:

[email received, September 2, 2005]

From :

JMUSELOVER N. <[email redacted]>

Sent :

September 2, 2005 1:50:41 AM

To :

[email redacted]

Subject :

note: coldplay was on repeat during the entire writing of these contents

well — -i have left the subject box empty for now, as I will title this letter after I see what it evolves into. Seeing as how your email went from comedic to compliment central (note the alliteration)…I will do the opposite. I’m just that original. Wow. so yes; damn computers for making communication THAT much harder to do to people’s faces. I will now use the fact that I probably have about eight-nine hours until you read this as emotional cushioning. Firstly I have a confession — — and that is despite my comments about being ‘friends with benefits’ …i don’t think I could have ever done that, the reason being I care about you too much. You had me thoroughly confused B- parce que (yeah bilingual — -add that to the list) all the other boys I’ve liked I haven’t really liked THEM. but with you…i liked the boo. I will never be able to compete with your wit — — your intelligence amazes me — (and alex) — -and I generally just like being in your company (and your aura….its blue..and its not the shirt). You have no idea how many motivational speeches Jill has done on this subject — -trying to force/help me to say this stuff to you — -but the fact remains that you’re the only boy in hisT to make me nervous. Weirdest thing. I’m sorry if I had you confused — -you’d think with my normal demeanor if i felt something towards you, you would know it. buuutttt apparently I subconsciously enjoy playing coy. and that sucks shit. and my sensitive email now includes the word shit..somehow i feel i have failed in some way. And now for another stroke of the ego — -(something tells me you’d want to know) I think my favourite thing about you is you never bore me. ok…so put that way it doesn’t sound that nice — -but what I’m attempting to say that there’s so many things you do that make me think: i’ve actually met the coolest guy alive. Like how you wear a flippin BERET — -and how you tell it like it is ALL the time — -and how you’re the only person whose grad write-up was Actually microscopic. You have my complete respect…I think you’re incredible. and you had me at hello. (haha…ok ok, I had to say it) I have firm faith that everything happens for a reason — -and whatever reason it was, i’m so thankful I got to know you. Despite my flawless timing (sarcasm)…I thought i had to tell you how i felt rather than regretting not. BUT — -enough of this, before it becomes an overdrawn sapfest……… changing subject …………………now. Wow…..you had it right. i did this the wrong way…now this just feels like smalltalk. so……how about those canadian geese. they crap everywehre. BARRETT — -i would wish you luck, but you don’t need it. I know whatever you’ll do, it will be successful. Now’s your time to frollick amongst other studious sweatervested folk. it will be fun beyond belief. And while you’re enjoying campus life — -I’ll be having coffee at Malaspina…most likely with Tim B.. Have fun watching Metric — -pretty much the best retribution for overpriced tuition costs. OK. this is it. goodbye goodbye goodbye. P.S. your email was insanely nice. thank you. i feel underpar with mine. Sincerely, JMUSELOVERifer N. ←-(oh..that was cold) LOVE JMUSELOVER

[email received, September 3, 2005]

From :

N. O. <[email redacted]>

Sent :

September 3, 2005 12:13:36 AM

To :

[email redacted]

Subject :

jumpin jack flash ! (meeither)

surprised? yeah, alot. once you get into the whole ubc scheme and meeting everyone you will understand what kind of girls you deserve and understand that they are on a whole different level than me. someone with so much detail and passion they don’t know what to do with it all. i don’t think you know yet what an amazing person you are, and how highly you could be viewing yourself. it’s so hard for me to find friends that are dedicated and accepting with the idea of being into different things. when people meet you they instantly know you are going far. i know even if we lose touch i will still be hearing great things about you for years and years. i am so glad we became friends, i feel like i have learned so much from you, even if just about myself. you really are one of the people we are all here for. to sing about, to write books about, to make movies on to inspire everyone else. i wish i could have told you this in person, but for me alot of words never seem to come out. but no, this won’t make anything awkward. i am so excited for the concert! even if i get up at 4 am i don’t care, to me it is totally worth it. so anyways, i hope settling in goes well and you start having lots of fun fast. thanks thanks for the e-mail, i didn’t think i got to be one of the letter kids.

[Barrett’s reply]

I really shouldn’t write another email, it just makes the whole world a little bit harder; I never was good at doing what I should do. I’ve never met an ordinary person, and I’ve never met someone better or worse then another, this whole universe that is humanity, is subtly balanced, and for you to clearly demean yourself for some unknown girl who you assume will be better then you is a foul emotion; especially to say me, of all people in the world deserves this unknown angel. I’ve met so many people but I’ve never met someone like you, look at the eloquence of your writing, how can you honestly think words don’t come to you? It is a hard and rotten thing to say anything meaningful in person, but more can be said in silence with you then a thousand, hour long conversations with most people. You are a person like no other, I could write for a year on why and still only graze the nearest surface. You’ve passed off every judgement that could be applied to you with ease, never allowing yourself to be typecast as anything but beautiful. Every thing you do has grace, be it your motions, your speech, your writing style or your emotion, and grace is something that is sadly lacking in today’s dejected society, and all the more special for its rarity. You have the presence of a mockingbird, someone you know will never hurt you, even accidentally, and will always represent peace and hope. Intelligence radiates around you, just reach out past your mental blocks and grab it. You are on a pillar in my mind, I don’t need to be with you, just the clear knowledge of your existence, someone to prove that perhaps there will be a person I can one day love, is all the connection to you I need. Secretly though, I’m sure I could search for a lifetime for someone like you, and count it a good life, but never come close to actually finding another as perfect as you. Perhaps it’s a bit more then a crush, I’ve had a crush on half the world, from Jill to JMUSELOVER to A. to Gwyneth Paltrow, to the girl who just walked past my room, and its always been that: a crush, something that has the potential to work for a day, a month, a year, but always in the end prove a relationship half full. With you I feel I’d have no need to be entertaining you every second, dancing to society as we all have to, but rather I could be myself, and not even realize it. So are you scared yet? I’m scared, theres a million different roads in life, each one with a different end point then all others, and I have no idea what I’ll be doing tomorrow or at the end of my life; but I’m selfish, I want happiness for myself, and I’ll bend the world to get what I want, perhaps with compassion, but that changes nothing. Four years is not a long time. A lifetime isn’t long either.

[INTERSTITIAL — draft for Barrett’s voice]

Before leaving home I sat at the kitchen table — my mother delivering BLTs while I typed — and produced a stack of going-away letters: to friends I had known thirteen years, to my parents. I was eighteen and treating a two-week absence like a death. In a way I was right; I never really lived in Nanaimo again.

[going-away letters, September 2005]

So you wake up, look around, and suddenly it hits you, what the fuck is this letter doing here, and who is pretentious enough to leave a letter? Well surprise: BBBEEEEBOOOOBBBBOOP, but you probably had an idea who it was before, IE, the kid you’ve know for 13 years is moving away, and he always had a great job at doing things in a random awkward fashion: this letter, for example. So why a letter, I dunno, I’m writing a couple, and it means I can ignore it, like, “B what the fuck is with the letter, BOITCH” and I can just pass it off, “O I was drunk, I’ll drive that car, your sister would think its hot,” sorta thing but the real point of the letter is just to say that sentimental shit I’ll never do in person to anyone till I’m on my death bed and I gotta tell god I love him or burn in hell; hell might win even then. Onwards to the point. Yes, you know I’ll bring up the fact we’ve been friends for 13 years, I’m predictable, I got it. But you’ve been a rock, always there, when I was friends with half the school or when I only had you and shaun as friends, you’ve always been there, never getting permanently pissed off no matter what I said, and lets face it, I can be a bit of a douche bag if I feel like it. And by a bit, I mean (Hashanah some old man just walked by talking to himself) how have you never hit me with a pipe. You’re an amazing friend, somebody to talk to and always be a part of my life. You have such high ideals, I’ve always tried to live up to your sense of honor, your parents call you lazy and shit, they just never figured out what it is you care about. Fuck cleaning dishes, you live life full, and never stop. Etc. I’ll see you when I come home in a few weeks, so this is utttttterly pointless, but who knows maybe the ferry will sink. MARRY ME SPENCER, is that where this is going, nah, maybe in 10 years…..(awkward silencer), ok I won’t marry you, but the offers there…..(awkward silence) ok so I don’t really know what to write in a letter, or how to finish it. The point is you’re an amazing friend, and I want you to know that I am so sublimely grateful for your friendship. Most friends come and go, fuck them, but you’re permanent, so hold on. Have a good life to huh, look around, theres a trillion jobs out there, search till you find your passion, and never stop for something you don’t love. B

⁂

OMG, what the hell is this, a letter, could it be from Europe, this is so cool, Jill, Alli, or Lyns, wow, what faraway land is writing YOU. Uhhh, so I live down the street, not quite so elaborate, but pshhhhh, win some/lose some. So now that u’re disappointed, u’ve gotta be wondering why this pretentious ass hole is pretentious enough to write a letter of all things, I mean, they were sooooooo pre-email. I like letters, so impersonal, you can say your deepest feelings, that you would rather die in person then say, and not have to deal with the person reading it. Fucking sweet (I found a napolean dynamite quote book, its so cool, I don’t know what made me think o that, but its 10 bucks and sweet). So hmmmmm, now to the tricky part, what do I write. Mmmm, ummmm, Dear JMUSELOVER, How is your day. Get it, 13 years of school, and that’s the only letter writing skill I have, yay public schooling you’ve done it again. So the tricky part first, why couldn’t u have said you “like” me sooner, like in grade 9, and we could have 4 kids by now. OK, so maybe it my fault to, I have ADD (probably) and I can’t concentrate on anything, but you would’ve been such an amazing person to have as a true part of my life: u’re so freakishly talented its eery, olsen was right, you’re voice is sublimely sublime (I forget what sublime means, I think it means fucking awesome, but subtly, I dunno), you were funny as shit, not real shit, but like black people comedic shit, you could make a funeral a party, you were smart, way smarter then Radu, as he quite awkwardly told me, it was a random day (this is not a run on sentence). You have so much personality, theres no one else in the world who holds up to you; I was reading the year book(they’re in and I’m not in it) and saw your write up, and its true, u totally could be famous, if that’s where you choose to go with your life: just like grade 3 said, you can do anything, but unlike being a failure like most people will be you have the perfect blend of talent to be whatever you want to be. And you’re hot. And you watch porn, which the jury is still out on for cool/weird/cool weird. Butttttt I have to go to UBC, and I don’t think I’m enough of a person for you and etc, so hey, maybe it could’ve worked, who the fuck knows, but bad luck and bad luck. At least we can still play video games together!, I’m totally usurping Lysa as your video game buddy, ok, maybe not. I’m taking English, and I can’t even manage to write one, non run on sentence: McDonalds here I come. Good luck and beat the shit out of life. B

⁂

So did we do good, are we sons that were worth the last 18 years of your life? I certainly hope you feel we were worth it. I feel that I have the best life the world has ever seen, and that my potential is endless, and this blissful situation is rested solely at your feet. You always had a lesson to give, an adventure to go on, a game to play, a love divided equally, and I want you to know that I am thankful, not just for the lifestyle you have given me, but for being a father. Theres no lessons on being a dad, and I look at my friends dads, and none have any hold on you: you always gave reasons for why you would do something, you always had the perfect blend of discipline and freedom, you always were approachable, you were never feared. Thanks, for the life you have given me, and the future you have made possible. Love Barrett

⁂

So I’ve written a bunch of going away notes today, but this is definitely the hardest. What do you say to a mother? Thanks. That says everything but it says nothing. You were my mother, your love was always unquestioned, your help never needed asking for. You were the greatest constant in my life, the one person who was there every day, rain or shine. I want you to know that I can never truly comprehend the labour that went into raising three boys for 18 years, but as far as I am able to, thank-you. I will always love you. You are an amazing mother, the best anyone could ever ask for, and I will try to never disappoint the potential you have given me. Love Barrett

⁂

So you leave and I leave and the whole world leaves. Nanaimo’s going to be empty, and that’s perhaps the number one reason UBC calls my name; home would not be home without the people that define this as home. When I think of home, I don’t think of possessions or a nice house, but rather those that I love, be they family, mentors, friends. Brothers off to university to start a life away from me, it is either make Nanaimo the past, or be a piece of the past born to the future every time R or T. glance at me, knowing not that they are superior to me, but rather that I am as that favourite childhood Christmas ornament: a joy to behold, but only on Christmas and unchanging. Is there logic in this, does it make sense? On an inherent level that nears the subconscious, it rings of sweetest clarity, so true that it is hard to express, as why black is different then white, it cannot be explained with ease, it is merely known. Humans at this stage of life or perhaps millenia can never leave something unhounded by the scientific mind, be it religion or death, and thoughts such as why leaving feels right will not be held sacred; rather then let an analytical walking corpse search for Freudian words to compress a life robust with living and ingenuity into a bitter stereotype, it falls to me to clarify that which is felt by myself, and perhaps many of those escaping from homes all around me. It is not a race to be first, but rather a struggle to not be left behind. By oneself, there is only being, one cannot be wrong, two will never agree and it will take three to have a fight mediated. We gain our sense of self not from ourselves, since to ourselves, we are the universe, but rather from how other perceive us; you are only funny if people laugh, fast if more speedy then others, slow if others are faster. The same can be applied at this stage of life where we flee the norm, for everyone else is fleeing. Everyone else leaves because those that define them leave and in the mob of life we follow others for safety. Guttural instincts should drive us, we do not need educat Where is this going, there are a million reasons running through my head now on why I leave and not a one is true. I leave because I leave. It is a decision made months ago, an eternity and blink, but a decision made without thinking of the immediate future, but more of the fact that this was a decision for the future and could be thought of in the future. But here the future is. And still I know that it is a few weeks away, an eternity but a blink, and I choose to treat it as the eternity but live it as the blink.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: the remainder of this letter — an early anti-money manifesto — is cut; its argument recurs, better, in the March 2006 emails kept below.]

[INTERSTITIAL — draft for Barrett’s voice]

Back at UBC, winter term. The plans were multiplying — army reserves, a volunteer year in Ghana — and so was the gap between the person cracking jokes in group emails and the person writing alone at 3 a.m. Both are kept here. The advice letter to a thirteen-year-old I had mentored says most of what I actually believed; I could not manage to take any of it myself.

