Part 1

Before I begin, I’ll let my emotions settle.

I was nine; Christianity was the dominant religion in my house. It was also the religion that dominated my thoughts. I truly believed my parents were perfect. I had no reason to believe otherwise.

Some people, whomever they are, are able to limit their strengths for a balanced and controlled future. My parents were not able to do so. They have amazing hearts, and that is their strength, but their weakness was education.

Most people have parents, and most people have parents with idiosyncrasies, and those idiosyncrasies either teach you to be different, help you evolve, or you may adopt them as your own and figure out later where you developed them. At nine, I adopted my parents idiosyncrasies. Also, I was taught to be unlike them by my elder siblings. I then allegorically discovered that I had issues very similar to my parents: anger, heart, determination, resilience, confusion, hyperactive, quiet, unsure, insecure denial, forgiveness, superfluously welcoming, manipulatable, sharing, giving, ignorant, stubborn, abused, abusive, lost, blameless, argumentative, obnoxious, teasing, and negligent are all pieces of my personality that I consider adopted.

I can’t say I adopted these traits specifically from them. But I cannot say which I didn’t. I said traits. But to me they are issues because everything in abundance, in a crammed space becomes the hoarding of that abundance. So if I was taught, for instance blamelessness, nothing was my fault. Even if I was to blame, and did the act, I wasn’t going to be held responsible. Another example could be superfluously welcoming. This example to me is self-explanatory, but you’ll find out later why, in no way it is.

At nine, I still believed they were perfect. And as I said, they didn’t make me think otherwise, but didn’t make me think that they were. So in the grey I dwelt to conclude, or learned to assume, I had a perfect life. So in the grey, I dwelt, unknowingly living in a home that was soon to de-assemble its mechanistic parts, like a Cartesian family structure,  because of the ignorant-assumptive method of repairing the part disturbed, not the whole system under stress. One could say it was a systemic problem at the micro level.

In the grey, I ran to hug my dad with a loving familiar embrace, that brought comfort and safety to my developing mind and body every time he came home from work. It was truly perfect. I had a happy family; a social family; one with many hidden secrets.

My parents presented as Christians, serving their saviour. They ran the youth group at the local church. They were great influences for the teenagers and the early adults who wanted to be closer to God. They organized weekly meetings, road trips, missionary endeavors, game nights, healthy sober parties where kids can gather in safety. I’m not kidding when I said I thought they were perfect. Surely I was safe, like all the Christian kids at these unbelievably safe parties, game nights, prayer meetings, road trips (life lessons at every turn). But I forget them all now.

I do remember one afternoon in the living room on Meadow Drive, when I was six looking out of the large centre section of the bay windows, my parents comforted me with their hands placed on either shoulder. I was on my knees. In a gentle soothing tone a question was asked.

“Who would you live with if we got divorced?” I believe my mother asked the question. I thought my perfect parents were telling a joke, so I answered “Daddy.” I didn’t really know what divorce meant. I’m sure they explained it to me, and I ignored it.

Their charity did not stop at the youth group, which brought, earlier in my life, in our family life, a boy into our home named James. He seemed to be the first adolescent (in my lifetime) to be invited into the safe place, but they have told me others, mainly family, were welcomed into the safe place with trust and tenderness. Regardless, James became part of the family. Still, the adage, that everything in abundance until it overflows no more abundance, just chaos remains, because the walls of the dyke erode, and the ocean floods the shores.

James was simple, as far as I remember. He went out with his girlfriend, bought lots of pizza, came home, and sort of ignored my parents Christian messages. He did not ignore my mom though and here is where I first learned manipulability.

A mother, a father, and three children, the father is at work, the elder siblings are in puberty, and the boy is too young to think for himself. The mother becomes friends with sixteen or seventeen year old James, and the boy has become neglected.

I’m curious if my siblings felt similar to me, but at this point I didn’t know that it was happening. Several years passed, I went to school at home, again I am nine, and James moves out. The youth group still thrives and so comes the beginning of horror. This isn’t a murder story, or a thriller that leads to near murder, wait, yes it does. It lead right to a near murder or suicide. A Death by own hand. Judging by the word ‘near’, we can safely say the safe place was safe enough that whatever remnants remained after the break-down of this home -its sickness sweating out of the windows- were able to save me and my siblings from near death by own hand.

I have an unprecedented love for my parents. They are so wonderful. They brought me up. I am now bringing up my own child. They did their best and for this I am thankful, but I cannot hide the truth from my perspective. It is too painful for my mind. I am sorry that I have endeavoured to be a writer. Hopefully the majority will overlook my scornful words and never read this material for whatever it’s worth to me. It may be hurtful to those I love, but it is the truth and in it a whole lot of misunderstandings. I just want to make sense of it all.

…

And that I will do. I will make sense of it all. I will go as deep as I can, and remain purposeful in my intention.

Markedly, the horror began with chatter of a new fad, a new construct, a methodology that spanned three years following James’ departure from the family core.

“We should help these children. They are so lost and we can help them find the Lord.” My mother may have said.

“Yes, we can give it try.” My father  may have responded.

“Even though they are homeless, I think our morals are just and rightly placed in bringing them up appropriately.”

“How many are there?” My father may have asked.

“There are three. One is around fourteen, and the other is twelve, and the third one is a young adult.”

“Ok then, we’ll let them know.”

“Who? the kids?”

“Which kids, our kids?”

“We have kids, three kids” my mother may have said.

“Three kids. only three, now six.” I say thirteen years later. “Three kids that are already brought up, who are now bringing themselves up, who are not looking to be told how to live their lives, who now are going to be told how to live appropriately” I say presently, resentfully, traumatically.

They were brought into our home on one particular night or day or bright and glorious morning that summoned the last moments of our family.

The three adolescents experiencing homelessness, smiled as they were introduced to us (the three originals), and were shown their sleeping quarters.

I now draw blanks where there should be memories of positivity, but instead there are spurt where there is negligence, manipulation, sharing, resilience, and ignorance.

I felt my arm behind my back, where it stayed, bent up towards my shoulders, higher and higher, straining the young tender muscles of youth, as I called out for a discharge from the pain, inflicted by the friend of the fourteen year old Jason Ef—-. He hadn’t touched me himself yet. But his friend surely influenced him to begin to play the big brother role which I didn’t and couldn’t choose by natural selection, more so parental street selection. “Hmmmmmm…..lets take that one, and ummmm hmmmm, yes she looks like a good fix her upper.” Says the ignorance, and the sharing predisposition of my mother and father.

“Ok, Stop!” I yelled and resorted to faux lamentation which helped him consider a higher and harder bend. Gladly my bones to this day have never broken, but only fractured from any injury, so my arm stayed functional, but my mind was given its first punishment for being alive. My first understanding that its not going to be so easy anymore around the periphery and what is not around the periphery, but what is hiding, sort of freakishly, like a cat in the darkness, with its eyes given a sudden but momentary revealing.Hello there my seemingly trustworthy predator, I give thee a fulfilling honor and a high chair, a high throne, to absolutely terrorize my safe place, to destroy my happiness, to bring real emotional tears to my eyes. The wooden spoon will no longer have the value to damage my soft buttocks, but the acidic tears of what I will never forget, but I will live with, can redden my tender cheeks upon my face with an upside down smile until the rebirth.  

