Three is the loneliest number

Happy blogiversary to me.


All people know the same truth: our life consists of how we choose to distort it.

I've never been a big Woody Allen fan, though I admire him, if that makes any sense, and so when a colleague of mine in the Film & TV department at USJ, who lectures part time in screenwriting and also teaches seminars at Dreamworks, listened as I outlined the plot of my screenplay over beers at The Loft, and then recommended I watch Deconstructing Harry, I ordered it right away. The tagline of the movie is, "Harry Block wrote a bestseller about his best friends. Now, his best friends are about to become his worst enemies."

I'm watching it right now.

I like it, I like it. A character who's too neurotic to function in life, and can only function in art.

A year ago I reflected on the strangeness of living in California. I wasn't happy to be here, and God knows I wasn't excited — I was so sick of people asking me that, just before I left Canada.

So now you're blaming me, because you're too scared to be loved?

I wrote last year that I don't write when I'm happy, but that's not why I'm not writing very much here, anymore. I haven't changed; I still write when I'm unhappy, and I'm still unhappy (though putting on a good front) so I'm still writing, but what I'm working on now is a screenplay.

You love too easily, and you love too much, and you shouldn't fall in love with me, because I'm the boy in that story, and I can't love anyone; I don't know how to love.

He picked her up at the airport when she moved 3,000 miles to a foreign country, and helped her settle in. He wanted so much for Pinky to purr when he picked him up. He took her to a Labor Day party at his friends' home, and they called him afterwards and told him she was awesome and asked when they could see her again. They spent Thanksgiving together, and Christmas, and New Year's. He showed her his beautiful city by the Bay again and again and again. He took her to the theatre. She met his father. And when she cried for her Dean who died, he was there for her, and at the end of the day that's what you want, that's what really matters. It's maybe all that matters.

She loves you still, despite your obvious condescension for her life.

He was always there for her, right up until he wasn't anymore.

The man is incapable of an act of faith, and for that I pity him.

Faith isn't about believing in someone like God, whose existence you have no proof of. It's just the opposite, in fact. Faith is believing in someone despite one terrible thing they've done because you have years of proof.

Tomorrow Never Comes

Have you ever had something important that you absolutely needed to do, no getting around it, no way out of it, and yet, despite your knowing you needed to do it you actively avoided doing it? Procrastinated shamefully, even? For weeks?

You keep saying you'll do it tomorrow, and then again tomorrow, and then again and again, but tomorrow never comes.

It's a special kind of self-sabotage. (Jack would be so proud, he's the master.) Like, in the back of your head there's a little voice saying, you know if you don't do X, Y will happen, and you know Y is a very bad thing, and still you don't do X. It's as though secretly you're hoping Y will happen, so then at least it will be over with. Or, in my case, maybe I'm just scared that if I do X, I will fail, and then something worse than Y will happen.

No, my blog is not X, and losing you, Gentle Reader, is not Y, but I've not been here to tell you stories because the equation is further complicated by the guilt of blogging when I should be doing X.

What brings me back today is the thought that you might be thinking that the reason I haven't been writing stories lately is because of what happened with Jack, and just the thought of that thought was enough to drive me with great speed back to the keyboard.

Meanshile, I've been going to Pilates classes once a week, twice a week when I can. I find it a terrific way to zen. And to avoid doing X.