[notebook scraps, winter 2006]

boys and girls club restaurants aquatic center

jp drop cd say searching for job mention girl

[advice letter to a younger friend, January 2006]

You were asking me for advice, and I think I needed a bit of time to think this up properly. I’ll keep this as simple as possible, how life works to me. First off, I’m going to assume your mother might read this, so I wont say anything that will get you in trouble. Not to many people are happy with their life. If u’re an adult, your job isnt making enough money, your kids are in trouble, your house is having problems, work is hard, etc. When you’re a teen, you’ve got just as many problems if not more, and they’re just as hard to deal with. Maybe they’re more hard to deal with, since parents for the large part make it harder. When you’re a teen the problems are what on earth am I going to do with my life, school is hard, I want to be popular, I want a girlfriend, my parents are idiots. There will be peer pressure. All of these and more are really impossible problems, being a teenager is going through them, a lot of people never get through these problems. You’re confused, thats natural, who wouldn’t be, so I’m going to give you my advice on these problems, as best as I can say it. What on earth are you going to do with your life? If you haven’t seriously thought about it yet, you soon will. Being a kids gotta end and you’ve got to be an “adult” yahoo. You’re probably thinking you want to go to university and be a doctor or something, most people think like that. The truth is, university and being a doctor, it doesn’t make you anymore happy then if u’re the meanest begger on the street. The point of a job is money right? So you want to go to university to get a job that makes a lot of money. A doctor makes lots of money. What is the point of money? Moneys supposed to bring happiness. What so many people lose sight of is that money is just one way to find happiness. A life can be spent aquiring only money and no happiness, do you see that? What do you do then, you do something you love. If you like skateboarding, then hell, go skateboard. If you like art, hell, just paint your life away. Maybe you wont ever get a lot of money, but at least you’ll be doing something you love, and being a lot happier then most people with well paying jobs. Thats not to say then “I like skate boarding, school doesn’t make a difference.” School really is an amazing experience for you. It is unfun, its long, its hard. It opens your eyes though, an educated person is open to a world closed to someone uneducated. The reason you do boring math and are forced to to english isn’t because they think you’ll go on in those subjects, but because you need to use the skills from math and english to do the job you love. Skateboarding and stuff is fun, but eventually you do get to old, or want to support a family, so you need a different job. This doesn’t mean you have to do a job that you dislike though. Being an animator, a sports broadcaster, a fireman, all need you to know math and english. How do you know how fast the fire is spreading through a house unless you can use math to tell you how the wind is blowing it across such a space. How can you be a sports broadcaster if you don’t have the english to fully express what is happening in the game. Other subjects, like science and social studies, are to show you what you like and hate. The teachers expect you to hate certain subjects. They want you to know not to become a scientist because you hate it, and the only way you can know you hate it is by trying it out. Thats also the only way you know if u’ll like it, so maybe you hate science but the kid sitting next to you loves science. Isn’t it worth your boredom for this other kid to find something he loves and would want to do with his life? However, if you really do hate science, and you are sure you do, try to get by, but dont worry about an A, since it would be better to get an A in the subjects that interest you in life and fail those that wont further you in life rather then get a B in all your classes. Its like sports, if u’re a tall guy, u’ll have an easier time at basketball. Not to many short people play basketball. Not to many people hating english are going to go off and become a writer. School is a game. Like cards, monopoly, soccer, it has rules, it has ways to cheat, it has strategies. I got through with ease and actually by the end of grade 12 loved it. I’m going to tell you what worked for me, I never had to do to much work, never had a bad relationship with a teacher and always got straight A’s or pretty close. First off, realize teachers aren’t gods, there are good teachers and bad teachers, they’re just people, just like theres nice kids and mean kids. Secondly, teachers very rarely dislike a student, they usually dont care enough, if you think a teacher is picking on you by giving you a bad mark, think of what u’d do in their place, what mark u think it would deserve. At school, most of the work they give you is “busy work,” IE, work that is only given to fill up time. The greatest talent you can get in school is being able to figure out what the actual point of the lesson is. So if u’re doing 60 math questions and they’re all exactly the same with just different numbers, and u’ve learned how to answer them, when u study for a test, just do a question or two rather then a bunch since you already know it, and move onto a section you need to know better. The same thing in social studies. When u’re reading a hisT text book, or studying out of it, dont try to memerize each paragraph, try to remember what they build up to. Its like a puzzle, as long as you can see what the picture looks like then if a few of the pieces out of place, it doesn’t stop you from know what the picture on the puzzle is. So when u study a test for hisT, dont go “christopher columbus sailed to North America in so and so year on such and such a boatblah blah blah. Just know who he was and what he did. Another big talent for school is to make in interesting. Never do to much homework in a row, and dont ever study when u’re not actually going to learn anything from the studying because u’re in a bad mood or its late at night. Reward yourself, say if you study for 15 minutes you can have a brownie or something. Or play your some music in the background, people always tell you it has to be classical, it doesn’t just something that doesn’t distract you, like elevator music. I’m listening to music right now, but I dont hear it, it just relaxes me. Anything works, if you like being outside, study outside, if you like bike riding, go for a bikeride but stop somewhere cool and read a book. When I study, I ride the skytrain, so nobody I know can distract me, I cant get off and leave, and the motion is relaxing. Have a positive attitude, if you say you like something enough, it really starts to become true. I hate chemistry, hate it hate hate it, but I made it fun, by instead of trying hard, I just wanted to beat the kid sitting next to mes mark, it gave me a reason to try hard. Some things just have to be gotten through, but nothing lasts forever and look towards the end. Everybody wants to be popular. I know, we have dreams of being rock stars and everybody loves us and wants our autographs. When people like you, its like a reward, saying that u’re cool. Popularity is nice, everybody really has interesting points that are worth getting to know them for, but making friends with some people just because you want to have the most friends you can is really kindof stupid when you think about it. It means that this person is only a number to you, so you can brag about how large your group is and feel popular rather then any sense of true friendship for the person. And chances are that people do that to you, just see you as a number, a person to make themselves feel cool. For a few years, I only had one friend, I suppose I was a loner, but i was more pissed off then lonely, I didn’t want to play social games, didnt want to be somebodys number. Im not saying do that, friendship is amazing, I’m saying that have a few friends that actually mean something to you, the ones you can tell what girl you have a crush on and understands when u’re in a bad mood. Keep the hanger ons if you want, but always have some people that you really would give an arm for. If you dont have any, look at your friends, and see who you want to know better, maybe find somebody even outside your circle of friends. Popularity is not all its cracked up to be, I dont see it as a bragging point to say I was likely the most popular kid in my graduating class of 400. It wasn’t fun though, maybe its something you have to experience to understand. Its like putting butter on toast, it gets thin and then you can barely even taste the butter. Make friends with everybody you can too, dont not be a friend with someone cause he hangs out with a different group or because he sucks at soccer or other people dont like him, be your own judge, maybe hes not worth knowing, but dont let some stupid thing stop you from getting to know him. You dont see sports teams not talking to each other over one bad play, they get over it. Girlfriends are a huge problem. I know you have one, you love her, etc. But is she the girl u’re going to marry? Well if yes, congratulations, if no, it means u’ll break up one day. Nothing is forever. Besiodes there is 3 billion girls out there, the chances that the perfect one just happens to sit next to you in class is pretty hard to believe. So without making you mad, likely your girlfriends an amazing girl, but you only will know that shes amazing by having another girl to compare her to. If you only play on a Xbox you would think an Xbox was the best thing in the world, but if you got an Xbox 360, you would know which was better. Now for the awkward part, your bodies changing and all that. You can masturbate now, likely thats a new thing, yippee, what an awkward word. Anywase, the point to the awkwardness, you like girls now, in a sexual way. Thats natural, and all that, but you’re thirteen, if you have sex with a girl, you could hurt you or both of her, since you’re not done growing yet. You could get her pregnant. Also, make sure what you feel for the girl is actual love, not just “i want to kiss her and touch her.” If thats it, then any girl could fill the role, and you’re hurting the girl by telling her you love her and all you want to do is have sex with her. You know gentleman and all that, what they are? For the most part, they’re people who control their animal instinct for woman and treat them as humans instead of sex toys. You choose who you want to be. Just dont use a girl, itll haunt her for the rest of her life, and it will send you down a road you dont want to. If you devalue a girl to sex object, nothing stops you from hitting her, maybe hitting kids, dont be that person. For me the worst part of becoming a teenager was seeing my parents aren’t gods. When we’re little, they cant be wrong, becoming a teenager shows you that they’re just people too. When they say something you dont like, think that maybe they dont like what youre saying. Think that if you asked your mother for dinner and she told you to fuck off and make it yourself youd be pretty pissed. Is the case any different when she asks you how school is and you dont tell her, or you say its a lousy dinner. She really does love you, and she wants to help you, just realize she isn’t you, she isn’t always right. Shes trying though. So if she makes a joke about your girlfriend, calling her princess Fiona, she doesn’t seem anything wrong with it. She thinks its cute. If you tell her to not fucking do that anymore, she wont understand why you got so mad, since she didnt see anything wrong with it. If you say “mom, it bothers me when you call her that, please dont,” she’ll stop. Its as awkward as hell and corny and all that, but shell stop calling her that, and instead of being mad and hurt at you, shell be impressed. For me it helped by treating my mom as a friend more then a mother when I was mad at her. For a friend, I wouldn’t storm out of the room when I was mad. Id want them to like me, and to not be mad at me, Id explain to them my views, and if we couldn’t agree, decide it better to not argue and just say ok, whatever. Parents are people, your mom doesn’t know that u’re changing, she thinks u’re the same boy as 4 as at 14, be nice to her, don’t spoil that. You’re getting to a point in your life where you can really cause problems to your future being happy. Alcohols going to be everywhere. Smoking becomes cool. Drugs become an activity. You can’t avoid it, its a joke when teachers say “just say no,” it would be like mom passing up a pay raise, to you, drinking, smoking, doing drugs makes you more cool. Try them, not to much, enough to understand what it is. Take a drag of a smoke and think of cancer, know that if you start smoking them daily, your life will be cut short. what happens after death, are you eager to find out. That doesnt mean never smoke, one smoke wont kill you, but dont go out and buy smokes just to look cool, cus u’ll get addicted, and it sucks, it is hard to quit. believe me. Drinking is fun, it really is. Its funny, everybody telling kids not to drink, when their favourite past time is drinking. They’re hypocrites, a word you need to learn. The thing about drinking is that its fun, but it makes you do stupid things, you don’t want to drink so much so that u’re always doing stupid things that u regret, but drinking from likely now till death is a part of your life, so come to terms with it. Know its not the devil, because if you stay away from it, one day you’ll crack and do something really stupid, like drink way to much and go to the hospital, like certain barretts. Know your limit, a half a beer will do you in at your age, dont drink more, hell, ask your mom, tell her kids are drinking and you want to learn how to drink properly. And if you can drink properly, you’ll make the drunk fools look like idiots cus you’ll have class over them, knowledge they haven’t reached yet. Drugs are a scary thing, cus they feel so good yet they can cause so much damag. Heroin and meth and coke, to name a few, will ruin your life. I’m not saying they might, or could, I’m saying they will. If you need proof, next time I’m in nanaimo, I’ll show you proof, but u’re old enough to know that they wreck your life. It puts something other then yourself in charge of your life. Thats a terrible thing, when u’re not calling the shots, the shots being called might not be your best choice. Stay. Away.From.Hard. Drugs. I’ll keep tabs on you, if I ever hear a whisper of you doing hard I will personally find you and set you straight. Dont make me do that. They really do feel good though, its like going fast in a car, its a good feeling going fast, but if you go to fast you crash, no matter what. Marijuana is something you’ll likely become accustomed to more and more as you get older. Theres stats for nanaimo saying 1 in 4 houses is a grow op ( a house growing marijuana), I don’t know if I believe that, but weed is certainly in Nanaimo. Understand what it does to you. It makes you feel good, but how, by setting your mind free. The problem is it becomes harder and harder to set your mind free so you need more and more dope, and when u’re not stoned, the world doesnt seem as good. If you get to that stage. U’re done. Think of it as an entire container of ice cream, its delicious to eat, and you could eat the whole pail, but if you do it again and again u’ll get fat and you wont be able to run as fast as u used to. Weed does the same thing to the brain, a little bit wont hurt it, itll taste good, a lot of it will slow your mind, and u can’t fix it. Its 2:15, a girl proposed to me tonight for a joke marriage, I tried to ask a girl out, I woke up at 7, first day back of classes in in 6 hours. Not to smart on my part, and I need to go to bed. I had to write this though, I had to make an effort, so maybe you wont read this, I don’t care, at least I’ll be able to sleep at night knowing you had my honest advice. Not the phoney teachers advice or the counsellors the world is perfect u’re not advice, advice that is sincere. I hope it helps. I really do. I just turned 18. When I met you I was 16. Im not much older then you, I hope my advice doesn’t hurt you. All I know is the worlds tricky, this advice is a sketching of a map to get through it. Its differnt then the map I used, and likely you will make your own. But here is a way. Good Night, my cells [phone redacted], call me, ask me anything, I wont tell anybody. Who could I tell?