I don’t know what I am complaining about. I don’t trust my inner emotional data. It is all wrong, and weak. Weak is wrong. Weak is boring. I have no competency. I am incompetent. I am the predator. I am the sure conclusion of trust. I am the breaker of your stupid kit kat. I will shake your meaningless world till the brains within clamber at its disturbing interior qualities. I am your inevitable downfall. I am the one who will bring you back up. I am the one to blame. I am the son of the household. I am the arm bent, and the body of elasticity, the crooked spine, the punched Pamela, the sad face, the entire entity that was abused and ignored, I was the light that dimmed till it died, the cousin which I knew so little of, the stolen car, the booted leg, the scent of pre-adult sex, the drugs in a religious home, the loss of breath from a king of the hill tumble, the youthful father who could not change a thing, the very sharing, the very caring  boy who tried to save all his friends from eternal damnation, the twelve year old smoker who needed to try some weed, wee…..and so it goes onward.

Part 2

In retrospect, my life wasn’t in my control. I was in the Absolutist hands of the culture I inhabited. I did not choose to inhabit Southern Ontario. It was a choice of natural selection. In the order of such a selection, I must decide what makes me capable of challenging the culture I inhabit. What gives me the power to do so when everyone sees what is wrong, but can only provide answers for the people who are closest to them.

Currently I yell. I yell so loud that the neighboring towns can hear me plea for someone to listen. I am in need of a conversation with a shrink. Though this is in progress, I also believe I have reason to vent the emotions of my childhood, that keep renewing themselves in my evolved self. The one that is still yelling but understands it has no place in civilization or possibly this is uncivilized society.

If you think yelling is a reasonable action and also a reflection of the person that is yelling, you are right. But it is also a reflection of the people in that person’s family circle.

One memory I recall, was a friend, yelling at his father for something he wanted. I didn’t feel comfortable with this method at the time, but once my parents divorced, I adopted this method, and used it on my parents. Eventually, this method brought me many materialistic prizes. I used them because they were toys, and I was a child. I definitely realized later I didn’t want them. I wanted my family. I became what I didn’t want, so I could punish them for not seeing the value in what meant most. For all parents out there who are about to divorce for whatever selfish reason you can conjure, if you have kids, you’re an idiot. If I do the same, I am an Idiot, and I’m selfish, and not a good parent.

Yes there are reasons for divorce, but there are reasons to not get involved with someone you can’t trust. If you haven’t developed a proper trust for the loved one, then don’t have kids. Read a few books on trust and manifest a trust that can last and evolve with your relationship, or claim the identity of stupid parent. I say it so harshly because you are not thinking about the children, you are thinking about your genitals. If your husband’s a drunk abusive man, then I’m sure your child will understand. If your wife is a cheating whore, than it is obvious that your child will understand once they come of age, but if you have a person, who is in full denial of their issues, or in my case two, then you have a parental unit of zero.

Anyway, the parental unit of zero sat me down when I was eleven, after the kids had ran a show of malevolence through our family core, and persuaded my mother that my father wasn’t for her, and my father agreed he wasn’t for her and they began seeing other people before I was informed, or my sisters were informed. At the kitchen table I heard of the cessation of my family. Fuck you, whoever deems this a mild trauma, go find your booze and soak in it.

Once I caught my dad on the phone with his new girlfriend, and I didn’t even know there was an issue in the household. Another time, my mother brought over her new friend, who I’ve grown to love presently, who became her husband after many years of development, and introduced him as her friend. But ohhh I knew what was going on.

They definitely weren’t clever. Instead made it seem like their easily read flirtatious passes at opposite sex friendships were how they wanted us to find out how ridiculous they had become.

Other than how they weren’t happy together, they weren’t really trying to improve. They had hurt each other too much and couldn’t repair what they were scarring.

They really preached the bible and they truly tried living by it, until their idea of god did not save them from their foolishness. What they didn’t know was no one is right, except the one who knows he or she is wrong. You can’t be right in this world, you can only do right and you can do wrong.

I became a fool. I was who I was brought up to be. I wasn’t some spurious phenomenon developed within an hour that no one could understand. I was lied to, and I didn’t like it, because of the religious roots in the lie. Everyone is forgiven as of now, except myself. Because I wasn’t taught how to be real and taught only how to be a Christian, I had to discover in a perilous way how to be real. And my first lesson began when I went to Princess Elizabeth Public School.

Part 3

A transition from the early years, where attention wasn’t spared to the outsiders, where I was taught by my mother the Christian religion, in text books, and into public school I went. In other words I was home schooled before and now I was experiencing for the first time interactive education.

I personally wasn’t socially educated, since I wasn’t ever around a large number of children throughout the first 9 years of my life. Before the divorce ensued I asked my parents if I could go back to school, because I had attended a years worth of public education when I was four, in senior kindergarten. I wanted to go back.

Maybe while I was at school, Primrose Elementary, my parents were sorting out their new life models. If this were true, and I believe it was, I was beginning my journey on my own, because no matter what the circumstance, I thank them for sending me into public so I could begin. It was a shocker to see grade seven children with marijuana, and smoking it at the back of school property. I didn’t know what the stuff was at the time. The semester went fast and I didn’t endure any bullying. I made a few friends and cried when I had to leave. I lamented deeply because it was my first experience with semi-developed children in a group setting. Yes I did experience children in a group setting at youth groups and such, but this was earlier and the children were claiming religious faith. Now I was introduced to all sorts of children, the ones without belief in biblical substance. Many who just simply lived based on elderly sibling example; Most likely the children smoking marijuana in the back. I made my goodbyes at the Halloween dance to whoever I got to know.

All of the sudden the transition to public awoke a deep sense of loss, which was the commune of public development, and all I was told was that my dad and I were moving to our new home in Orangeville (my home town), and I was to attend a new public school, Princess Elizabeth.

Hello to the new world of my dad and I. No one to coax me, feed me well, supply me with love, and no one to ensure that my earlier development continued. He was too busy working to show any affection, and I was too busy getting lost in a schema mold that I still am trying to unravel in sequential peril.

This I say to show you the multitude of harm that early trauma does and has always had on the young. Habits are developed when we are children. Anger was churning heavily as it was filled with regretful decision after regretful decision. After so many regretful decisions, they seemed like the norm. Habits like angry reactions, frustration, self pity, endangering feats,Ignorance of any mild act of affection that did come my way from my parents, and hurt from the new family, which I allowed to takeover, was just as traumatic in every instance of betrayal ensued by my friends (my new family).

I walked into class pretty nervously, and sat down. The people were looking at me with heavy eyes, and I felt the heaviness resting upon me from every direction. What I didn’t know at that moment was the new family like any organization needs to have some initiation to enter. Be it a form you must sign or a series of painful plights to ensure your loyalty. This organization, this new family which lasted throughout the next seven years of being betrayed in countless ways, brought me around in the monomyth to where I am now, at a new beginning.

They tested me whenever they could. The girls at first, who were favoring the new blood that entered unknowingly and uninformed. They wanted to call me their own. I wanted affection. I wanted love from whom-ever and however. So the girls in my classes, one by one began to be my girlfriends and dumping me, one after the other, until I had been with at least nine of them, all friends with each other. It was like they wanted to see for themselves how poor I was emotionally, and it stirred up the boys to the point that they started a petition to have me taped to a pole, as my punishment for being lost in the new family. Another boy was involved in the petition and he by the end of two weeks had more tally’s than me for the disheartening punishment of being humiliated in front of the grade seven congregation. In the face of proper democracy, I was chosen to be humiliated, and I allowed them to initiate me into the circle of punishment which I would not be able to leave until my eighteenth year.