[group email to friends, from UBC]

for starters this is a giant statement of superfluous jargon. its meaningless. i love meaningless things its what reminds me im alive. and start. so i have an hour to kill, my room mate just walked in, said he had an hour to kill, very ironic, i just wrote it as he was walking in. wow. seriously. my mind is blown. what the hell can he have to do in an hour, that 1am on a tuesday night. i feel like asking him but ill play it cool, gotta play it cas, maybe ill put a suit on. back to the point: i have an hour to kill, and i figure, some of my find readership, who has no choice but to accept my emails or delete me from msn, (which would make my mother sad, so dont) might be wanting an update on the life of barrett AKA Ts brother. mmmm, im pretty good thanks for asking. i figure out the meaning of life in a dream last night, i was flying a sea plane in water world(an instant classic, btw, watch it, he has gills) with somebody important and we were fighting and then somehow i was hovering in a jungle. now I know the meaning of life is obvious from this, but for you slow pokes (malaspina what) the meaning of life is to be in a movie. I was in fucking water world. You know what ass that would get me. I never got that term, get ass, its kind of meaningless and vulgar. shmeh. i haven’t done any laundry of my clothes yet at UBC and its starting to scare me, i sleep under my bed, and the laundry hamper was so full it toppled over from the strong draft of my room mates repugnant breath and i thought the world was ending. sooooo many clothes fell on me. so, i need to know how to do laundry. but how do i learn? i tried doing some laundry before and it came out all crinkled so i dunno, so if any girl will marry me and do my laundry i marry for her personality not her laundry skill or steak cooking skills. dinner tonight was steak made from a toaster oven, flawless. but as black people say: ‘bbq sauce,’ and so the bbq sauce was used. its a top ten condiment. hell, a top 5 condiment. behind ketchup, purple ketchup, green ketchup and teriyaki sauce. teriyaki sauce, now that, is a sauce. it could even make falaful good. well, it would try. well falaful sucks. but it has nutrients so lets eat it. man is supposed to eat meat, eat meat. you dont see jesus going ahhhhhh beef, oh no. are you better then jesus? my room mate just made me walk over to his computer to look at the cover of vanity fair. i admit, its cool (naked keir knightley and scarlett johanson, thats just unfair, like my spelling of their names) but really, who sits down at a computer and goes hmmmm, what should i do. oh. look at magazine covers. really. well hes asian and has taken over the world since GM is going to be passed by toyota so maybe ill serve him coffee and he can give me the hook ups. i hope this email doesn’t go to T, he’ll judge. the sentence structure is superb though, its so artsy. thanks mommy and daddy for university, its really wearing off. well maybe it is. maybe it isn’t. i dont think intelligence is proportional i think its universal and just unbalanced in societies eyes. why think a mathematician is a genius but a farmer a hick. professors are the elite of civilization but ask a math professor what freud said or an arts prof what smith said or both how to be sociablee and they’ll give you a nod of the head and a fuck you ask the right person. why is knowledge divided, isn’t that counter intuitive? worse yet dangerous. i think thats what post post modern will be, the realization that everybody was wrong, everything has been pointless. maybe its already been realized. see thats the problem with arts students, we think about pointless useless wrong shit. and claim it as fact! wow. well we’re all fucked though, an arts student doesn’t use enough fact a science student doesn’t use enough reason (real reason) and commerce people are so stuck in the rat race that they don’t realize their actions have real consequences. so where do you go? can’t live in a tree we cut the rain forest down, the amazon has its largest cutting down ever last year, nice to know the environmentalists are working. we might one day make north america and europe sustainable, but just in time for China to come along and need to go throgh the awkward stage of industrialization, dirty more snow, and then it will fix itself and wOOt we’ll finally have fixed africa and they’ll want to industrialize. maybe if hitler conquered he would’ve been an environmentalist. everybody rages on hitler, ya, he was an asshole, but no diss on mao, we lovvvvve china. so where was i, o yes, where can you go in the world: nowhere, go give up. its the easiest way. i just read this book by marshall mcluhan (i like to drop names you don’t know, it replaces friends) and i did a biopic on him, and he gave a quote of ummmm ok well i forget, memory wasn’t a strong point, something about how. ok. im going to combine several quotes. all of which i forget. does that make it my though? how we don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t a fish. well what does man live in, and what if he doesnt want to live in water. mcluhan died unhappily. so he fought=unhappy. so lets give in and give a fuck. what does a raise mean, not a thing, we need nothing, the animalistic urges which still inhabit our unevolved form need quenching, but on what? so we ‘fight’ for the raise, ‘fight’ for the girl, since we really have no object. we’re superfluous. worse yet, we’re a cancer, since we’re destroying life by our very being here. the best choice for mankind is suicide since then at least we save the world, we will destroy it one day before its natural interim. but thats not my problem we have oil and we have money and africa can suffer so i can buy a hot tub and everythings good for me. which makes me pissed off. my lifes to good at the expense of everybody else but what do i have to use my animalistic instinct to fight against since my life is to good. i won the lottery and am pissed the fuck off. i love how the word fuck is so abhorred. like something sacreds been bled on by an aids patient. whats so bad about it, sex is still a taboo when war is glorified. feminism aggravates me since im white christian priviliged and they take away from my prestige, but to be honest, men have screwed up, white people screwed up, and christianity screwed up, so lets give somebody else a turn so at least theres a new scape goat. thats remarkably offensive isn’t it? its a generalization like all my bullshit and most likely wrong, but look at hisT. before white christian males proliferated the world with their ideology the world was sustainable. likely it was inevitable, we have evolved to much, to smart, but haven’t evolved fast enough with our change, we’re in so far over our heads that a guillotine will swing. how did we design a conventional bomb let alone a nuclear bomb.somebody had to sit down and go: lets make a device to kill, and not just kill, but kill as many as we can as fast as we can. thats where the horror of the holocaust comes from, not so much from the scope of death, ghastly as it is, but how modern it was. everybody had a piece of the puzzle but so small u couldn’t see the whole picture. the industrialized robot at its finest. the point of university, narrow is into a hammer to pound those nails without degrees while we never see the hand and inertia carries us towards wood. we’re sposed to hammer wood, they wear towels on their head and are pro-gay marriage and hate exxon. so the point is im good thank you for asking and i have to go do my appointment and i hope you are doing equally fine. reading breaks next week, come say hi. and im an idiot, always remember that, so dont take a word i say literally. as i said its superfluous, a time killer. b

February 8, 2006

And everythings forgotton that I never knew Fuck this thing autocorrects, ill turn it off, autocorrect censors my imperfections; my, imperfections. fixed? yes sweet. essay time and memories are gone and im fresh by being the same newness i was when i wrote my destitution.

[self-addressed email — “to barrett from barrett. PS, u are good looking” — February 19, 2006]

From : Barrett Nash <[email redacted]> Sent : February 19, 2006 1:03:55 AM To : [email redacted] Subject : to barrett from barrett. PS, u are good looking

In the darkness lightness grows Was it ever any other way No darkness no light Life deferentiated by a smile Or a sword But not this meaningless Residue of a life gone To a dust finer Then the oldest ash Unbidden tears on The happiest day Graceful touches of wandering eyes The promise of a future forever In a safe place Warm in an embrace Anything over this frigid Ice world, I want no pencils No money just lies and lies And I eat them like cavier Something to be devoured slowly Painfully slowly don’t watch me eat Watch me live youd’ better Take away heaven Before it scares me into hell Driven away or drive away It’s the same You’re away And I hate you Till night comes And your lightness Hides in my dreams Always

⁂

Your voice savoured like a wine Bitter for the first sip, unprepared Scared of its intoxicating formula Drink it up and its gone A goblet of your vernacular Over a day of paradise What utopia last forever Other then written dreams of softer voices

[EDITOR’S NOTE: three further poems from this self-addressed email are cut — violent sexual imagery that reads indefensible without framing. Not cut silently: see the Youth Part 1 report; Barrett to decide whether to restore with commentary.]

February 23, 2006

if the morning is broken then what of the afternoon. abandonment would be sweet if i at least had the dignity of having a grasp strong enough for abandonment. my attitude? fuck you for fucking with me. welcome to the world, i’m still outside and lost; thank god for lyers and stupidity. stop talking im tired its quiet hours and im usually noisy but not now and never again and and and. shit. always and shit. barrett nash and shit. barrett robert nash and shit. barrett shit nash. hell. well it happens. was a good day to drown, with the sun chrystalizing and the dolphins swimming. sharpens the senses. maybe i should drown for 80 years, im at the surface now and its boring. death and its fight is existential causing me to exist. I fight therefore I am, thinking is just an evolution of an ant building a hill. logic is a circle, we’ll go back to tribal if technology allows us. till then dive in the water. 200 dollars thats money and a lot of it, but hey, itll be fun to spend on something bigger then food and alcohol and stupidity. its nice having a working computer.

walk through every door for the sake of going forward forward forward. whats the fun of a treadmill when the worlds racing outside your window. in every office the desk is facing away from the window why why why the stupidity loses so much pleasure.

cigars and angels is all i need

⁂

i remember being young and stupid i was young and stupid to think of the moronic me enjoying the sunset and laughing for the sake of its bubbling sweetness so pure devoid of sarcasm building to cynicism around a system broken as my own intelligent life

⁂

what a life worth it for that one song imagine suicide yesterday before that song was made but its done i listened what are the chances another will come tomorrow when im carrying rope in my emo hands

⁂

lost is the swirls of a gray maelstrom hitting the rockbottom unable to drown unable to swim eternity down heres lonely looking at the life ending wall of water, three seconds then its over

February 24, 2006

Today is sunny. I am going to go to stanley park and an arts one aprty tonight, and put off work for another day seems like a great plan. pshhhhh. whats the difference. 25% essay due on tuesday whattttttever. shit happens. and i will deal with it and the army and ghana and school and friends an dlove and family and europe and money and pride and family. its no big deal. im happy this second so who gives a fuck about the next second. i am so lonely i have to lose some friends. i wonder how though, its for the memories that im with them now. alexia so bitter it makes me want to punch her or burst into tears. be careful butterfly, you can fly. im so full im empty im so happy im sad oh life what a complication of contorting conundrums. to be free, these chains drag my neck into the feces of thos dragging their faces in shit higher then me

12:39

we are all going to rot in hell. if it exists. i hope it exists, we deserve it.endless suffering. what have we done. what are we doing. what am I doing. sweet jesus the suffering. the lost generation of a lost continent. whose lost? fuck us fuck money fuck corruption. the retchedness of hundreds of millions is worth television and hot tubs. that is the choice we’ve made. the forgotton continent. forgotton. my god my god oh my god what to do.

[INTERSTITIAL — draft for Barrett’s voice]

March 2006: the army was processing me, the Ghana application was real, and I was writing long confessions to a girl across the Strait of Georgia because it was easier than saying anything to anyone in the same room. Her reply — plain, kind, entirely sane — is the best editing my prose ever got.

march 3 maybe

to N. well i don’t have the pleasure of saying im drunk but i can’t quite claim sobriety. so does that mean im talking things i think but never say or saying things i talk but never do. i am so clever. you left a loveable witticism about you possibly being god on my msn so you have the honour of witnessing a rant. that and you always reply to me (when you reply) with at least a grain of honesty, so much more desirable then the unconscious lies sputtered at me from every other corner. i lie so i’m in a gutter too, but unconsciously or consciously, subtly or unsubtly, you always speak a little truth, so i talk to you on msn and send you drunken emails hoping for an answer to a question i don’t know how to word. i suppose thats a scary thing to say to a girl: a question i don’t know how to word. occurs in some grade 10 drama production where the rochester rides off with his cinderella after an hour of painfully honest prose. no worries, not one of those questions. i told you i’m not drunk. rather, what do girls actually want. if the stereotype is guys want sex, then whats the stereotype for girls, what do they want? maybe fuck the stereotype, guys want the perfect girl, girls want the perfect guy, but theres so many layers of innuendo, casual glances and whispered talks. how do you get through to a girl. i fall in love with every girl but every girl i get close to i push away because i’m so scared that I’m promising a fallacy I can’t supply. guys talk shit about girls, maybe you have some idea, but no idea the depth. objectifying is only the beginning, you don’t hurt an object and laugh, an object at least is worth something. so when i deal with a girl its already based on a lie and its hard to break through since how can you explain to a girl shes not an object when its the most popular brand of pick up and fuck me line in the world. bleh. girls dont make it better, to me the greatest strides feminisms made is that girls have lost standards. the allure of a girl being a higher being is lost watching them demean themselves. its a cold logic: at a fancy club, its beautiful girls who find the richest man, and fuck him while his money lasts; at shitty clubs its while the booze lasts. yipee. we were raised on fairy tales, chick flicks and disney movies and to wake up and know that it was all a lie is such a dissapointment. so i join the army reserves, apply for ghana, live at ubc, and am ethereal even to myself. i escape reality by not living reality. theres that cliche about breaking the mold, its not so much that but its more that the molds conforming me into an unnatural shape and i fight it. ill burn out in the process though, i can already feel it though. you have dreams of a villa in france with kids and a husband who loves you and warmness. i dream about finding away to help the millions of suffering children, fixing the broken political dystopia, saving the natural grace of a cancerous environment and riding everywhere on a white horse. and yeah living in a villa in france with a girl i love and kids i can raise better then myself. but the essence of a dream is that its not reality. everybody has dreams like that, i’m sure you do to. but i know i can do it, help out in some way. but its a cold life, and its wearing me away, instead of helping kids in africa i could help myself, instead of fixing politics i could extort the loop holes and instead of finding a girl i love i could find a rich beauty. if life is all shadows and mirrors with the good reality only existing in movie plots then might as well say fuck everything. this really isn’t adressed to you anymore, can u feel the change of focus? its now adressed to myself. the classic question: what do i do with my life? nobody knows, my dad summed it up the best when he said he just asked himself that question yesterday. nobody ever knows what they want to do, they never even know what they’re doing at the moment, its only memories we have and if you can make a statement that it was a good yesterday then it would be a good tomorrow and you owe it to the good yesterday to feed off its memory. my yesterdays have all been so good but its unsustainable, like a stock market, it can’t rise forever, and the higher it rises the deeper it falls. my life is completely unsustainable and to keep it going i burn a little brighter but at what cost of fuel. so who are you? who is anybody. why do we go to school. why do we fall in love. work hard. everybody watches the matrix and goes wow a reality in which we’re a fuel for some malevolent being would be horrendous. maybe thats all we are though, just a fuel for a machine, burned when we’re needed, raise taxes to raise an army to fight those with armies and beat them and move into bigger houses and have more people to kiss and fear. how many pictures of corpses do i see daily in the news and give it little care since i am so isolated from it. my machines winning but theres no winning because we all die, and like donnie darko we all die alone. its the meeting of the death thats a challenge, knowing that you made the best of it, looking back and feeling no remorse. this could bring up the subject or religion but i am so sick of religion. do i believe in god? asked daily by everybody like intellectual pokemon card trading we trade secrets of sectarian lifestyle. if there is a god it is a personal god and its my god and deal with your god without contorting me. the schticks of us false intellectuals: religion, love and death. all i need to do now is write a shitty poem and i’ll fit every stereotype i’ve tried to fight. well this turned into a fucking show about nothing and im sorry. i really am. this is awkward for you, but i don’t really care. for one i can apologize and feel myself justified. for two maybe you can answer, say something meaningful. maybe i should just ask questions untill i start to get answers. what a terrible apology. im sorry for my terrible apology. start again. u’re a smart girl, you don’t talk to hear your own voice, and u’re far away. who else can i ask? my parents, my brothers, other friends? who would u ask? claire jill tim alexia? its hard to ask questions, or at least for me. i always have to reduce it to meaningless with a quick comment, a casual smile, afraid of judgement. i guess i’m at the perfect level of obviously non drunkeness to say a merry go to hell to fear of your judgement. how depressing that i dont expect a reply. whatever. how self centered can i be? how are you? i always ask people that and they never answer, just ignore the rest of this email, its just a muscle that has to be moved, all i really want to know is how are you and thats not a one sentence answer. or my place to ask. thank god i can blame this social deviation on alcohol. b

apology after drunken apology

[her reply — saved chat and email fragments]

no you believed me i can tell tahts all i said i can safely say guys talk shit about girls thats nice to hear but not actually some girls just want to have sex, alot girls want loveeeeee! haha they were beautiful he dont talk about her. if you fall in love with everygirl how do you plan on settling on one? you are promising them something youcannt supply from my head girls just want a guy to be nice to them. so how can you not do that. you promise to do your best guess what you are eighteen, barely in fact fuck it and get rich let her steal away your money she can buy clothes. whats the point in that i have no idea i dont think anyone does. i dont know why we do those things or why everything is how it is why do we bother if we are just going to die? because we want to i guess. or we think we do anyways. aybe your just a lucky one and its gonna keep on going and maybe keep getting a little better. theres no reason why it cant. you deserve it but even if you didnt theres no saying you cant have it good. id ont even know what to say. except maybe just take it easy. actuallly. not just a read this dont think about it comment. but actually take it easy. everythings not soserious. it doesnt even matter. go to africa. have a good time. do some great things. and then come back and finish your school and become something that you think you might enjoy. and actually like waking up having to do most days. because really whats a big money career and hot chick if you wake up dreading it?