I cried on the pole with every type of tape binding me to the goal post which has denied so many moments of intense last minute soccer tie ups. For me this was my last minute tie up and it was the affection I craved. So many people, at least forty to fifty kids watching me, feeling like they are happy it was not them. But still feeling like this is wrong. It was the most affection I felt for awhile.

I was battered inside. It was the most humiliating moment of my life. It was the start of a schema which allowed me to feel like others could use me to uplift their own spirits. The schema of unlovability.

When Grade eight began and I had spent the summer skateboarding with those who I new from earlier childhood development. I returned for grade eight with a little imprint of fear in me that none other than a boy my own age, who was coming from another school was to beat me up. Which marked the next phase of initiation, which was the initiation of pure physical pain. I had to fight.

Imagine a family where you have to fight your way into its affectionate embrace.

This came when after a snowboard trip I was being bullied by one of the boys who taped me to the pole. He was one of the rulers of the school. He didn’t like me then. He especially disliked me this day for he was shoving my face in some cold icy snow. I guess I allowed him to do it because when you are wrestled unwillingly to the ground when you least expect someone who you want affection from decides to do it, you just go with it. Once I stood up from the thirty seconds of breathlessness. The other boy witnesses pleaded that I fight for myself, which I didn’t understand as an option till this moment. I’d never forget this option till I realized later in life what it could do to your reputation and how it could sabotage your peace of mind.

I was worried that he would tell his older, much bigger brother, that I had fought him, and would himself come and find me to beat me. Regardless, this boy came up to me and hit me in the face, and we began a tussle. Right exchanges up to maybe six punches each, until I swung a left and he quit. I had hit him on the nose and made him tear up, which he supposedly couldn’t handle and it was the symbol of my initiation complete. I had won.

That very boy the next day didn’t make fun of me, nor did anyone else. That was it. No one in the school would challenge me. I didn’t know I could earn respect through fighting. I also didn’t know that you can lose respect very quickly, because people do not like to fear, and when they fear, they can feel intimidated, which breeds deceit and vengeful thoughts. The boy whom I fought was and still is my friend. Maybe his fear is what binds us. Maybe my triumph is what gives me this Entitlement to overpower people. This overpowering habit that comes very swiftly and until now unrecognized as the reason for my downfalls with so many a conversation. Blah, that was grade seven and eight.

Part 4

Grade 9 brought with it an increased amount of marijuana, and influence for desires of all sorts. The aversions on the other hand, simply were of the previous family to continue to disintegrate, the hope that the new family will not reject me, and that the past four years were real.

As ones epoch’s have inevitable ends, so do ones phases end, chartering a new phase revealed, at the turning point of epitomes. The beginning of high-school was surely a new phase, one might say of development, but mistaking it for this when it was surely of degradation. I do understand there were developments, but in more ways the degradations, which would be the mores, the purpose, the stability, and the self-worth, were there, and so evident in the elders expressions as I continued to age in adolescence.

When I thought, when sitting in a classroom, about sitting in a classroom, I would think how I’d like to stand in a classroom, flirt in a classroom, or socialize. I didn’t see the setting as a tool to learn better. I wasn’t pondering it at the time, but in retrospect the setting was counter-productive. When in the life that transpires after graduation or drop-outuation, is there a setting where forty people sit for an hour and half, four times a day, to learn about various subjects? Why wouldn’t the curriculum reflect life as it is? Maybe it did, and I haven’t yet discovered how.

Anyway, with the consumption of marijuana, alcohol, the depletion of loving and nurturing sources, and the lackadaisical stance of the educators in most grade schools, I couldn’t keep up with the focus needed to achieve passing grades. I left grade 9 with six of eight credits.

Part 5

I wouldn’t want to skip any details of my first year of high-school, so I will reveal without equivocation, what transpired.

At home the world was marked by narrow hallways, small bedrooms, malnutrition, poor hygiene, and an atmosphere surrounding our home with strangers. I wouldn’t even call it home, though when I pass by the house in Orangeville, I remember its merit, maybe as a memory of what not to strive for. Although it was a place of transition, I had no sense of happiness, and I don’t think there were any currents flowing through any of the injured members of my broken-blood family. They were sad, and they wanted happiness, and they still do, and I do too, but the shock of a world rusting at the core, which rarely happens with material things, was too overwhelming, since it wasn’t evident until it became cancerous.

One ounce of happiness came from the baked pizza buns my dad would make for me to sell at school. He wasn’t comfortable giving me money so he would give me an option to earn it. I think I earned thirty five dollars once for thirty five bags of leaves collected one autumn day. He blew a five foot pile of snow my friend and I made a snow fort out of one winter. He was a cabby in the evening and a printer during the day, and I was home alone, which I like to remind myself of the twelve year old independence I achieved. He worked a lot, and still does. That is one thing my mother and her family can say he is good at.

At school, I was selling those pizza buns for a dollar a bun, which was similarly as much work as a dollar a bag for leaves collected, so I eventually found it inefficient and went back to mooching, since it was much cheaper and the money my friends collected usually was stolen from their parents wallets. Pretty sneaky, yet predictable, their moves were. Mine was a little less sneaky, and more irritating than not. I was mooching food and dope. In return I entertained as best I could. It became old entertainment, kind of like John Candy or Chevy Chase, people found new ways to laugh. I couldn’t keep up with the times.

Eventually I became sadder and decided to change my home from the father umbrella to the mother awning. They were different in that one protected from rain in a private setting, but the other encouraged community to be sheltered from the streets of Erin Mills.

Jack and Diane, my new caretakers, worked the afternoon shift, so I pretty much didn’t ever see them during the week. I didn’t know anyone in Mississauga but I had my skateboard, which was a reason to go out front of the house. Two local girls came to greet me, since they didn’t have much else to do. One of the girls was connected to the neighborhood thugs, while the other was sort of comely and shy. Everyone is nice at first and the girl connected to the thugs decided to connect me to them, which I thank her for, since it made me who I would become. Somewhat of a despondent, self-righteous, seeker of the new family (Mississauga club), thug want to be who was introduced to rap, hip-hop, and the environment which comes with that class of humanity. So not practical for happiness. It is all based on coin, and collecting respect for the self. If you don’t get it, you fight for it, if you can’t fight for it, you fall short of it. I didn’t get any, and didn’t see any given to those who thought they had it. It was a sea of  malicious boys and girls who wanted something big, dangerous, deadly, expensive, real. I had none of these traits. But I knew where to get them. Since the local thugs began revealing their superficial goals to me, and they seemed like legitimate life paths, to a underdeveloped child on a massive sphere, in a gigantic solar system, enveloped in a galaxy like ours. Since humans own it, because we know of it. I guess I say this because I have heard some say ‘our galaxy’. It is just a galaxy we are in. Anyway, the fun just started to begin in the G.T.A..

Part 6

 As I dismissed the duties of the adolescent, to learn at a given school, and take care of the household I lived, I engaged in many desire based activities. Looking for experience in dangerous places, I didn’t know fear like I do today.

 During the year I was in Mississauga there were many moments of complete absent mindedness. Inexperience allowed for experience to be had. I sensed lies in the energies of this newly introduced family, but I new not what it meant at the time. Reminiscing I can say my intuition knew full well to avoid people with that energy. I wouldn’t have known unless I learned how to reach the level I obtained living on the streets.