March 8

the razor blade is cutting the flesh of my mind made by manic marketing my eyes are turned skyward

like death in a fever only the heat of release all emotion sooner been never and all the glass of lights burst

never was there a time to mourn my own passing i was to busy being born into a fresh life, cut out the angels

⁂

ok ok ok ok ok ok ok. what do i do. army getting in, ghana getting done, essay not getting written so hard so much so little a whisper into a hurrican and the hurricane halts, spits and carries on. lalallalallalalallallallallalala i am imploding so violently that names are rendered as useless as classification, i am the everyman not a barrett.

March 14

how do you know if shes going to sing anything beautiful? life is hard but its not. i worry, not about myself. i should about myself but ill fight when hes in front. why can’t everything be good for everyone. knowing the answers doesn’t stop the question.

⁂

i really have no idea how to answer your email, i wonder why people can’t talk like this in person. this is the third time i’ve tried writing back, but i still have no idea what to say and maybe ill just wander away again. i think a lot of people feel what u’re feeling, or at least they should. we’re adults. yet here we are surrounded by the trappings of childhood, not really feeling any different but knowing we are and stuck with the question is this life? is this it? i think we were lied to when we were kids, we were told we could do anything, that the world was fair and there was an answer to every problem. but here we are at the first wall and most people won’t get over. maybe victoria isn’t far enough, but maybe europe isn’t far enough either. wherever you go, theres the same dichotomies as nanaimo, it has to be a perception change. For me it happened when I realized i was useless. everybody told me i was so smart, but theres nothing to do with intellectual intelligence: its useless and dangerous. i figured if my goal was a job then the job would be my life and a job shouldn’t be a life; a worker ant has more point since at least it feeds others. so i thought fuck it, im not going to be useless. and its been a bit of a fight since then, but i think im on a track that my life might be able to do some good. i don’t mean that by going to africa, i mean actual good, a life with worth which makes me feel alive. nanaimo feels fresh because ima new person, vancouver is amazing because it is endless, my family even has more vibrancy, its so strange explaining to your parents that you’re taking a different route then they expected but when they get it they understand. i don’t know what that has to do with you, all i know is that i am happy and if for a second u’re feeling sad, don’t, rise above it, beat it, own it. raise your perception of what life is. we’re living in a fucking crazy world. its an evil world. there is nothing better then money, the vatican is enslaved by money, our gov’ts are enslaved by money, and we are enslaved by money. there is no one to be mad at, we brought this on ourselves with pure selfishness. everybody knows deep down though that there is something wrong with the world. we are not made for this world. evolution takes millions of years yet here we are off a 10 year electronics revolution which has made obsolete the last remnants of our nervous system and soul that survived the tragedy of the enlightenment and industrial revolution. heinrich hertz has a law: “The consequence of the image will be the image of the consequence. All new technologies bring on the cultural blues, just as the old ones evoke phantom pain after they have dissapeared.” We’re going through the cultural blues of a world that has advanced beyond us, and have the phantom pain of a time we perceive as simpler and truer then this global village monstrosity. everybody feels this type of stuff, in the US some 30%(ish, i think its more) of people are on sleeping pills, heroin cocaine meth weed are running rampant, video games and tv take more time then the outdoors, these are all escapes from a world that we’re not prepared for. I guess the point is, the world is painful, you’re not going crazy, the world is crazy. friends shouldn’t be able to leave for a year to the other side of the world, parents shouldn’t be in isolated shells of work, computers shouldn’t become a part of our mind, cheap mass media shouldn’t proliferate us with demeaning values at every turn, hundreds of thousands shouldn’t die on an unthought whim. but its happening. and everybody ignores it. and everybody thinks they’re going crazy. so now the tricky part, how to deal with it. i have no idea. we’re not supposed to escape. we’re supposed to get jobs and enjoy hot tubs in our cars while we drive and kids trained to be robots with every ounce if indiviuality ripped from their souls. We’re supposed to go this is life, this is the point. its not though and its a trick to find a real point. a real goal. a goal that can consume you and affect every decision you’ll ever make. you’re 18, its not a rush, but nobody does rush so maybe it is a rush. people put off their dreams to go work at quality foods, say that they can do what they want after they move out, after they graduate, after they have a good job, after they get married, after their kids move out, once they’re retired. i think most dreams die with their dreamer. we’re sheep, we follow the line, we dream about going our own direction but when everybodies moving left and thinks they should move left, it is hard to not only move right but to convince yourself you should move right. i don’t know. i don’t know. if you’re not going to marry tim then you have to accept you’ll break up with him one day. hes a boy, just have fun with him, don’t get overwhelmed by something that doesn’t deserve to overwhelm. tims a nice guy, im not a relationship expert. im scared shittless of it, only drunk barrett does anything, not because im afraid of girls but because i don’t know where the line is. what i want from a girl. its a balancing act, you have to get a certain feeling out of a relationship, any less and its not satisfying, anything more and its painful. so what do you do when each person has two different lines. i don’t know, seems like a catchphrase. just think about what you want from tim, don’t ruin europe over it, take things in stride, if he pissed you off, laugh it off don’t cry it off. you’re 18, you’re a girl, hes a boy, and no matter how dead fucking serious things look now, you’ll get through it. im not a shrink, im not smart, im emotionally self centered and i really just don’t give a fuck about much. or so i tell myself. so i don’t know really know what i just said, i just know its a hard world, and that most people aren’t going to have a life, don’t get stuck. and you can delete this if you want. b

March 18, 2006

you were lost the second i saw you we never had a real chance oil and water my hand in yours the soft curve of your perfect face is all i have to see with your cold eyes passing over me a piece of scenery not standing out higher into heaven rather just fly straight and down to the soft ground never leaving it you were my chance you ruined it you ruined me once i was more then a shell now in a trapped box the pencil is my love memories flash of that time when i predicted perfection i’m burning the bitter inferno of lost potential of being lost

⁂

i give up right now walk down the street another broken back slumped sadly devoid of pride filled with arrogance another clone another ant in this diseased colony working for ourselves dig deeper into unhappiness no satisfaction from a tv when your kids hate you and your wife sleeps around in the bed you bought the modern rage is impartiality the modern love is sexual purely sexual i once was found but now am lost the maze is the hardest a square with no exit i fell in and the dirt is raining on me shovels of those who say they love me are burying me alive

⁂

i drove past your house today couldn’t muster the courage to look at it but i drove past your house today satisfied knowing you walked this street might look outside and see me maybe we could have met eyes if i was more brave and had looked maybe if i was more brave i would have stopped push your brother aside and be true for once in my life on my feelings for you im glad i didn’t look why spoil a dream with drear reality you’re the perfect angel in my head and dreams are more real then spiteful cities black streets and broken nervous systems behind dead hearts

[INTERSTITIAL — draft for Barrett’s voice]

That is where the first notebook runs out: army forms, an Africa application, an unwritten essay, and a notebook full of ledges. What the spring of 2006 decided — and what it cost — is what comes next. I was eighteen, living in residence at UBC, filling a document the way other people bite their nails — poems at 2 a.m., mostly never shown to anyone. Except when they were, which is its own sT.

i am going to fucking radiohead in fucking amsterdam. wow

why fear death stare it down make it run in fright endless sleep starts tomorrow why put it off with lackluster floating on a long river devoid of any scenery just one view of a vista sparkling in every direction and may my short river ride end so much peace so much life in the blink of an eye

im a happy person in an unhappy world thank god for fake smiles

[INTERSTITIAL — draft for Barrett’s voice] That spring the journal grew an audience of one. JMUSELOVER was back in Nanaimo, a year behind me, and we wrote each other the kind of emails you can only write to someone you never have to face at breakfast. I’ve kept one of hers, because mine make no sense without it.

April 2, 2006

kurt wanted a list of music, thought it was a telling journal entry

i left out fun stuff cus i got to tired im not an emo. which is a noun so im stuck between deciding to do econ or writing an essay needless to say, its a perfect time to have your non musical friend pretentiously tell you about bands. dahg

i’ll generify this with fake genres

post rock: godspeed! you black emperor, mogwai, sigur ros, ulrich shnauss, zero 7, a silver mt zion, mum, m83, Amina, the album leaf, boards of Canada, explosions in the sky, out hud basically, they’re all epic anti pop. they all start off with a sample or two and just layer it up and layer it up, theres diversity thouh, godspeeds apocaliptic, BoC is just fucking evil, M83 is emo, the album leaf is hooka music. the emphasis is not on the vocals. I’d try like herod by mogwai and roygbiv as less accessible, maybe moya by godspeed and twenty two fourteen by album leaf to see if you like it at all.

hooka music. chill dahg chill. some post rock works like album leaf and sigur ros, but the remix of silent alarm by bloc party(compliments is the best), cat powers (metal heart, good woman, the greatest to try), antony and the johnsons has the guy with the best voice ive ever heard(try for today i am a bay), aqualung, belle orchestre (side project of napolean dynamite guy from arcade fire), ben kweller (try in other words), homogenic era bjork, broken social scene (try anthem of a 17yo girl or ibi dream of pavement), clap your hands say yeah, the dears, DNTEL (side project of the dj from the postal service. this is namedropping gold, theres a superpitcher remix of one of their songs with DCFC singer singing, you mention like half the indie world. Only better name dropping song is a massive attack remix of rabbit in your headlights which is UNKLE ft dj shadow with thom yorke on vocals. that, is prentious) massive attack, portishead (jazzy deep beats for this and massive attack, same as dj shadows you cant go home again), eels, elliot (song in the air is great), elliot smith (twilight, angeles, everything reminds me of her, theres too many, hes god), ryan adams (magnolia mountain), iron and wine (he has so many, my favourite is cinders and smoke, a lot of people like sea and rhythym, he made lo fi), imogen heap and frou frou (same girl), jeff buckley, jem (OC ruined her, she was on it, that bitch), obviously you know death cab for cutie, postal service, fuck you oc, the shins (st simon, new slang, caring is creepy, JMUSELOVERy lewis and rilo kiley (fuck feminism, i dont like her but N. does and yound girls with guitars is her genre of choice), the knife (their new cd is amazing, the captain is the best, its really experimental), the organ, of montreal (tim wish you were born a girl is my fave, these two are reallyu indie), mazzy star (pedro the lion does an amazing version of fade into you), neutral milk hotel (a lot of people on campus worship him, he is good, not worship worthy. try oh comely and king of carrot flowers pt 1), pinback (fortress), radiohead (motion picture soundtrack, they are god, experiment with them, everybody has a radiohead song they can fall in love with, most electic band ive ever heard in terms of evolution. you can’t start being pretentious until you like radiohead or have had your tast evolve above radiohead), sage francis (undergroud rap, try sea lions, hes good, garrett could live off him), decemberists (odalisque, on the bus mall), sufjan stevens (he wants to have one cd for every american state. hes on two. he is absolutely one of the best song writers ive ever heard, try casimir pulasaki days and jacksonville), trembling blue stars, UNKLE,

ya, i could do more genres but im tired and i have little faith on you even reading all this. its more for you then me, information overload on your point. theres about 15 different genres in all, with artists ranging from solo to 10 members not including orchests, coming from maybe 10 countries. its eclectic, try some stuff, if you like something tell me itll make me happy, if not, i enjoyed writing this. it felt good to do. i tried to do artists i thought ud never heard of and i didn’t do really narrow ones who i dont think are amazing. all these people i really like. try some and enjoy.