  There are lives in this world, which have pallid atmospheres, hazy ones, ones that appear real but are facades of subculture. Facades based in neighborhoods. Subcultures based on struggles, innately based in types of suffering. Impoverished families with parental guidance almost completely unseen. When the parents are working, as were mine, I wasn’t focused in books, but living with kids, and learning life through their problematic struggles.

   Because I survived the hate that developed, I can say they live such a struggle! Hate is taught, respect is sought, but broken by anyone who dares, and street kingship is the game which starts on the kinder garden playground.

   At first the girls I had met seemed to be the full picture, but then they brought the thugs, and they seemed like the full picture, but there aren’t only those thugs, there is an entire city of them. You’ll keep meeting new dangerous people endlessly till you are challenged by a killer. And as the saying goes ‘Kill or be killed’. Fortunately when I faced this point in the game people play, I walked away, after an assault worth photography.

   I witnessed two guys jumped, partaking in one in that year. The boy was two years younger than me, and I had no real reason other than peer pressure to hurt him. I fought one boy who was two years older than me, who I’ve heard would stab me to this day If he saw me. A late teen blood was stabbed, and murdered for stealing a watch from another boy who lived two blocks down from my neighborhood. He had borrowed one of my DVD’s when he was over one afternoon. I didn’t know if he would bring it back. But he did. I honor him for returning it to this day.

Once my house was robbed of all belongings that a young eye saw valuable, and after a boarder who at the time was a friend was threatened by a local juvenile for his life (the border bringing in weapons of lethal proportions to protect himself), it was concluded a fresh start was necessary, so we moved to Cambridge.

  Of course the full extent of a year could hold in this work a thousand paragraphs but noteworthy is that the fight I was in was because the boy had humiliated me in front of the kids at school, and then spat on my shoe. Also worth noting is the reason for humiliating me. I had impregnated the girl that was comely and shy. She had a miscarriage a few days after the fight. He called me “Daddy,” repeating it as I walked to the front doors of Erindale Secondary School.

  Remembering that year and the years to come, I can see the childishness. It was in the drug use, the physical abuse, the sex, the partying, the ignorance, and so much more that bred more of each as cyclical existence drained me of any and all happiness. Once I spent a half year in Cambridge, happiness was scarce, in other words, happiness became spurts of drug induced humor. Being that if I wasn’t drunk or high all the time, it became scarcer, and during one long period completely not felt. I was alone, even from self.

Part 7

The colors I remember were not colors but shades, and shadows. People were not people but imitations of what we saw in popular culture. The branding on our clothing was symbolic of a culture which had no direct relevance to Canadian youth. We were so fake in so many ways that it hurts to remember. I felt the longer I faked who I was the more I became colder, and more like the person I was impersonating.

I remember believing I wasn’t fearful of who I was around. This family of the dangerous youth in Cambridge. I would tell myself they liked me, although I didn’t trust them. They were all hurt by someone. I don’t think they believed in mental illness, either because they didn’t know anything about it or that they were told they had it, and revolted at the idea they had it. But most of them were disillusioned about who they were. I think they thought they were normal to impersonate criminals. They believed committed unjust actions were hilarious, and thrilling.

It looked as if I had no future. Without a dream, or career to aim towards, or a person to assist me towards that  career/dream, I looked to the Cambridge family of unfamiliar faces to ease my suffering. It was amazing how many times I would delve into substance abuse when I didn’t have money. The populations who do abuse are so generous. Without money, and without the value of it, I couldn’t help but taste the results of so many different flavors. Sort of like candy when you are a child, accept the way they would chase your nerves around, and spin your vision, send rushes of blood to various areas of the internal world, or vibrate and bend space-time like it were an illusion, gave the experiences a different quality than sugar. I liked using and then reacting to the feelings of feeling free to act like myself, a self I didn’t know enough about to say I was acting like. But it felt good and innocent once it was familiarized.

I remember sitting behind the nearest recreational center, in Cambridge, with all the local thugs. Some were sitting, some pacing, and I was trembling inside, fearful to speak, and thinking why can’t I feel comfortable enough to talk to them, have something to say, or relate. I didn’t know at the time a person doesn’t relate to every personality type. Without being assaulted I returned home very sad and weak. I was sad because I was weak, and I felt dumb because I couldn’t relate. I cried heavily till I slept, and saw my dad the next day. I believe he came to Cambridge to visit me, and I confessed of my depressed thoughts. I said “I don’t know what to do…I feel like fucking shit!” A few tantrums and he brought me to Toronto to a walk-in clinic. I told the walk-in clinic doctor my thoughts, and he asked me if I had thoughts of hurting myself. “No” I responded in fear I would be institutionalized. He looked at me, and offered me a prescription, for 10 mg’s of an antidepressant, I was to take daily.

I was going into grade 11. I look at who I was becoming because I didn’t know what family meant, and I practiced so much anger that into my 27th year I still struggle to control it. I look at that boy, and I hate him. I look at my decisions to argue with teachers, skip school, and smoke weed as a testimony of fear. I look at the boy before all of this, when I was eight, and I say I love that boy. He practiced love and wanted to share knowledge about what he believed to help people through their struggles.

Then I used Christianity. Now I use Buddhism. I look at Christianity as a problem, and see it instilling ill-practices in people by causing them to disassociate themselves, and posit a hierarchy which has them above any other belief.

I began digesting MDMA, Marijuana, Psychedelic Mushrooms, Cocaine, and felt a self-hate strong enough to bring me to a walk-in clinic doctor, who prescribed me the best drug a man can buy, antidepressants. It was absolutely thrilling with the concoction of all these chemical ingredients. A month in to my prescription I felt invincible. It sparked the child in me who helped others. I didn’t hate myself anymore. I fucking loved myself so much. I thought I was the Prodigal Son. I walked around Cambridge believing I could heal people. I went to school preaching to all of the dangerous kids I feared. I challenged them to express their hate for me by suggesting they hit me. Some did hit me, and were amused at my antics. I’d take out my small bible and put my finger to the first verse in it, and read it to a given person, and told them how it related to them. It was amazing to feel no judgements upon my being. I couldn’t feel anyone’s hate like I did before. I was cured of the gut wrenching discomfort which I felt when I was depressed. But Buddhism teaches you this false sense of happiness is only temporary, and it was. People in my life noticed my actions. They questioned them, and thought, “he’s not normal”. They threatened to take my invincibility drug away, and I felt sad, and cried “Don’t take them away from me,” as I fell to the floor like a two year old. Life isn’t like this. It isn’t pleasurably sensational. In life you have pain, and pain comes from everywhere in the form of psychological, and physical pressure from family, friends, and enemies.

At that time I wouldn’t have agreed. I wanted my invincibility pills, and I wanted to be the savior. I was obviously institutionalized. They brought me to Grand River Hospital. In the psych ward they took the pills away from me, and that positive world became a descending jagged line graph back to reality, back to depression, which I believe was caused by pressure from losing my family. The one which gave me happiness. The one with Mom and Dad, Andrea and Pam, and myself. It felt right. To this day nothing feels right. It’s been one year shy of a decade since my psychotic episode. I believe it took six to seven years for my nerves to recover from the chemicals flowing through me. The psychiatrist switched the antidepressants for antipsychotics. I was lulled to a depression, and darkness where light could not enter.

I remember watching t.v. sitcoms, and not understanding anything the characters were saying. I remember not showering for weeks. I remember bringing a knife to my bed, and placing it to my wrists. I remember hating myself more than I ever had when I tried to formulate a thought about who I was, and not understanding what ‘I’ was. The withdrawal of what I was on took 8 months of detoxification. I wouldn’t look at any visitors to my room, my world, my mentally challenged place of dwelling.