April 3, 2006

Maybe twenty minutes ago I came close to just smashing my mirror. When I was reading your email, I felt like ripping my drawer out of my Ikea desk and watch so much useless shit flutter to the ground. I didn’t, but I want to. My tonight was spent in these japanese gardens smoking a cuban with a bottle of wine talking about why capitalism has failed. Fucking university elitist ass holes who change nothing perhaps, but the undeniable fact of capitalism failure is indisbutable and worse still its demise is impossible far off. I dont want to talk about whats wrong with this system that blankets every facet of the diamond that is life, but more how to make do. You’re an intelligent person and that is a miserable fact in a society that craves specialization and mass stupidity. Engineers aren’t smart, business tycoons aren’t smart, profs aren’t smart, they’re specialized into a hole, the narrow laser lighting impossibly bright a meaningless part of a room when a light bulb could illuminate the universe. We are being pushed to this unsatisfying lifestyle and we can feel it and it is a terrible ghastly monstrous pain. Sometimes I write poetry, to express myself, if it can be called poetry, last night I wrote “…let me break myself. broken is better then empty, and empty is better then not fulfilling being full.” that is the tragedy we suffer. of wasted potential. of dreams to bright for a drear world stuck in montony. Life isnt fair, its not us, its not everybody else, its society as a whole. we have no one to blame, we stuck ourselves in this hole with our petty desires and our petty desires consumed our souls. there is no purpose to any of us living, when most people go to sleep, they should ask what did they do today. the highest value today is making somebody else a lot of money, yourself a lot of money, so that you can buy more useless shit to insulate yourself from a world of ever lessening reality. this is rambling, there is a point. there is a way to be happy, i dont know if it works for anyone or everyone, all I know is that I am a happy person. i suffer flashes of impossible melancholy, sometimes when I’m driving I just wonder what if i dont break. what a way to end with in the soft embrace of my favourite song cradled on a sunny day into a thoughtless abyss. I will never do that though. I used to want to be a lawyer. Bring home lots of money, live in a mansion on a hill, have a beautiful wife to give me a hug and drive my perfect kids to school, and when she drops them off tell them their daddy loves them. Everybody has dreams like that. We were lied to, that doesn’t exist, the kids are lost in technology and peer pressure, the wife wants to get a job and leave the kids alone and I’m bored with this perfect family. This is the american dream, the back bone of capitalism, and its a lie. Its not a happy lifestyle. If you got into tv what would you do? would that make you any happier then you have the potential to be right now? if you got a record deal and could perform in front of millions would you be living a better life then if you sat on a corner and there was one person who just couldn’t stop listening to you. we’re taught to dream big. we can be astronauts. a woman president. the bigger the dream, the more chance of failure. we’re taught not to give up, but what we’re not taught is that those people who achieve dreams are just regular people. celebrities get tired of autographs. the rich are in the rat race of not being rich enough, competing against the jones’s with a bigger jet. we have to change the way we dream, dream for satisfaction, for the moment. the moment, the present. what a beautiful idea, and it doesn’t exist anymore. We live in our memories, thinking of what a wonderous time, and build a million different futures. The present is spent on a couch watching a tv while we put living off since we’ve outlined out dreams. I think most people die unhappy, and even worse, they’re so isolated from what life could be they don’t even know it. work hard in school to get a good job. get a good job to buy a house. work like a dog at work to pay off the house, raise the kids, put money into retirement. maybe when we’re 80 we can reap the benefits of our dreams cus we put them off. look at the chinese, they’re the wonder of the modern world, growing at an unprecedented rate that is caring everyone. why? because their workers are willing to work 99% of the time to drive their new car in front of their neighbors. to put their kids in furs. dont think about the future. dont think about the past. live in this second and be happy. if u’re not happy now, who gives a fuck about the future. its just a later now, why can’t they both be moments of joy. people make fun of me because i can’t remember anything, they pity me for it. i pity them for living in remembrence while every second i live is fresh, the best second of my life till the next one. a life of just existing, sitting and staring at a wall, is a joyful life. i dont have a future planned, i dont want to be a politician anymore, i dont want to be a lawyer, follow in daddys footsteps. i want to be a person im proud of right this second and hope i can be just as happy with myself in the next second. dont worry about getting into tv, worry about what you’re doing right now. get off the computer and just walk and walk and it will be the most enjoyable experience you’ve had in months. dont put your dreams off, grab them now while they are fresh. maybe you can’t change the world, maybe thats not a noble idea even, who are we to say what the world should look like. instead we have to live our lives as bastions of inspiration that there is still romance in this rotting husk of empty hearts and robot minds. Your nightmare is going to bed at 8pm with some fat beerguzzling curtis B. on your couch, mine is working in a cubicle from 9–5. neither nightmare has to approach. if you don’t like university quit it. i agree, university is pointless in giving us a stable future. i think u’re at university for the same reason as me though, to open the power of a mind, explode the lie of ignorance is bliss by understanding it is not knowledge that frees us but the perception of the world that knowledge allows us to perceive. do your goals now. my goal is knowledge and i love it, i have no false hope of me getting some job from this, and if i do, it will change with time as all things morph with this one continuam (except this run on sentence). i think it is the most heart renching statement i have ever hearf of you saying you’ll get your masters and chat with mr C. in dover with some nitwit teenagers who still believe buying an ipod will make them a better person. get your masters for the sake of the beauty that comes with the task, not for some meaningless end result. you haven’t undergone the road of education yet, how can you plan where it ends. take the forks as they come at you and always take the brightest one. I’m joing the army reserves, going to ghana, and doing a term of school. this is a lifestyle that prepares me for nothing but is what i want to do with my life. im saying this poorly, its a rather abstract idea to what is likely the ultimate cliche: live your dreams! oh the OC. rather, not live your dreams, but make your dreams what your life is, make driving to school a thing of joy, working at the dollar store something you would do even if you weren’t being paid. raise your perceptions above the destitution of your surrounding and you’ll raise your surroundings into something you love. there has never been a time of life i haven’t enjoyed, i just say what must be must be and make the best of it. make the best of it because you have the best; if only you knew it. on love what a dangerous topic. what is love, its a means to an end, we fuck like rabbits to make kids to further the human race. its an instinct we’ve out evolved like so many others and our minds our playing catchup. i can’t give you advice on love, every girl ive kissed ive been drunk and regretted. i think love exists but we can’t possibly know what it is at this time. maybe my most real relationship was with you to because there was no prententions, or maybe it was all pretention without saying there was no pretention. we didn’t wear the masks that are pushed on those in love because it was a joke but it wasn’t. maybe you dont want to fall in love with curtis B., but i have no ambition in falling in love with somebody for flesh alone. i want somebody to just cradle while i read a book and feel perfectly at ease at, somebody who can share my perception but never let me figure them out. or so i think. its so hard to know the truth, we turn on the radio and love is some epic ballad, heart wrenching. my heart will go on. its a beautiful thing, tragedy, we all want it. make me jack dawson what a life. but its not a life to live, its a life to dream about, these stories in movies, in song, these myths, are the worste things because they can’t be reconciled to a world living off shallow mediums and uneducated flatulence. i dont know. i cant help you. id say marry me, but i wouldnt make you happy. we’re two big magnets that dont want to be chained by anyone elses ambitions and theory. dont settle for less then perfection. dont do the platinum blond, youre a beauty as a raven, so dark that you suck up all the light in a room and radiate it around you. its not about finding mr right, its about recognizing him and really instill in yourself what you want. maybe you should just find somebody to cradle you while you read a book. on nothing at all. this has been a meandering pointless lesson in uselessness, but as im sure you know, writing is as much for the writer as the reader. knowing this is for an audience only announce truths to myself i shy away from when its my own persona in question. its a hard world because we make it a hardworld. the best advice i think i am capable of is just take pleasure in everything at life, and if you’re not enjoying it, can’t enjoy it, dont do it. life has a future, prepare for it, but what is the point if the now is lost. its not good advice, its cliched, but we spout golden knowledge to each other all day and never apreciate its true meaning. people say don’t sweat the small stuff while racing home to catch the preview for next weeks desperate housewives. people say education is good while they go by uneducated in 99 percent of what life really is. there is so much life and it is so easy to grasp. your nothing is watch a moon be swollowed into the mountains, why can’t every second be like that? how many people saw that same moon without an ounce of feeling? how many things are you looking at that you’re missing so much point of. just live and live and you’ll find that tomorrow you’re still alive and happy for it. bee PS i just read a book for school called extremely loud and incredibly close. id read it, its about how an enlightened thinker reconciled the horrible existence of enlightenment into a joyful life. dont read anything online about it, just read it.

From: “JMUSELOVER n.” [email redacted] To: [email redacted] Subject: I’m happy Bee. Date: Sun, 02 Apr 2006 18:32:07 -0700

Dearest Barrett Robert Nash, I apologize for my increasingly emo msn names. I hold my bangs partly responsible. But the truth is, I have come to many realizations recently, they are as follows:

ON LIFE I always possessed a belief that I, was ‘different’. That somehow, I would succeed in all my goals and dreams. However, school has confronted me with a contradiction. Knowledge can be liberating and limiting, simultaneously. I crave knowledge, I love to learn, but what I’m being taught, is that my ambitions are farfetched, and I will most likely conform to the average gray area. My plan, is to earn my masters and become an english professor. Is that it? In 30 years will I be sitting in a lunchroom with equivalents to Mr. C.? I can’t stand the thought. There is so much I want to be and do, and, like a typical libra, I’m highly indesicive. Some days I want to be a writer, others, I want to be on tv, then I change to wanting to play my own music; it is constantly in a state of evolvement. The reality is, for the next 50 consecutive years of my life, I will go to a monotonous job, just to earn money to keep afloat. If I’m lucky, I will buy a shiny SUV to make my neighbours jealous. I will frequently attend insignificant dinner parties, I’ll date, I’ll settle down, I’ll have some kids, I’ll raise those kids, sex will become a chore, I’ll put away for RRSP’s and a college fund, I’ll find a weekly show to become addicted to, and I’ll start going to bed at 8'oclock. Is that the result of all my aspirations and hard work? Reality depresses me.

ON LOVE How is it that love is a constant, yet it is the most unreliable source I have come across? Is it bad to admit the most rewarding relationship I’ve been in was our mock one? Perhaps it was because there was no genuine committment, and therefore no chance of loss. Only after breaking up did I realise how much of my life was affected by him. I am currently in the process of sterilizing my world, and trying to find myself again. The truth is, I’m in denial. I’ve always professed that I would remain unattached, and never grow dependant on someone. But I did, and that scared me. And now it’s over, and I’m left hurting. The worst thing is I’m completely unattracted to people who want me back. I am fueled by constantly feeling I have to prove myself and earn the other person’s love, and it’s best if that’s an impossible achievement. As soon as my feelings are reciprocated, I grow bored. Maybe I’m doomed to spend my life with someone like Curtis B., as he epitomizes a man who can never be claimed, and in return, never wants to claim me.

ON NOTHING AT ALL Last night I sat in the dark, and watched the moon descend. I did that for two hours. At one point it looked like it would crash into the earth, and I didn’t care. I used to fear death, but now I’m more intrigued by it. I sometimes have the urge to swerve into oncoming traffic. The fact that I have control over my own death, and deciding when my life ends is fascinating to me. I’m trying to decide whether essence precedes existence, or vice versa. Are we put on this earth, with no expectations, and the choices and ethics we bestow in ourselves define us? Or is everything predetermined, and we come here to materialize our decided destiny. I read a philosopher who claimed that God was dead, and we are his murderers. We just dont know it yet. What if there’s nothing more than this? I’ve always admired the carpe diem, ‘live everyday as it’s your last’ idea, but I’ve always told myself, I’ll just do that tomorrow. I wish I could bring myself to do and say everything I want to. What holds us back? I already regret so many missed opportunties, how many more times will I be inactive to my instincs?

ON ENDING EMAILS Nothing groundbreaking here, its just over. Respond, I want to hear your thoughts.

-J.

ps-I want to dye my bangs platinum blond, and the rest of my hair black. Good or bad idea?

April 18, 2006

oh JMUSELOVER

i hate email for its lack of interaction but love it since nobody meddles by interacting; i completely see why some supposed psychopaths resort to conversing with themselves: there is no better more thoughtful audience. in the absence of being seen as retarded or some other fucking unoriginal cruelly effective slur, i’ll refrain from talking to myself and use email. yipee. so i have an exam today, haven’t started studying, went to the beach and burnt my notes while the sun sank and my little posse found me hilarious. then came back and rather then studying the notes i saved for being vital i made fake ids. there are so many ironies in life. theres this quote “i was overwhelmed by the weight of all the lives i’m not living,” i think thats a fair summation of the lack of joy so many people experience in every day life: the dilemma of how do you know if you’re living the best life possible. maurys an escape, a means of saying at least my life isn’t that miserable. everywhere we look though, we are bombarded by the opposite side, a hercules and his madonna deeply in love on every billboard, a lifestyle that crams more then most people will live in their life in a single half hour, novels that present magical worlds that taste so real that half a life can be spent day dreaming of tromping around a fantasy land. life is drab, dreary, and dismal, since no matter who you are, your life is a failure in comparison to the ideal life presented to us in our media saturated lifestyles. while im writing this email theres a pop up of a gorgeous angel holding a penis sized phone telling me shes mine on lava life. apparently, we’re missing out. whenever we get that which we supposedly want its never what we wanted. a car isn’t the expression of freedom that lifts you from your parents strangle hold since theres still nowhere to go. an ipod wont make you popular. wearing versace wont make you rich. the only feel these things gives me is a sense of selling out, that the 50 dollars i just spent on pitch black earphones must be able to be spent in a more fulfilling way. there must be a way to fulfill life, to live it to its potential. that point can’t be reached, ever, we’re competing with the jones’s where everytime we better one neighbor we move into a more exclusive neighborhood with jones’s we need more of everything just to seem adequate. you’re making 8 dollars an hour and feel that theres some mean trick being played on you, im living off a hundred dollars a month and am trying to save money. i get by, since i dont want an ipod anymore, i made the choice between having no money and time to spend the attributes the world still exhibits or having a job and disposable income. last week i just went on mass transit in a vain attempt to study economics and ended up at the top of a dam, water rushing below my feet, a valley spreading infiniitely at my feet, mountains filtering a gorgeous sun and an ocean of trees giving me the pure oxygen i need to sustain my euphoria at such a sight. it was one of the most satisfying experiences ive ever had, there was no cost, only pleasure. maybe the hobos bet right, whats having the option to eat steak to being able to live in stanley park? we laugh at the bag lady, her shopping cart is pitiful, but she is freer then we can ever hope to achieve. maybe we have to laugh at her, its either that or hate her for having a heaven we can’t hope to attain. T and i went for an easter dinner last night with family. small talk is an insight into the unsatisfying lifestyle that will darken most of our lives. T making knowledgable well informed utterly meaningless points on why broke back mountain didnt get best picture at the oscars. my god who gives a faint flying fuck. we’re sitting in a eight hundred thousand dollar house, pulled up in my dads mercedes, wearing brand name clothes and for gods sake eating an organic turkey, and we’re reduced to small talk that reeks of filler. this is the epitome of wealth: being able to luxeriate in meandering meaningless irrelevent activities. between having the option to work a lifetime to own a horse or work a lifetime on a horse my choice is easy, obvious and clear. whats the point of this, im lost, there is one. as maybe you know, T can be a bit of a bitch when hes preening, so he was asking me polite as you please where i think my arts degree will get me. i told him hopefully happiness, and he smirked and i lashed out, asking him where will his commerce degree get him. his reply: a disposable income. i told him take his shallow life. maybe i was just mad, but Ts was right, disposable income is the dream. its how we measure ourselves. it is so meaningless. i worry for T, i dont think hes preparing himself for an existence of merit, an existence that has no point beyonds a disposable income. i read this book where there was a faux letter from steven hawking, it was in prose striking me with its relevence, with the last three lines something like: i wish i made something for lives to depend on you ask what happens if you cant stop inventing, what happens if you’re not inventing at all we arent inventing at all, we’re having nothing depend on us. and you’re getting all emo from it(yeah i used the word emo, the kids use it, it works, lalallalalallalalala breaking pace of email). please dont give a fuck if you’re not a good driver, don’t give a fuck if you’re on msn with a glass of rum, don’t give a fuck if you can’t keep up to troy B. enlightened banter. what does any of that mean? what depends on any of that? nothing is invented from that. my exam tomorrow i have to write about reductionism and holism, which i didnt know what it was before today so ill risk demeaning you by giving you a basic definition. holism is seeing the world as a whole, one giant organic beast, while reductionism is putting everything in boxes. its not a bird, its a crow, its not a crow, its a corvus cox, etc. this is how i think most people see life, in a massively magnified reductionist lens, like zooming in a microscope onto a piece of lint and it is the focus, while if they were a little zoomed out they could see an entire universe of opportunity and pleasure awaiting them. please please zoom out, please be happy, i so want you to be happy because it is so easy to attain but just a little bit easier to fail to grasp; if theres anything ive learned of human nature its that we take the easy route. dont take the easy route, grab a perception of happiness and view the world as it is: perfect. there is no life better then the one you are living right now, this second, this moment. its not a trick, its the reality, there is more pleasure in the act of breathing then every movie ever made and think of how much more you are doing then merely breathing. b

[INTERSTITIAL — draft for Barrett’s voice] Exams ended and the year folded up underneath me. Everything in this stretch was written in the two weeks it took to say goodbye to a residence room.