I lied in my filth, and cried. I would hit myself as hard I could in the face, trying to knock the thoughts I was having out of my head. I would aim for the temple.

There is a mental state of depression where the usual self-hate thoughts like “I don’t like myself” exist, and then there is a deeper level where you don’t understand the words “I don’t like myself”. Where there depression becomes psychosis. I’ll admit, the years that followed were dark, but after my sister, and her boyfriend reintroduced me to music, I used it for therapy. Where I was in my room, thirty pounds overweight, not finished high-school, with my only spurt of happiness since before my families break-up taken away, and without any idea of what life was about, I wrote songs. There is no other reason why I would write a song, but to express some part of me that couldn’t make sense of life. I wanted to make sense of life. Because I think in human progress we need to have beliefs to guide us to principles which work in the setting of our lives.

In my life in a country which is in a world where people are so lost as to coexist while providing for themselves, and their families, we justify unjust actions if it is good for the whole, because of fear. I don’t think what I went through was much different than what our country goes through on a macro scale. My individuality is only a fabrication of the beliefs, and principles in our society.

We are all instilled with these beliefs that we need to fit in, and be apart of a group. We need to follow that group because we decided to be apart of it. We are taught to stand by our decisions as I did with the family (group) of thugs till I found out that group was doomed. My blood family was doomed, I didn’t know it. My thug family was doomed, I didn’t know it. Every group seems to have its end. I don’t know of a group which at some point does not end. It’s all temporary as the Buddhist practitioners suggest. In the course of my life I don’t know of anything that has remained the same. How can it remain the same if we are evolving as a unified planetary body.

How can I survive, and be at peace when I am forced to live in a world that I don’t agree with. Money and ego, caste and respect, war and freedom, debt and freedom. Pain is what life is, and that is okay. I am a human in progress in an existence which cannot be understood, but must be rationalized, or there is no purpose. I get up. I work. I try to love more everyday. I sleep until I eat until I sleep no more. If I were told on my way to the egg that this is what I was getting into I would have went back up the urethra. But I love my new family. We struggle to live happy lives. We are all in debt, and unsure of the future. We will speculate, and dream, because that’s what keeps us living.

This is not a family history, it is a perspective of life that keeps changing. Nothing has ever remained the same, except that people always want happiness, and try to figure out how to obtain it. I wish for all sentient beings to find happiness, and work to reform their destructive emotions into positive mental habits.

From going through such unpredictable changes as I have you cannot use drugs to fix your mind. You must learn about your body, mind, personal values, and develop yourself wholeheartedly into a person in a country, on a continent, on a planet, in a solar system, in a universe, in a perspective which will only ever make sense to you. You must rationalize, and compartmentalize that the answers of what you are in are to help you find contentment with this perplexing existence. The inevitability of our earth’s destruction is a cause of this journey for answers, but you cannot live without dying, and earth is not exempt from such a universal truth.

All things fathomable seem to have a beginning, and an end, but we as individuals are a tiny piece to this world we analyze. We have to analyze it so we can be okay with it. We have to believe we know or we become psychotic. We have to theorize so we can relate. Its okay. Life doesn’t make sense. Some beings are born, and die four years into their lives because they were shot, and killed in a third world country. Some beings are the same age in a first world country, and walk out on the street, and get hit by a car or freeze in a snowbank. It doesn’t make sense, and that is okay.

I want to help find ways to make sense of it too. It is our species that solely want such answers, and we always say we know. I still don’t know what the fuck is going on, but there is enough sense to grasp on to to say I’m okay, and I love the people in my life.

Part 8

The last decade compact with anxiety, has been tormenting. In the course of detoxing the drugs from my body, I attempted the master cleanse. 11 days of lemons, water, and maple syrup, along with two salt water flushes, I caved and ate a box of crackers. This was a couple years after I was off of the mood stabilizers. The nerves in my hands, and feet were ignited. I would repetitively crack my phalanges, and proximal phalanx.

At Christmas, my spirit looked frozen in the state of complete aversion to company. I was still inside the 8 month detox period, and I couldn’t socialize. I’d receive a gift, and I can’t recall reacting to what I unveiled. I remember faces of family members laughing. They would try to converse with me, but I was lethargic.

I don’t think I wanted to live in that state. It was a claustrophobic psychological dungeon. In this dungeon there is no trust. After smoking a joint with my sister I could have sworn she was going to kill me in my sleep, except she didn’t because she was never going to kill me in my sleep. Its like I lost understanding of safety.

The neighborhood was dangerous, everyone was evil, including myself, and at any moment I would be killed. An intense state of fear I couldn’t live in for too long.

Writing music allowed my schizophrenia to rest. So many voices, from where did they come, and why have they gone since I began practicing meditation?

Finally I began working on projects with sound, studying words, reading novels, painting, writing, and partying. My brain rebooted, I was ready to get back to the illusions of grandeur. No longer Jesus, I was going to be the next greatest musician. Its okay to work towards greatness, it only hurts the people around you when they continuously mirror your foolish ego, and you react in aggression.

The first songs I wrote were minimalist, and experimental. I called the E.P. “The Disintegration Tape”. Its name came from learning about climate change, and I love powerful titles. It may be powerful, but doesn’t make sense to the layman. I didn’t care back then, and my poetry reflects it. It came out as awkward and abstract as it was in the dungeon. The only thing allowed out of prison was words and sounds, like someone would save me by bringing me the key to the gates of perspective. Open-mindedness is what I think it’s called. I was taught that too much open-mindedness and you will not be original. I developed a complex with originality. Anything I thought that was similar to something else I would right off as a rip-off. I didn’t see that influence was how people connect to you. A common question “What are your  influences?”

“Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Bob Seger, Bob.” I wish I would have answered. But even if I was influenced by only Bob’s would my influences be strictly original? What I learned in my twenty seventh year was no, they all had influences and one of them had a cover’s album to start his career, and the second one on the list barely wrote his own songs. So why was I so judgmental? I think I just hated everyone because they didn’t understand me. Poor reason to hate people when I was intentionally equivocal.

As I rehabilitated, the fun began. Performing abstract music with Dave Fox were my fondest memories since childhood. The rare applause we received when we performed was usually pity, and it felt good, because I got to dance with the instrument I held, and screamed when I could. One man described it as “Contingent Indifference”, if I can recall it correctly. I was just having fun and tapping into rhythm, feeling the perplexed energies from the crowds. Without any fans it couldn’t have survived. But I am a fan, and I think Dave Fox is a fan. That’s a good start. We played shows around the Tri-cities. Does anyone remember Childebeast? If not Dave will remind you for the next seventy years, because he doesn’t want to forget the hits we made, that may not be appreciated because the music isn’t mainstream, and isn’t written to a formulaic structure. It is Contingent Indifference.

Music is a a form in which to set an emotion and it is acceptable. Maybe it isn’t liked as a genre, but it is acceptable. Attaching words to that emotion in the form of melody is therapy. Music therapy is a step in the right direction. I finally found something to help. I was fully supported by family, and friends. Instantly I knew it was good. All of the emotions I possess were too much for music, so I would write on the side. Even then my emotions were too much so I took the rest out on my family and friends. The people that for the first time I noticed were helping me. Something else is going on internally I thought. I don’t want to live if I am hurting people involuntarily, because I feel I’m being attacked for who I am. So confusing, but I had to keep writing, composing, painting, partying, drinking, searching books and people, and creating ill-habits.