April 21

a journal entry in my journal, how ironic. i guess its gotta end sooner or later, my journals coming to a close, another stage of life gone. i converted my room into a bar. sums it up.

we’ll never all be togethor again we’ll never laugh at anything as easily as at a girls disfigured gait or a mans massive girth our times were easy and blessed we change we grow the last kiss of childhood was spent in a basement thank-you for making my toes curl and making memories to be forgotton today and remembered forever love can only be pure for what is gone

scent is the best sense purity can’t be seen its floating everywhere for our last days togethor the sun is at its height there are no shadows to blacken our landscape so take a sniff and remember what can’t last its over now yet it existed and we laughed and we lived life and i can smell the thinning beauty of a dying caterpiller stuck in its cacoon.

11 words to 40000. ive written a lot. exactly 40000 words.

just looking at you i can tell i could talk to you forever never need anybody else anybody more beautiful anybody smarter you’re the missing half of the whole thats been hollowed out i wittled myself away but you fill me i can be exist again how pleasant where pleasant means everything and i love you id propose just here looking at you but you havent looked at me yet and you walked off the bus and i never will ever see you again never never never is along time

hide who you are hide who you want to be what you like the worlds stacked against you there is a world stacked against me what a life to have to shoulder with so many other liers

ubc is over this part of my life is over, i loved every second of it. but its over. so much has changed. i think i became better bigger smarter. maybe. but so much changed. people change. people become unhappy. the air of innocence is gone. childhood is gone. this is life, and whatever we make out of it. i hope i make something good out of it, but not everybody will, what a tragedy. there is nothing as bad as watching a stagnant friend. im still in love and im still stupid. maybe one day. at the start of the year i said there was no rush, and there is no rush. i want it now. goodbye

moving day April 27, 2006

bags are packed and im waiting for the father and a van. goodbyes have been said or will be said soon. i guess it was hard, who knows what zoe wants, S. didnt know, and of course guys make everything casual. ya. see you in a few years dahg HAHAHA. well i guess thats the truth. theres so much pressure still, i wonder if this is life, the waiting between changes. ill hande it, i have to, i dont have a choice, i hate being choiceless but i dont hate anything. i hope i aced my exams. i hope i get into the army. i hope i go to ghana. i hope i get into gage. i hope i find love. and peace. happiness. ultimately though, thats all there is, just hope, no certainty. right now, this second, things are good. so ill hope, but ill enjoy this moment, this is the change im living breathing. b

go to sleep and go pack why do people tell me they love me the day after i move away.

this is going to start with an apology and end with an apology. im sorry for sending you this, i sincerely am; i have no right to, who are you to have to hear my problems and even more who are you to know my problems. thats spiteful, im sorry. everybody has to talk to someone and that someone always seems to be me, but i have no one to vent to, im a different person to everyperson i meet but im never me. maybe im more me with you since i know you more through a computer then through real actual interaction. im sorry for all those emails ive sent you before to, they’re awkward, emotion is an awkward thing, ecspecially when it is reprehenisbly transmitted. im sorry for this email, im sorry for every email ive ever sent you, im sorry for any email i will ever send you, im even sorry for being so pitfully sorry. nobody is confident, everybody feels the same shames, the same fears, the same pains, confident people are just better actors. i need to talk. maybe i just had the hardest conversation of my life. maybe i moved today and while im quietly vegging away checking minute facts about nothing this beautiful girl who went to ubc told me she thinks shes in love with me; that im the only person whose ever made her feel. just feel. not feel something, thats all she said, feel. you can imagine i had a million witticisms but instead i bit the bullet and actually talked to her. its not her i need help with, shes gone, going to australia. more why would she tell me the day after i moved away. why would A. and JMUSELOVER tell me the day after i moved away. its not them, its the way i treat them, they consciously try to bring it to a head before i go. i juggle, i play naivete with business and pseudo-philosophy. i keep them away. why the fuck do i push every girl i like away. so why should you know, you must, ive thought you were someone to love when i first got to know you over a year ago, but you have a boyfriend so thats a rock wall. but if you didnt have tim id still push you away, we probably wouldnt be friends and i desperately want to know why. oh the coherence is losing, maybe i wont send this and do both of us a scared nicety. lets start fresh.

what should i do to actually have something with anybody whose a somebody to me. thats a dead serious question to me. i was in bed with this girl a while ago, and she wanted to have sex, and the only thing i could rather drunkenly tell her is that whenever i get far i think of god. somehow i made that sound romantic or somebullshit since whats romanticism but the person whose receiving the words perceiving them in a romantic manner, but she talked to me for a long time, thinking i was saving myself since the bible tells me to or something. all i could tell her then was i used to be religious, it wracked my subvert emotions, maybe you remember when i wore a cross everywhere on my left wrist, even if you never saw it im sure u could hear Ts judgements on that. well i lied to her just like i lied by using the symbol of a cross, it wasnt the christian god i cared about, it was the realization that there is forces out of my control. i stopped wearing the cross the day after bowser. i told the girl because god is watching, but i meant because theres more to you then you’ve given me and i want to know you before i know you. god is a force out of my control, i believe in a higher power because i see creation and its perfection. i know nothing more then that. but i cant comprehend the randomities of an odds infused life like mine is going through the slot machine of divesting myself emotionally into someone ive known for what, months? how long does it take to know someone, youd have to be someone to know them and then how many people actually know themselves. but i want to know people, i like to play things safe, but its not a safe world. so maam, what do i do? im not an idiot, but im not cut out for being human i guess. i dont want a million girl friends, whats the satisfaction when each one takes a piece of me. maybe i still believe in love being like a thunderbolt, that ill just see a girl and know this is it, propose now. maybe i dont know anything. not a thing. at anything.

you’re the only person i know who can actually have the potential to say anything back. which is ironic since i really dont know you at all, maybe thats why though, when the explorers first found america they drew their own maps. i havent gotten to know you at all, so i havent taken the first step towards an impossible task and havent felt the frustration. i have a lot of friends but no friends. i have to act for them all, im not trying to cry my sorrow, im pretty sure we’re always all acting. i dont know who i want to act in front of you yet though, if i say the witty sarcasms, the crude racial slurs, the thoughtless intellectual, the loveable goof, and 6 billions more disguises for six billion more people. before clay hardens it can take any shape, shapes that wouldn’t last in the furnace. so be the person i want you to be this second, cut through all this ramblings of a tired confused teenager in love with his own voice and please tell me of a way i can cut through a million mental blocks and walls and have a way to make a difference, a way to make somebody feel for a lifetime. i want love.

now for the ending apology, as promised. a genuine apology is a rarity, there are so many apologies sprouting from so many misdemeanors that an apology is worthless just as a flake of gold is worthless in a barrel of sand. that doesnt mean that the gold is any less valuable; i am so so so sorry for sending you this. what right do i have to put my weight on you when you undoubtadly have your own mountain on your back. everybody feels the same amount, its just in how we hide it, i guess im not a very good actor. if you get to here and theres a rotten taste playing on your tongue, delete this. if you’ve decided im to personal with a stranger then delete this and dont talk to me, what a world where we can put a person out of existence by deleting him from msn. if you ignore the contradictions and tangents and see not an answer, since the question is impossibe but maybe a way to live, to come to terms, tell me. im polarized but i dont see a way to the golden mean. if you want to help but can’t, dont feel bad, or angry at me please, after all, i did apologizw :). who knows, maybe you feel just as fucked up as i do.

last thing, ive sent you some weird emails, and theres a rather bleak suggestion of who i am resonating through them. that residue of bleakness and everything is in a pit is not me, im a happy person. i could spend a day watching a flower bloom and count it as the best day ever lived by anyone in the world. its just i dont supress happiness or satisfaction, it bounds from me in every smile i give to a stranger, every word i give to someone i love (but not love), every door i open for an elderly woman. i dont like to go to what doesnt make me happy, does anyone? but maybe im weak and have to get it out and i get it out to you. and im sorry for that. b

ps. id delete this no matter what, i come off as a rather pitiful person, and i dont think you’d want it known to anyone you’re literally close to that i write like this to you. i cant imagine tim dreaming of me killing him is exactly a promising statement in how he subconsciously perceives me. why stoke a fire that shouldnt be lit.

[INTERSTITIAL — draft for Barrett’s voice] Home to Nanaimo, then Europe with my brother — three weeks, ten cities, one cancelled Radiohead show. I wrote on trains, mostly in fragments, and I could already feel myself forgetting it while it happened.

today i officially moved away from vancouver. rez is moved out of, the ferry was boarded, im back in nanaimo, home is now actually a home. it was good, leaving, painful but good. its raining cherry blossoms where i walked and it was painful to watch, knowing that nanaimo doesnt have these, that it will be months and months and maybe never until i can be cascaded by endless individually perfumed flowers again. i will never be in my rez room again, it wont be my rez room anymore, its not mine, like vanier isnt mine, im not a first year student anymore, im nota a second year. im not employed but i work. im a nothing in the middle of everything and its nice and its oh so hard. its painful. my friends are gone and who is left? my family is different since i am different, i want them to be the gods i dreamed of years ago, even months ago. i want to be the worlds worst person, so that i can look up to everybody else. instead of blabbering about balance, where is the balance in pain and stupidity mixed with obesity and ignorance. that is not happiness. it takes knowledge to grasp the beauty in every shadow, like tasting a fine wine can be missed by those unused to the delicate flavor, the world is being missed, none are attuned to its romance. stab the earth and call it beauti. there is nothing to compete with a tree, an ocean, a mountain, a person. nothing. put a tree in the center of manhattan over any statue, it will not disappoint. i hate the tree lovers, but they are right. they just dont take a step back, the trees are being cut down for them, no matter who we are. a vegan doesnt eat meat but she kills animals. hypocrites.

and summer started this is from europe not about europe.

If I were to burn every fire to a shallow ash, there would still not be light enough to hide these ghouls. Horror sunders every bleak bellow of hope. Why does the devil caress? Where the sun burns the soul is flayed and where the water laps like acid against unsullied flesh there is a shrieking hedious abysmal wretch. Maybe millenia after the end of man, trees bludgeoning his foul wonders, there will be the soft sing song of an elegant jay with no engine to blare past its bleat. When the liquid of our culture leeches softly through the cracks of our foul bowl, humanity laying gasping for an unanswewered breath, unchanged the wheel shall revolve back to beauty, Adam’s finger nails snapped to spouting fountains blood torn from futile feats to delve out of the thin pit he dug. There was once a way out, before the murder of innocents rests on his conscience like a brand. May it burn every nightmare. Now let the carnivore eat her young to feed the fetus, and all fly to hades; her husk is horrible but necessary: a lesson, a testament, to what to much of trying to hart epitomizes. Let us be the example to the universe — there is nothing to gain from taking everything in existence.

She stands silent, alone. A sea of marble a cold ocean encasing her; combining with the endless silent depths of her eyes to make a statue out of flesh and living tissie out of dead stone. There is a beautiful scene here. Something to witness and remember, a second as my train blows lonely past. A memory I can share with no one is a memory that dies. She exists a world apart, a creature of my mind no one might lighten back. I miss all my memories. The ones I’ve forgotton and the friends who have forgotton them. I miss so much, the tilt togethor of our heads, at a movie, the closest we’ve been to a kiss. The silent sobbing of a best friend disowning me, knowing its only my fault yet still I punch the cold pink stucco till blood sluices down to my wrist; angry at you for not forgiving me one last time. The crude joke that introduced us, false pretences carrying to this day, we still don’t know each other, and I took an ounce of your innocence; I should be flayed. Chasing her in my car the day I move away and the day she says she loves me. Under a slide, my brothers friends, off limits but here they are pressed against me. Peeing on the side of the house, so new in the world a decade and a halfs friendship blossoming. Being pushed into a thorny bush, tears rushing at the indignity of being powerless while my mouth delivers where my hands failed, I run from the angry. Having a sour drink, perched high on my bed, the pretence of studing long forgotton as we suck the last ounce of this soon to be splintered friendship. Sitting high atop the planetarium, a tropical forest lit below us, a starry night serving as a ceiling, and my blossoming birth town; I said I could die this very night, 17 rings on my trunk, and have no regrets — there is only so much living one can expect out of a life, I reached it that night, that moment. Driving faster then I want, watching you breeze past me like a bird past a tree, I was scared for you: running ret lights, still I sped up, and won; we laughed, still laugh about it, I was so frightened you mother fucker. We missed the bus stop screamed at each other over the mistake; we were best friends. At the center of thebridge, pinned as bikers blitz past, a sea plane gliding by just out of reach, how inspiring, how awe full. Out of a tunnel for just a second, luminous sunlight floods the drab cabin, a picturesque little beach being buffeted by battling waves an inch away, back into the tunnel. How many memories make a man, and how many must be lost to kill him? Inertia all that carries most empty husks through repetition towards a grave, the endless dreams of fogotton days.