The people who irritated me most were the closest. Mother, father, sister Pam, the girlfriend at the time. I didn’t know why it was the closest people, or even a person who thought they could give me constructive criticism. No, I’m right, your wrong, that is dumb. I’d say to myself, and the facial expression which I’ve made such a recurring habit: disgust.

Part 9

April 4, 2017 sparks a reflection upon the very hilly travels one has tried indubitably to flatten for ease. With reflections like these it becomes clearer the inevitability of mountainous strain on the inner self. We must know this.

As custom lives show each of us travels differently. We travel with different belongings and varying styles. Our belongings held onto from our histories strifes are related to the style in which we live. I’m afraid as I walk the earth, and predominantly drive on the asphalt roads built for us all that we cannot relate publicly because of our emotional attachment to stigmas of mental illness.

I’ve destined my writings to clearer display who I’ve become through ‘my’ struggles. In many ways I’ve developed into a reactive man with little compassion. It concerned me. I wanted to know what the root causes were, and what made me. I came across ruts of habit, and felt the nauseous de-ticking of habitual change. I felt the urge to grasp onto the vices for coping. Drugs, cigarettes, porn, over-eating, masochism, anger towards conflict etc were some of these desires to calm the nerves that somehow biologically trigger heavy emotions to explode.

I thought “I don’t want to live if people find me so conflicting”. I felt very much like a problem to my loved ones. A horrid brunt that couldn’t be reasoned with. So I looked to the self help shelf. At the Waterloo library there were many books but one was for me. ‘Emotional Alchemy’ by Tara Bennett-Goleman. The book was an impressive way of chemically mutating the reactive self into a pausing self. It taught a branch of psychology melding the east and the west. In it you’ll find the rational perspective of behaviours taught by our ancestors (which I believed wholeheartedly to be the case) but in it the words it was not their fault. I love this book because it brought me closer to understanding balance.

I have been obsessed with balance ever since I was diagnosed bipolar. I didn’t want to allow the diagnosis to imprison me by acceptance but as I read further into the eastern philosophies I discovered it was acceptance which allows for release of grasping. I like sharing this because I don’t know how common sense it is to people in the world. I want others to find awareness and learn it as I am so we can better rationalize our daily conflicts. If you knew me you would see the errors I commit every time you spoke with me, and you would see the progress that I I’ve undergone.

I do it for you. For sentient beings to know that one who steps foot into the depths of the mental health asylums and is given little hope to turn around from drug induced psychosis (with the many habits and nerve disorders which such experiences are born) can find a healthy refuge. A refuge not grasping at the expense of another.

The refuge is where the illness dwells, where the viscous giants of instability sell you hate. In the refuge awareness observes your thoughts sailing to despair. Much like the battles of Ancient Greek mythology, the battles against the evil gods are the strands of emotional paths we take to more suffering. Our stories of myth, of the ability to conquer the medusa and her many hairs of snaky emotional content represent our ugly habits we must observe with compassion. If we do not use the tool of awareness we become the medusa. We become evil or hurtful as I have been countless times to you.

You are of the plethora, and we are of the multitude. We search individually for a more peaceful earth. We search for groups to attach to which represent our beliefs. We are no different than the flora in the fields or the fauna in the forests. We are of a group with sentience. We are living and feeling and how complicated it becomes. But from study I’ve discovered the earth is not growing more peaceful because of war and protest but from the changing of perspective. We have been imprinted with Buddhism. Our culture has been given for the world to connect the practices of insight, through pausing and reflection. It’s amazing how much healthier we are becoming. But as I discover with every habit I work to uproot, there is a quake of unsettlement the body must undergo to settle. The humans of earth are no different. We are a progressive entity which must self reflect to change.

Part 10

Awoken in me is a demon. Because of unpredictability of an awry upbringing, good will became misfortune. As noted in earlier chapters I do not want the causation bestowed upon my parents backs. It is my burden.

Inside that burden is a child looking desperately for an identity. I was brought up with french Quebec relatives and a King James bible on the kitchen table. Mediation between myself and the demon-like characteristics I developed was and is my responsibility. Three to five years post psychotic episode I cried out to the Lord for love. I asked for someone to console me and guide me to self-worth as my mother had done. Someone to share lustful thought, touch, and time unlike how my mother had done.

She was not in Brampton, for all I could attract there was long lost liars and demonic triggered women who I would never trust. When my sister and Dave brought music back to me and care took to teach me the chords on a guitar I decided to go to Waterloo.

There the second Catherine had appeared. A student of Wilfred Laurier in religious studies. Our affair was periodic, and never fully felt on my end. I believe she could love me but I was too shallow to love her. A truly wonderful person, she critiqued my writing and set me forth as a professor would towards simplifying my sentences. As many pretentious asshole self absorbed artists do I scoffed at her, and said she didn’t get it. But now I thank her for her criticism. Although I still finish sentences with ‘of’.

Some women are not worth mentioning because of their minor affect on my future. Pure rejection of my homeless style-less corduroy fashion which was inspired by an earlier epoch. I must smell, reeking of instability, and to some seem unpresentable.

On the side of Childebeast my amateur soft rock band of obsessive involvement I dreamed of the quaint, artistic, strong female I believed would repair me. I moved home to Orangeville after I visited a friend circle from high-school. An old friend Jesse brought her cousin Christina to the party that night. For the first time in a while a pretty face with a decent sense of humor looked at me in the right way. Our relationship became, and I was ready to be repaired.

Instantly little betrayals triggered my insecurities. Pictures of an ex-boyfriend, she had more than a few male friends (some ex-crushes), her curiosity to look up at her ex-boyfriends apartment window were instances causing anger. Jealousy was my new protector against this girl who I thought would fix my problems. The relationship lasted a year, and in it was terrible communication toxic jealous and distrust on my part, and a lack of love again to relish. Christina appears to be in a much more stable relationship now with a better man for her. I moved on also a week after our break up to Hope. A Zellers coworker who has a great sense of humor and an artistic upside which attracted me.

I was entranced by her movements. The way she moved was unlike any one. She was a youth trained dancer and her dancing career failed alongside her failing nuclear family, much like mine. We saw something in each other which we could see in ourselves. We were children of the same nature. Neglect, art, and the revival there of. We moved to my mothers, and I began to mold her into my fantasy of a woman. “Be more artistic, more quaint, you have it in you”, “stop looking at him” I would demand again jealousy was aroused, anger too. Trust wasn’t there but we fervently tried to love each other. She said “I don’t think I can get pregnant, I’m worried”. I was into the idea of conceiving. We did. Two years into an unstable relationship compact with rage, neglect, jealousy, and moments of undeniable affection Owen was born. On the midwifery bed in Waterloo I saw the most alien thing occur, an earth alien was born before my eyes. I couldn’t believe this child was mine.

Post birth Hopes love for me dwindled to nothing, and the energy that was once spared for me went to Owen. She seemed to have what she wanted and she began talking to another man. I was jealous of my own son, and I pleaded with her for intercourse. Maybe I wanted sex, but more importantly I wanted the love she gave to Owen as my mother once gave to me.

I didn’t have the unconditional impossibility I craved, and after she and I tried to have sex one last time a month after the birth, I reopened wounds, and our love was lost forever. An incident in which my jealous rage over comments about the man she was texting told me she liked him, and I jumped on the bed and wrapped my arms around her and she began crying. She thought I was going to hit her. I was hugging her. I messaged her mother, and told her she was unhappy.