Florence was beautiful.

And where do the angels live when heavean is burned down? Maybe I don’t believe in hell, but I believe in Fire. As long as there is light and pain and heat over nothing this is still heaven. Save me from nothing. Please. please.

Maybe the day won’t break. No sunshine to tell the rooster that the day has begun, a blue moon the only light kissing the pale skins of kissing lovers wishing to see a world of colour. To kiss next to roses a pale shade of pink only visualised by girls dreaming of a sweet summer. Maybe the day won’t break, maybe the sunshine has been sucked out of our very blood.

When did I become a spark in the lightning? A piece of flashfire blinding the darkness the setting it ablaze. An inferno purifying by by stripping living flesh to a maggoty white bone. Pure is pure but pure is empty. Pure is a void, and I have made it. Nullified the sactity of sacrilegeous by minutely analyzing them: god doesnt exist, he is a chemical craveing.

I forgot the last time I cried, what a tragedy.

I’m so tired of talking to everyone else since everyone else isn’t you. I want to drown you in my rhetoric,flood your senses with my sense. Convert you into me, so I can fall in love.

Marry me tonight when we know nothing of each other or the world. Maybe we’ll be confused or scared but we won’t be alone. Let me gently touch the tip of every finger, count every hair on your head. Be my inspiration, my madonna. My true tale that you are alive with a beating heart, and since I exist to someone so fantastically real as you, I must be.

Attention please, don’t go beyon the yellow lines. (maybe coming from rome?)

that noise ive already forgtton in the monaco train station.

What an abject way out. Your peace for the dead when their breath isn’t out.Like angels playing harps in a rising sea of black acid. Sweet music still being made, muted by screams of pain as flesh melts into liquid. The horror is not in the agony but that each quivering second is the best second left — it is all made worse by time. Still the harps are played. Death does not come at once. Must the stomach die to kill? Must the heart? The brain? One can live in a coma but die awake. A glance outside shows angelels with their harps writing in acid. Detrimental repetition has melted the mind to a paste worms could dismante no more. Greed and self loathing, loving. Has burnt the sould in a gray sallow ash. Only skin remains and this is no harbringer of life. Might it quickly catch to its neutured cousin, end the dread existence of purgaT.Give me death, give me life, but never both.

Maybe I was scared. So much was changing so fast. Is changing so fast. Like a caterpillar in his caccon, unsure if his fate is to fly as a butterfly or perish in the cold breath of winter. Stuck immobile, there is still a plethora of of wodrously plausible options. If only I could stay lost in my dreams. Only one route can be take, in a life, how mundane. Why not let the day be a dream, and wake up into sleep, where one night I can be a romantic hero saving my love from a fiendish tyrant, the next night be the billionair philanthropist who stops genocide. Why must I live in a world structured to structure my unstructured mind? My must everything be boxed off, emotion is not some rectangular brick! It is the sinuous river following its own route.Cutting what needs to be cut, but distinct from every other river on earth.There is nothing that makes the desert sparse. Silent rivers flooding just out underground out of sight, and sunrises sorrowfully dominating absolutely. If you wish emptiness glance at a house encroached in the trench of suburbia. An unstoppable army. What a world to see, millenia built upon the back of millenia quanumed the metamophism of this rock into a one in a trillion oasis. What luck to be in this spark of time to mark its downfall. Destruction has its own aspect of beauty.

it was a good try, miracles, but no one believed them. we asked god to prove himself, then analyze the chained reactions that allowed the wonder. How disparate the lack of perception: the chemical reaction is the miracle. Call fluke the wonders of the breathing forest, the rising as it sinks geography and a millions millions millions example of perfection. Math states perfection is only possible theoretically, but here we are, living and conscious.

now I’ve always thought of myself as a nice guy, but im pretty close to head butting you (yes you), since somehow all my bragging about how I’m going to Europe has been paid back by people actually wanting to know how europe was. or at least everyone is very polite and pretends to be interested, but frankly, I always find peoples trip stories boring (no, not yours, yours was interesting (really, it was, theres no sarcasm (hug?))) so I feel bad telling people mine. but apparently I’m supposed to say something, and here I have a bit of time (sorry for leaving your party xander, we’d come over, but its dark out, my cars breaks are giving off a smell of burnt small animal and I’m a less then good driver, a bad combo(does this go to xander?))(i use way to many brackets, its style, people work to use brackets, i had a lecture on it, really). where was i, oh yes, i have a bit of time, i mean of course im usually busy, i mean friends and long emotional walks on the beach and making sure my hair swoops to the left, but now I have time, so heres the brief sT of europe told with no lies so now instead of asking me how europe was you can be like oh, i read your email, want to get a slurpee. so first off yes, europe was good. its all still there, everything smells like shit, ive probably told you that, its been my token answer to how europe was, seems like the most efficient way of not boring people. im your monkey. ummm, what else, i dont get how i should do this, so you have to suffer. you can skip this part, but if you actually got to here, congrats, and might as well carry on, since apparently you too have a lot of spare time; try swooping your hair, its a great time killer. pout more too. so we did like everything, if there was a sight, we saw it, except david, cus there was a line up, and frankly, i saw this copy in vegas and i cant imagine the real one is worth 10 euros and a three hour wait when ive seen the vegas one. in fact, if you can only afford one place to go to, go to vegas, they have every place, the venetian was better then venice. venice gets boring fast btw, maybe go for like 3 hours, we saw the canals, i got hit by a pidgeon, then we spent maybe a trimester of pregnancy riding up and down on these non gondala boats for free since we refused to pay for them; being cheap was a common theme for the entire tripe, i brought back a chocolate bar for my mom (a milka, top of the top of the top of the line) and this rock that just fell off the colloseum. good timing, really really really good timing. shitty made building anywase, like, i saw the movie gladiator, and i figured they filmed it at the real thing, but guess not: the real things all crumbly. culture was not a strong point on the trip, sure we saw everything, the louvre, the ufizi, the chocolate musuem, the van gogh musuem, but what the fuck do i know about art, so if ive seen it in a book i go wow, T, that ones great, i mean the lighting, its genius, if its not in a book it gets a two second glance and a walk past since theres zero bragging cred. causes havoc if you dont recognize one though, i mean, do you know what the school of athens is? i sure as hell walked past it more amazed at how some pope decided he wanted forty kilometres of hallways. maybe this is why catholics have no money now genius. or the pedophilia. anywase, yeah, culture, we did the stuff, but we did it our way, which was good, enjoyable and when im fifty and smart i can go back and go hey T, the lighting its genius and actually know what im talking about since my mothers fifty and she knows everything. anywase, this is rambling and starting to bore you (yeah starting, come on, we’re having fun here, this is a blast, an insight into barrett, what a good looking person actually thinks, take notes, maybe you to can gain that cheek structure so fine its been used to grate cheese) err umm, starting to bore you so heres the summary:

• Europe smells terrible, like a mixture of diarhea, salt, and some type of body odour. not BO, something deeper.
• You get tired of being dirty, all i wanted was to be clean and in nice clothes. i dont know how people go for months i was ready to come home at 21 days, you guys who went for a few months what the fuck, dont bring lice back to my country. B2) if you go to lyndsay B. (who is a nice, beautiful, gracious host, whose house has no working light bulbs and is carpeted with a nice inch layer of body hair) dont have a shower, have one before, have one after. please. B3) Kristing is also nice beautiful and gracious, and her showers are nice.
• shit i keep getting side tracked. oh we saw everything but thats boring to talk about. like you really want a monologue of yeah, i saw the effiel tower (thats how the french spell it) it was tall, and monaco was rich and florence had good gelato. fuck thats boring. so assume we did all the shit in the travel book and it was good and if you’ve already been in europe chances are we had more fun with it then you cus frankly we’re fun people.
• radiohead was cancelled and i cried but amsterdam makes up for it, go there, marry me and go there. raise my children, i love you.
• and thats about it, it was a good trip. honestly, bad smells and stuff aside, i loved it, everything worked out and everything was fun. and the weather was great and my happiness is usually directly proportional to sunlight.

ok, i feel content that you know completely comprehensively everything that occurred, I’m in town by the by, and I think I might have the rest of June off, so if you want to do something yeah, that’d be chill. And ummmm, hmmmm, now we need more small talk when we actually meet, the safe topic of europe is gone, school was long enough ago that its in the past, can’t talk, ummmmm, hmmmmm, the new small talk conversation is about how tanned we are, and how its only the beginning of june but, wow, we’ll be black as a black person by the end of summer and you wont be able to recognize me and id love to put a shape on my body while i tan and make a body tatoo (not that i tan). b

[INTERSTITIAL — draft for Barrett’s voice] The end of that summer is the hardest part of this book for me to reread. I was drinking when I wrote, trying to write a book about not being able to write a book, and sending letters I had no business sending. Two passages in this stretch needed a decision: cut them and pretend I was never that person, or leave them in and say plainly that I was. They’re here. [Barrett: this frame in particular is yours to rewrite or veto.]

this is the one shot the big time not on some television more like walking out the door unbowed back satisfied understanding contententment isnt forever or ever that if its flushed you take it this is life the not giving in fight again in your own way smile when you want to cry die if you were supposed to live but never ever forever give in

sometimes i pray for a gunshot not to me just someone suitably far away so that i can wear all black for a reason

sadists clawing at my arms make me drown in air play football with us damn you no lets talk damn you no love me damn you no there is nothing i want from you, darkness what is worth having i have i can dig, devil, my heart is here in my chest under scratch scabs \

i felt like writing you and the first thing i thought of was if my mother would smell vodka on my breath if i had a few shots. how terribly terribly emo, and emo is the new nu metal, its so out and unstylish so ive got to pull up and just go with the lack of alcohol and over dramatics. do you still exist? i ask that of so many people and everybody always takes it as a joke, but it is such a serious question to me. everybody i know and love has morphed, changed in a day or a year or a decade into something alien. curtis B.’s out snorting ecstacy, alexias gotten bitter, T is manipulating my mother and you never talk to me anymore. its been such a goddamned long ten minutes, i went from being perfectly content and watching donnie darko, to sitting in the pitch black of my den looking at my msn list getting not depressed but infinitely sad. theres a stark difference. it just seems that the world has moved on but i haven’t changed and im alone. i just wrote

so metamorphisis eats my mind growth fed from the inside every new beginning begs a new end new friends for lost love education at the expense of logic my mind has a cancer so large, so rotten its fucked up what an idea more and more where does more come from? economics: infinite demand in a finite world ghastly, its permeated my soul

from JMUSELOVER I just received an email informing me there are thousands of single asians waiting for me. Thousands. Isn’t that amazing? All for me. And my work is so closely related… I feel like I know them, and their culture. Thats how I stay happy. Finding humour in the most insignificant things so many people overlook. In other news… Today I pulled out onto the highway, and a car honked at me. I am so paranoid that by the end of the day I had convinced myself I had caused a three car accident, and a pedestrian was involved. I felt sick. Imagination is my worst best friend. I still need to learn how to apply it, or else I will die of an ulcer when I’m twenty. Theres a quote from Dogma I find very relative to how I feel: “Faith is a cup of water. When you’re young, the glass is small, its easy to fill. But when you get bigger, so does the cup. It’s harder to maintain, but every once in a while you have to fill it up.” I’ve started to notice how much I have actually grown. Previously, my biggest dilemma was homework, fear; going to the principal’s office. Now, my dramatics carry some actual weight, they can change other people’s lives. I could drive home tonight, make a quick wrong choice and kill myself and 4 other people. I’m blown away by the power of a second. I guess right now I’m overwhelmed by responsibility, and how flimsy life is. Life; considered a foundation, is the most unreliable thing I know. Change is good, right? Do you remember what you were doing last week, or even last month? The amount of things I forget appalls me. This is my life, my ‘one time deal’ and if I were confronted with half of my memories I couldn’t claim them. Now that we’re adults, we should seize the world. Its ours to mould. We’re the leaders. So why do I feel like I’m standing in my dad’s shoes trying not to trip. -JMUSELOVER (I swear I’m happy) N.

buhk beginning and maybe end

themes:

I) loneliness a) technological seperation -talk on msn, emails, phone, xboxs, watering down social interaction b) no more shared experiences -family dinner -best friends c) blight of every generation but distinct in every generation II) average a) apex of generational horror -son of the hippi failures i) where is there to raise when we burned our house down b) lied to, said world was ahead of us -didnt know how to choose the world, what we wanted was wrong III) bleak made out of the beautiful a) driving down the highway, a drone

IV) beautiful made out of the bleak a) celebrities, shallowness, love stories and death war horror V) interesting time to live, the end of the world (last line as ive decided now right now this second)

And I’m sitting at my computer and I have no idea what to write about. Just finished reading Time magazine for the week, making sure to read it in front of as many friends as possible so they realize how smart and good looking I am, when I read that “my” generations author hadn’t been discovered yet. Well, its talking about them starting (fuck my mom keeps talking to me, how am I supposed

to write the novel of my generation like this (shit, ignore that, it ruins the climax of the sentence all this is written in the middle of (hope this doesn’t break the flow))) at 30, so I’m 18, why don’t I just write the best novel ever for our generation now, then when I’m 30 maybe I can be a rap sensation or an actor. Fuck. That sentence doesn’t make sense, my fucking mother. Fuck. Ok. Well I don’t really know how to write, so maybe don’t go by the writing, just turn this book around, look at the picture on the back. Aren’t I adorable? Yeah. I am. And I want to go to Africa to work at a school, I’m a triplet, I help out tweens on their problems, AND i work at a special needs camp. Isn’t this the type of person you want to be your generational voice. And for the ladies. Or queers, who may I establish now I am a supporter of. But not gay. I also support woman and the metis. Ok for you lot; yeah, im hot, maybe the picture doesnt do justice, maybe I got a hair cut, I have great hair, but the point is, your generation voice could be a hottie. If my book wins, you could stay up and watch larry king, and be smart, and enjoy looking at my magnifecently rippled torso and emo sad blue eyes. Unfortunately, I just figured out that I don’t know how to write a book, have a topic to write about, or really give a fuck. Hmmmm. Well, lets introduce ourselves. (TIME KILLER) No its fucking not, you should know the author, understand his mind set, get into his shoes like atticus rambled about in to kill a mocking bird which I know you read beceause we had to; yeah school system, thanks for pulling through. I remember in school we used to do practices of writing where we described our selves and we had to do physical and ‘non physical.’ Yeah, non physical — I think I just see the humor of that now. Spiritual will piss the non religious off and everything else sounds to yoga buddhist corny. Anywase back to how good looking I am. Wow. I get the ass, but I get it by being sensitive, using my tremendous humor and impeccable style to worm my way into every girls heart, then fuck em, leave em, and tell my buddy curtis “i scored MOTHER FUCKER.” Non physically, I’m also pretty goddamned attractive. I’m pretty friendly and am told to go to hell a lot. Ok this isnt working to make me figure out how to write my book. Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way, who really reads a book that starts with the author rambling on about himself. It’s supposed to start “in the water lightness grows” or “the fallacious feline fell far; grace had escaped nobility — passion.” But my books starting like a conversation to my best friend, who I dont have, because I like everybody the same (dont tell my good friends that). I’ve so far got a sheet running of some themes I’d like to incorporate into my masterpiece fame getter. Ideas such as loneliness, bleak out of beautiful (and reversed), all this grade A shit, like my profs would pat me on the head for but how do I, to use us authors slang, weave it into a sT. mmmm, well. I could write about me, but name me one memoir that made somebody famous, besides anne frank and she had the holocaust, maybe if I died in a giant oven after writing some innocent grade 2( fuck my mom is interrupting me again. I wonder if she has any idea that I am trying to work. Note to self for all you amateurs, working in the kitchen with an overly gossipycurious red headed mother dont get shit done. Here she comes again: oh cutlerys on sale. Thats actually good news, I’m moving into cluster in rez and need to eat somehow. For my buddy walker, yeah thats his name, i know (walker texas ranger) i found i giant box filled with dirty cutlery, dishes, cups, everything i guess someone was stealing and gave that to him. I guess I have to buy it this year though since whats the chances of me finding that once, let alone twice. Ecspecially with him looking for it. Hey I’m almost at 800 hundred words, I wonder how long a book has to be, maybe I could write a book about wondering how to write a book. How perfect would that be for our generation. I’ll get into an angry anti societal rant later, but right now the suns just starting to set, I’m in prehead ache phase but a head ache might come, and just all around in a non revolutionary mood. Oh wait, I take that back, now you, yes you, mothefucker you better have bought this too, librarys are for whores and virgins. You’re normal right so buy the fucking book, its like what, 20 dollars, 25 max, splurge. Its not like I want an escalade, just a little mercedes to bomb around town in, likely black, then I can go from gang fight to gang fight and wow them with me cool car and soon to be learned kung fu. One step at a time, just like mommy sais. For the beginning of the greatest work man has ever seen, I’m deffinetely referencing my mother to much. I know, I know, shes good looking, she raised me right, or I’m of her blood, or whatever that joke is, but, what. I forget what I was going to say. The point is, no, you may not fuck my mother you sick perverted cocksucker. Well maybe not cock sucker. mmm, what would be a good curse for a person who would like to fuck ones mother,,,,you Mother Fucker you. What a good swear, don’t use it, its copyrighted to Barrett Nash (me) on this day of days june or or july. July, i went to the fireworks (canada day, not 4th of july, call it america day idiots) and they sucked, people should not be allowed to see good fireworks cus then how can you go back to bad fireworks in your local shit hole of a town. Anywase the fireworks were good but awkward because I decided to self narrate the sT of the fireworks (a prerogative to my fine work here) and well, fireworks, uhhh, it was of a sexual nature. Lot of use of the word orgasm and thrust, and made it awkward for everyone around us. My dad wants to go to Home Depot, don’t worry, I’ll get creative inspiration on the way.

• Well that was only like a two week gap, not anything to interrupt my continuity. Get it, there is none, I’ve really mastered the humor here. There is so much fucking pressure in a life. How the fuck am I expected to deal? I don’t really give a shit if I write a book, I just want to get the awards, go up on TV in a meticulously fitted suit, bitch on my arm looking at my cock and knowing she’s gonna do what I fucking want. Who cares about the build up, its the end, I’d try to be a fucking rock star if I figured it was easier to learn music then just write and write for a few hundred pages and assume that the end result will just make some publishers day. Weed dream, not really, I figure I got the ball in my court. I’m 19, which means I can be the youthful maverick, explaining the drudgery of my surroundings to so many adults who fail to realize why their children have hit a brick wall in terms of measurable life. They can just read this, go “ahhhhh, he’s 19, now I understand, my child is fucked,” and go back to their hidden joint and third wife satisfied it was the Playstations fault and maybe digital cable had been a mistake but oh well everybody makes mistakes right. You motherfuckers rot in a hell you don’t get to choose. If you want cold I want to sear your flippant flesh, rip out your hair one by one, put your neck through a meat grinder. Make you suffer. Death is something we’ll all deal with, how rude. But yeah, 19, so thats a total ace, that’s if I can finish this fucker within a reasonable timeframe. See I’m already preparing, I’m actually 18, but using 19, so I have over a year to finish this, and Voltaire wrote Candide in a week (or two I forget, facts can give way to approximation, its my book motherfucker) and he died so long ago and French is so much more eloquent then English because it picks up english girls while English doesn’t pick up French girls so I should be able to write a full book faster then Voltaire, if only I could get some continuity unlike this multi week breakfrom my first writing session.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: FLAGGED PASSAGE 1 of 2 (readers’ assessment; V2 original line 5262). The paragraph below contains a shock-comic riff that trivializes rape. Per the blueprint it is not cut silently. My recommendation: KEEP verbatim, framed. Proposed framing for Barrett’s voice in the surrounding interstitial: this “book about writing a book” is an eighteen-year-old performing bulletproof cynicism at exactly the pitch of his real distress — the mask is the evidence — and the unsent letters that follow are the same voice with the mask off. If Barrett prefers excision, replace the paragraph with a visibly marked omission; do not trim it quietly.]

I’m a triplet too, figure that must count for something, when was the last famous triplet author, it’s a prejudiced market, better publish this book publishers or I’ll say you didn’t want to take the risk of signing me for my tripletness. Don’t play naive, you know what I talk about, the inhibit fear that my brothers will also have to get matching billion dollar contracts since they’re my

brother identical (how would you know they aren’t) and look like me and must therefore think like me but really they have none of my prosical genius (its a word) and is wasted money. Shit, I just made that up on the spot (can you tell) but now I’m worried that being a triplet might be a bad thing, running in turn to the fact I’m a liberal, male, white, christian with rather good looks but nothing phenomonal enough to capitalize on I’m feeling a little bit fucked. Maybe if I do some attention grabbing thing this could be my memoir instead, run naked from coast to coast, has that been done yet? That would take to long, maybe become a hermaphadite stripper who gets raped, I could do that overnight and that shits reversible except for the rape and can it really be that bad? Girls always are like “oh that would suck” but you take it from your boyfriend or husband and seem to like it, why don’t you just get in the mindset that the random guy is your bf; sure its hard but then you could enjoy it. No other species gives a fuck, why are we the exception, and no offence but its not like rapes a new thing, go ask some Carribean woman from any era other then our own escaping into eternity and she’ll tell you its a part of life. Or so I assume, once again, the whole research of this is kinda hazy, not my forte.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: end of flagged passage 1. Text continues verbatim.]

Holy Fuck its hot out, I suppose if this is to be one iota as magnificent as something that exists I should bring up global warming, maybe then it can be “THE THOUGHTFUL INSIGTFUL LOOK ON GLOBAL WARMING BY ONE OF THE YOUTHS WHO SHALL SUFFER FROM THEIR PARENTS FUCKING INEPTITUDE.” I kinda like the ring of that, has that been done yet. And I wouldn’t even have to do any research, I watched

that Al Gore movie yesterday with my parents, my idea aren’t I a darling son, is there a darling son market? So he did the research for me, and I can just give my generational spin on it. Well, sorry to say, but I don’t really give a fuck. Why the fuck should I have to change my life from being the best living standards in hisT so China can just pollute its way past us whiteys to be the new world powers, them taking our example to just get clean while Africa is fucking with the pollution. Like really whats the worste case scenarion: the imminent end of man? Well, we had a good run, the world will come back, it survived a meteor that wiped out all life and maybe we did worse then the meteor but thats why time exists to fix up fuck ups. Besides, earths gonna get destroyed when the sun blows up anywase, might as well do it on our terms, teach that fucking sun it aint to hot. That wordplay was totally unplanned PS. It’s kind of a rush of adrenaline too, the idea that what countless generation upon countless generations of human lives took to realize, the total control of our world, nothing to fear from anything, will end in one brief flare up in time our total annihalation purely on their own incompetency to realize when survival tactics became murderous. How wonderful to be in that select group of people who gets to watch the end of the earth, how many people in hisT get to see how this movie ends? Its a privilige. But yeah seriously, maybe we’d better get better air conditioners because its good and all to say it’s sweet to watch the world end, but it is so fucking hot out, its giving me a goddamned head ache. Totally unfun. I think I’m going to go take a break, maybe go eat a piece of garlic bread, its so delicious. Or a popsicle, I’m not a big popsicle person, but seeing as its so hot out I can make exceptions. Ciao

Back after only an hour break, smashing my previous multi week break meaning that if I can keep up with this ratio I should be done tonight. It shouldn’t take that long anywase, I was getting kinda bored with this whole writing thing, so I googled how long a book should be and the internet told me about 60000 words would be more then enough and I’m at like 3000 so only 60 writing sessions

or so which means if I write once every two days I can be done in about four months, just missing the holiday rush which is a good thing because, lets face this with a tad of honesty, maybe this isnt exactly holiday rush material. I wish I got in for boxing day though, catch some people with the massively reduced stickers. My goddamned mother is back on her warpath of destroying my book. Its her country music award show, and every goddamned act “Barrett, its Brad Paisley” “Barrett its Faith Hill” I could not care less. Reminds me of being little, “Barrett, you have to listen to the words,” ummm, ok mom. “I’ve gotta BBQ stain on my white T-shirt” about somes it up, except for that lonestar song from September 11ish that I used to deliver papers too, it was so nice. And Ryan Adams and Fleetwood Mac and Dixie Chicks but don’t tell my mom because then she’d think she’d won and my betterment of the Nash line by evolving musically above my parents would fail and lets face it, I don’t want to be the person to prove Darwin wrong. Understand? Certainly. Obviously by me rocking out to Boards of Canada loudly, singing along to the incessent “the past inside the present” for maybe the thousand times its played in the songs gives me full right to mock the third rate poetry of Toby Keith’s plying inept ballads. We’re all fucked. But notbody likes my music which must mean something right, I get to be an individual, break the mold, new word order. Nobody has my sight, don’t you motherfuckers get it, its beautiful, how did they do it, “Ice age coming Ice age coming” good job Radiohead I fucking love you for saving music from guitars since I can’t play the guitar but I’m good at computers so keep on with your tech whodunit and maybe I can compete too. I got typecast as the idividual in my family, how fucking ironic is that. One brother the sports/science god, the other brother the social prince and me: the individual. I always figured individual meant being seperate, uncategoricable (i’ll spell check that later) and here I am typecast as being impossible to pin down. Boo. Not really anything fucking special about being an individual anywase, its the in thing. Oh wow, you made your own pants, thats so sweet, yeah, that music has a screamer spouting lyrics in a purely unlikeable, intentionally ungoddamned likeable style, its so our own, way to be seperate, lets all wear black hair and smoke weed and collectively fail in every measurable form of anything, wow, we’re so fucking individual. Ok, maybe we’re (i include myself) fucking idiots. It’s understandable right, how do we compete to out parents, the baby boomers, the most profitable generation in mans hisT, fucking changed the world in a day more then a generation would in, well, a generation, how do we compete, just make another internet. Makes it way easier, just spout garbage about how meaningless their accomplishments are, who gives a fuck if you make a lot of money you never lived a fucking day in your life. Go enjoy your beach at 80 grandad, I’m a fuck up now, be a fucking individual. Don’t worry though, the individuality movement is already failed, gotta rock the free fucking world, so I’ll work 100 hours at my dead end job for a new amp. Participate to society more dronish then anyone before us, our deepest questions are answered. This is getting kindof bullshitty, maybe I’ll take a break now, come back when I’m more geniusy. I bid you, sirs and madams, a good night. Stop reading here. Stop it. I say stop it.

While maybe my reasons for trying to write are a tad shallow, I do think I have a viable view point. Maybe its been beaten into the ground by Al Gore monotously talking, boring everyone to tears, Annan calling another desperatate unanswered plea, or that bitchy woman who lives next to Bush’s Crawford ranch that nobody likes. Maybe my views the same as theirs, but I got to have some

message, some underlying theme to make so much waste at least have a hint of resonance. I believe my generation is suffering under the blistering, horrifying truth of being average: perfectly, monotously average. We are at the height of the greatest civilization ever recorded, every day bringing man to new greater heights, yet here we sit, wasted, not defining ourselves in the slightest. When we wake up it is to go to work and put our minute meaningless work power into furthering civilization forward. Consciously, we participate as a clog, the trillionth decimal point on the equation of the humanitys machine. Ultimately, we have achieved the communist goal of the greater good on a scale unfathomed by the likes of stalin of Mao, since we are not forced, we take nothing for ourselves.

Somehow I just don’t understand. Why did I go to school? Why did I love my family? Try so hard, so fucking hard. For this instant? What is so great, why is this better then the unknown darkness of death. Pray for a dream during sleep, same chance in oblivion. Give me god but this inbetween gray is wretched, so wretched, like a flight forever in that weightless second of takeoff: my

stomach is forever heaving in my mouth. What travails as a life, we are robots.

[INTERSTITIAL — draft for Barrett’s voice] The first journal ends here, and the second one starts the way the first one did: tired, in love with somebody unavailable, taking attendance of everyone I couldn’t hold onto. Then back across the water to a new room at UBC.

august 5

todays spencer pools pool party, hes leaving and i think thats ok. i think the seperation, the transitional era of highschool to post whatever is finally finalizing. hes going, ill miss him, but its ok. its a good feeling, we’ve had our good times, might still have more, but they exist and thats all thats necessary. i think im finally untired. i think its almost time for this journal of sorts to be over; i read over it and enjoy every word I’ve written. the memory there in front of me of who I was at that second, but it is not me anymore. Maybe I’m less, maybe I’m more, but the change is there, I can feel it. My first entry, I could not write today, and I would not want to write today. If this is how it ends, then good.