Before the birth, during the first three trimesters I was reading Emotional Alchemy, and books on trust. I was fully engaged in my pathway to strengthening my emotional stability. It was too late. I was alone in our (now my) Waterloo apartment. She brought Owen to her mothers, which was an hour away from me. I traveled to see Owen with a pick-up truck for the first year of his life.

She left either because of my rage or because of a lack of love or both. This was not like Christina or Catherine, this involved my first born son, and has become in my mind a journey to a balanced reaction to the acts of  unaware ignorant hate upon my being. She had a child with me full well knowing what I was like. I promised her I would work on my mental disorder.

Owen is my sole reason to exist. My love for him is endless. I miss him. His presence has lessened. School and distance has brought me into a funk. When a man and woman conceive there genetic lineage are united. Our connection will never divide. Our pretentious love led to a creation of magnificence. I meditated for a year, working, meditating, writing, composing, and visiting Owen. I demanded it was in Owens best interest to see me half-time until he started school. Reluctantly she complied. After a year of meditation, work, and self-reflection I met Tanya.

Immediately she was light. A blossom in the winter. She was artistic, strong, intelligent, gorgeous, and interested in me. The first six months were perfect. I wasn’t insecure. I didn’t mind her plethora of male friends. At a point in the relationship when I felt her commitment (maybe to me or maybe to Owen), for the strangest reason jealousy was lit again. All my work the past year seemed like prattling. Triggers were happening everywhere. Distrust was a snow storm covering my poor vision. Again I was not being given the essential unconditional impossibility I once received from my mother. Was this my abandonment schema?

Tanya fell in love with Owen as people do when someone is lovable, and this love for him was a consistent reminder that if I created someone as beautiful as him, then I too was beautiful. Owen it appears to me was the reason to stay while my jealousy surged, and anger erupted. She endured two and a half years of it and finally put up the strong women boundary that all women can learn from. “Either you get help or I’m gone!”

With mental disorders meditation while living a life as a westerner does, is insufficient to change habits. I went to a counselor for the second time in consecutive relationships trying to heal. The first councilor guided me to indulge in self-help material. The second brought me to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I obsessively uprooted jealousy and insecurity over the next year with CBT charts. Jealousy dropped from 95% highs to 35%, and lows of 4% which is a healthy normal level of rationalizing one’s feelings about ones partners activities. CBT was the repair, but so was the will to find the woman strong enough to put up the boundary to her love, which is what my mother did when I was bad. In my mother’s case it was a short time in my room, but with a partner its a love lost forever as was with Christina, and Hope. At least with Hope I have Owen. With Christina she brought me to awaken the demon. Hope brought me to search to exorcise it, and Tanya forced me to dig in and love it, and myself. A woman did repair me, or did they all contribute inadvertently?

To all the women and men in my life I am sorry for what I put you through, and I thank you for tolerating me as long as you did, you have all taught me how to work with mental illness a little better, but Tanya has significantly changed my life forever.

Part 11

Parents & Government

The suffering existing because of my mother and father continues to resurface. The cause is the guilt of my own doing. In so much as I can claim, when I look for answers when confusion rises the conversation inevitably sparks resentment.

I was listening to Aboriginal radio this morning. The two men were speaking of horrific events 135 years ago when the U.S.A. government massacred 200 indigenous men, women, and children. They talked about revolution and reattaining what is rightfully theirs. They spoke of 90 million acres of reserve land stolen from their protection. Their words were of war, not of civil discourse. I thought of the suffering with my parents. A microscopic comparison, but I noticed the same resentment. I do want retribution.

I want retribution or all minorities afflicted by ignorance. The native men talked of the general who ran the massacre, and how the general’s accomplishments were exalted even celebrated by the Obama administration. Do the aboriginals of North/South America, Australia, New Zealand deserve resolution?

With my parents, the causation of their actions were detrimental to my upbringing. The present moves swirly forth documenting the victims of history without a consequence. Prison, revenge, re-establishing land ownership will not reconcile the awful path of history made. The retribution is in how we affect the present moment. A part of me wants to have the love and focus I desire. My situation in the lower middle-class is a norm. There is a sickness in the household, in politics, which allows parents and governments to make terrible decisions. Their choices are affection the well-being of those they look to protect; the children of the home, and the citizens of our countries.

Their decision ill affecting the lowest castes of society, will always occur. The weakest will become the strongest, and the strongest will damage the weakest. The issue is in the suicide rates. Aboriginal suicide rates are high, suicide rates of men in the double standard system in which feminism has gone too far is high, the suicide rate of teenagers too young adulthood because of child abuse is high. When I faced suicide and couldn’t commit, I knew I would find a way to live inside the social injustice, but I vowed to work to change what I could. I have only changed myself a few degrees. With 177 degrees to go the world looks great, the world looks awful, neutrality is of realism with each decision.

Inspiration & Purpose

From 2012 on I was focused predominantly on finding money to support Owen, myself, and my passions. His presence cannot be downplayed. If there isn’t Owen there isn’t work ethic for construction, with him there is a great purpose to work. When two purposes intersect blindly there is an inner conflict sustained in tunnel vision. The purpose I predestined was the vision of creative creation, and then there was the down to earth necessity to carefully protect my son. A love as deep and as rare as the oceanic life of the pacific basin. We can only see this love in passion, in parenting of any kind.

Owen’s life is the only force to ever awaken my desire for worldly possession, so I may provide as parents have done for all of history. This drive is built on the foundation of fear! I am afraid he will not love me, or he will not become the best version of himself. For the last half decade the heart which awoke out of a stupor, a depression, a suicide, wasn’t forgotten.

Compassion isn’t only for others but for ourselves. 2018 started with the same fear. I am going to lose my creative drive (as happened in 2012 with Owen).

When people talk about their children as the only purpose for living, and give up on taking care of themselves, they hurt their children, their partners, their friends. Over emotion is abuse. Over happy, sad, angry, neglectful, entitled, aggression, are all examples. I can relate this to my parents. They were over zealous, over the mountains evangelical, neglectful to each other until the neglect sprinkled in the distance between us and them. Over happy when we were neutral, or over sad. The thoughts of our inner minds are the source of the emotional overages. Humans are not balanced. We are both predator and prey simultaneously. It is our allegorical goal to balance our minds and our societies.

My goal is no different. With the drive to achieve I struggle with time and family and friends demand for time balancing a reaction reflecting my personal goals to achieve with their demand for time and demand for a neutral ( sometimes positive) reaction to their replica of a lifestyle.

How Do I Balance This?

The Buddha provides an eight-fold path to balancing the mind, with the aim of dissolution of a monk. I do not think this path is realistic for a ‘doing’ being. I am a being which believes art, literature, dance, and comedy are essential assets to a society. The Sutras are guides for monks, much like Various Positions by Leonard Cohen is a guide for artists. Various Positions isn’t a step by step guide, but the books artistry awoke an undeniable urge to create. The Sutras do the same for a person who wishes to sacrifice their own worldly passions for a righteous deterministic goal of dissolution.

In the process of meeting the half-half version of myself, who can ‘do’ but not ‘harm’ I’ve discovered will not happen. To offer sentient beings their right to peace I must ‘let go’ of the world. The only approach then is to accept my imperfections, the ignorance of doing harm regardless of its negative effect on sentient beings, and understand the harm of action ripples out into the selfish sea of creation.

How Can I live In Awareness Of My Ignorance?

A person who chooses to ‘do’ chooses to harm. Living in awareness of harming others is pathological and limited. Although a person has chosen to live in awareness of harming others, the awareness will eventually cause the individual to choose awareness of attachment as an influence over ignorance of action, bringing one to ‘let go’ of worldly attachments. Much like the attachments of the desire senses guide people to extremes o perversion, so will the awareness of all things influence the self to more awareness and deeper insight.

I may say letting go of the harm I cause will let me live creatively, but I will eventually let go of my attachment to creativity. The reason I believe this is that even though a person’s pathology may be strong it will always be self observed by the lens of awareness. It takes trauma or the observation of trauma to heighten awareness. With the seeds of awareness planted and inevitable trauma coming, deeper insight being the sprout of the seed, the plant being the path, a person cannot escape the oxygen of plants, and to kill the plant would be to kill the self. Awareness is an essential inherent seed of all minds. All that needs to be done is to crack the shell and the plant will grow from within. After that a person has a limited time before they begin to see things as they are. So create while you can creative people, but avoid watering the plant and ignorance will be your friend, art will be filled with egoism, and truth will be lost.

Part 12

What is there to say other than that anger has risen from within. From where does it arise? Why has it returned? On whom is it projected?

The people who I have been born to love by way of familial bloodline, and conditioning have endured much of the same experiences related to our relatives as me. Not exactly in the same manner, maybe more traumatic, maybe less, most likely just a different effect altogether, but some effect nonetheless. We are a fiery bunch which has led outward the burn of the countries cityscapes because of personal goals, potentially problematic family relations. The issue is in the conversation. The context being one of politics, religion, family history, reparations, all of the above emotionally inflammatory.

The early stages of my studies into the psychology of interactive patterns, emotional constructs, tolerance limitations have shown how little I know about present moment conversationalism. We talk, we disagree, we fight, I yell, we split, and we try again another day. It is emotionally taxing for all members of the interaction.

It is not possible to feel nothing. Emotions are in us, and mandatory. They arise without warning, they consume the present moment with memories, and projected futures. The cog of working with emotion is meditation. Meditation is a broad subject. It is a tool for awakening awareness of the present. In the present are the emotions we attach to and fly with until we crash. It is in awareness (the observational mind) that we can notice anything particularly strong; bodily pain, mental strain, attachment anxiety.

The rampant emotions running through my daily patterns, my monthly cycle, my annual clock, come up due to recurring environments. I have had many encounters with my sons mother, which I cannot expound to her, and her family, because it would cause too much suffering. I instead relieve these thoughts to the page, upon a friends backs, a ventilation towards my spouses consciousness. It is here that you will know of my woes.

I see many faults in her doing. She places her priorities in such that she is predominant, and he is secondary. Much like I had insisted when I was with her, I tried to convince her that we (the parents) were most important. Number one, but I was wrong. She resisted this type of prioritizing in the relationship, but she displays it ignorantly in her life. It is evident with the plenty male counterparts she brings into his life, and calls them ‘dad’. Owen must agree to see such men as his father, and I must agree to allowing such an affair or it will be my peace, which is his peace, which is my family’s stability on the line.

So I sit on a cushion, not to cleanse, or remedy, but to find clarity in the up-roaring screams of discomfort. I sit to watch anger, and opinions surf the seas of my projecting consciousness. They are potent, but not poison. As the Buddha had said ‘the three poisons’ are desire, aversion, and ignorance. But I do not see my feelings as poison, but as essential for observing, navigating the landscapes of my timeline.

It has been good for a long while now with my love, Tanya. She has, and I have learned to communicate in a loving way. Through counseling, and deliberate change we have come to find some form of reformation, some progress in this human relationship we evolve. She has been there like my mother was when I was young, like my mother is now. To have two women like them is a necessity for learning compassion. Not just compassion, but for loving. How many fools forget or never learn what love is as a manufactured substance of living close to one who loves. We need it. We have it. Some amount of memorized love, feeling it so rich is so crucial for sustaining it further.

My grandfather is ill, my uncle is ill, they have deadlines set by doctors who set them approximately based on the disease; both with cancer. I do not understand their spirits leaving this place. They are not gone, but they are said to go, but where? Maybe no where is the place they go. Is nowhere somewhere? Could it be an invention of the gods. Those prattling creators who built the big bang like a Pandora’s box of infinitude. No use theorizing like a simpleton, for it would do no good for my own spirit to question where our beloved go after they pass. I read in ‘Vanity Fair’ last night the death of the supporting character George Osborne. It was impactful as was intended. The author Thackeray began to use the other characters to show disapproval of the undiscovered death of Mr. Osborne. Jos made comments to Osbornes servant, about his dislike for him. His servant agreed, and by the end of the chapter he had died by gunshot to the heart.

I think this relates to the dialogue between my Uncle and my grandmother about my grandfather. Uncle complains he is wasting the remainder of his life sitting around atrophying, when he should be walking everyday. My grandmother screams “Fuck off” from the hurt of her history. It’s as if the pangs of discourse come up in detrimental times. The rage, the blame become prevalent as one dies like a distant star no longer to shine. Now that Burton (my grandfather) is immobile the calamitous pleas from David (my uncle) do not have merit. They are shouts of missed targets. David will not understand this because it is a long fractured heart hurt by Burt that resonates his opinions past there value. I love them. They are my family. But as is being discussed, what is this fury?

The fury, the anger is a sure combative defense of one’s memorial digest of what has damaged the self, that could destroy the self. We are ever trying to rule the world! Although we don’t deem ourselves capable, we would take the role if we could to protect the very nature of our desire to avoid strife. The futile nature has me despondent. I agree not all would pounce on the position for world ruler, but most would or they would appoint someone better for the task that they know and trust. Isn’t this the basis for democracy? We get to know our parties leaders, and the more we know we build trust in them and decide. Yes he or she shall rule for four years. I learned some of this from J. Krishnamurti.

Krishnamurti would ask “What is this wanting? This wanting to become? What is it to be nothing and then to become something?”. From this he would continue asking questions, and suggesting an answer, “Is it desire, is desire thought?” And maybe he is right. His denunciation of all world religions is one way to interpret his path of meditation, his way of life. Somewhat a nihilistic one, from another perspective it is a path of actuality, the barest logic. It could be as suggested, all thoughts and feelings are broken down into thought categories, and with careful observation there could be freedom from desire, from suffering. And so far off the path are my family members. So far off am I. The path which none are subject. So evident is the pathology of humanity that individually we must do our part to prepare our minds for the present moment, in the present moment, or we may all perish. As history shows we are too cyclical, and from the Buddhist we learn of the breaking of the cycle. Are they right? If everyone gave in to the Buddha’s path would we all be okay, live a life of peace, and would there be no more strife, no more family drama, no more wars of continental caliber. Would not one of the meditators lose the path and give in to desire again like Lucifer? Are we the specimen of power hungry civilians?

Looking back at the first breath I had. No! The first thought I had. One where I was only a toddler. I can see it was the innocent observing of children playing around me, excluding me with their francophone speech. The second thought I had where I was a young boy, and seeing my mother naked getting into the bath. I was shocked and confused at the body which bore me. From with I was nurtured, and outside I am ashamed. I should not have walked in. How would I know that she was busy. I didn’t know what busy was. My third thought sledding down the stairs on a single mattress, what fun! My fourth thought of being punished from what I cannot recall. As I fetched the wooden spoon from the kitchen drawer. Jubilee, shame, fear, blame, anger, neglect, and now I am thirty.

There is so much to tell before I surely die.