Friday, July 20, 2012

No I just google shit! cause I ain't abandoning ship

There is so much fear in the air, it stinks. I can smell it all over the place. The stinkiest part about it is that most of the people who reek of it don't even know about it. I love my dad, but he lives in shit. I can't understand why. But when I was a kid he never taught me that it's alright to float your own boat. My mom did, she fucking floated her own boat for sure. My dad would say "She tore the family apart" But all I can remember is sailing away.
Looking back I can remember the family busting up, we were all victims of such shitty circumstance. I think we would all like to think that money was to blame, but it wasn't money that tore my family apart, it was apathy on the part of both of my parents. My mother was a vigilant dreamer and my dad could fix anything, they were both passionate people. They were also so fucking different, my mom played the part of the fearless leader while my dad was always keeping things in perspective. My dad wasn't willing to zoom out, focus on anything else other then maintenance. My mom never felt there was anything to maintain, she didn't want to be held down.
My brother was older then me and he could see what happened between my parents form a much more mature stance, he was a teenager. All of it made him anger, and since he never really liked me he made sure to vent his frustrations towards my parents out on me. His behaviors influenced me. He played a huge part in the way I live my life now. I'm not sure if he understands what his understanding of life has done to the way I live mine. He's like my dad in that he can analyze everything and deconstruct it to find all the flaws. He's been like that since I can remember. I could never keep up with him, but I wanted to. He used that against my parents and specifically, after the split, my mom. He understood the delicate circumstance many of the decisions which involved our family; he couldn't come to grips with the fact that life can just suck even when it's suppose to be perfect. I on the other hand loved both my parents way too much, through thick and thin. Mom was always there to nurture me, in a way that uplifted me. She was mean and did her own thing, but they we're not things that directly made me feel like my boat was sinking. Our boat was sinking, I just never knew.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

are you gonna go my way?

"Hitting the pipe, what the fuck could be better!" that's what I always say. There is nothing like it, it's something you can do with your kids. There is nothing like doing a blunt, and hitting the high road.... no handed, to fakie. Yeah, that's my kind of dream, just me my son, on the outside, maybe playing a guitar in the the Okanogan, hitting the mother fucking pipe.
The first time I dropped in on a transition I was twelve and it hurt. It was a quarter pipe and I dropped in, it launched me on to the street and gave me road rash like you wouldn't believe. I still have a scare. I swore I'd never touch a skateboard again. Things are always transitioning. Life is always gonna change and if that don't hurt a little it ain't real. There is a first time for everything, unless of course you don't ever try anything.
My mom was working the night shift, something she had been doing my whole life, except now instead of having my father in the house, I lived in a run down apartment complex and my brother was looking after me. He was seventeen and I was still prepubescent. When he wanted to go, I wasn't letting him leave without me. We went to a party. It was a hot summer and everything seemed unreal and new. We walked together, my brother and I and we had a friend, another boy my brothers age, a diabetic. My mom had decided to accept him into our family. The Three of us did almost everything together.
My brother wasn't a smoker, I was by the time I was twelve. It was sweet, the first time I stole one of my mothers Craven M Menthol cigarettes, I sneaked it from her pack, when she was sleeping. I ran outside and light it under a bridge. I was such an act of defiance and it gave me so much pleasure I got sick. My head was spinning, but I smoked the whole thing, I dreamed it'd never end, but it did. I walked home alone after watching it burn out.
My first hit of drugs was amazing. I was so young. I didn't even understand the consequence. We were at the house party. Being the youngest there, I was holding my head up high. No one cared, they were mostly all watching The Wizard of Oz on acid. All of this was incredibly intriguing. The house was gorgeous, there were girls and booze everywhere. But alcohol didn't interest me, no, I followed the skunk smell. I was so eager to smoke up.
She was sitting outside with the pipe. It wasn't some drug pipe, no, it looked like her dad's pipe. She laughed at me as I sat next to her. I wasn't with my brother, but I was a with our diabetic friend. We all wanted to get high. They both smoked on it for a while until they got bored. "What do I do?" I asked, I had never lit a pip. She said "suck it in, and just when you think you've had enough inhale, deep." She said, "Pretend your moms coming and you're holding it in for dear life!" I did, I held the smoke in several times.... and it did nothing to me. I figured it was fake or something, but they really seemed to be high. I guess some people really don't get high the first time. The party was eventually a bust and the three of us headed back to our side of town.
The walk back was looking to be an uneventful stroll through the street, but it became so much more then that. As we were walking home a red sports car pulled up, and out came a group of what I'd now call, rig pigs kids. They were Alberta rich, four big boys, the type of kids most Canadians would say came from "a good home". They were bad. Right away they threatened to fight. They were all drunk, and their car was left in the middle of the street idling.
My brother was geek, for sure, he wore a trench coat before the trench coat mafia even existed. He was an outcast for being different, and by that I mean we came from a European home and we were raised by parents who weren't stupid, so my brother and I always had attitude. Neither my brother or his friend were fighters, and I was way to young to be able to step up to one of those dirty jock type of animal people. They robbed my brother of his Star Trek pin. They gave me a Lennie Cravits Cd and some Guns and Roses!
I learned to skate in NewMexico!!!!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Remind me if you give a shit...

too many good looking people drink. It makes them ugly, it makes everything ugly, it does that on purpose, and anybody looking for something beautiful knows it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, beauty hurts. It has bad skin now and wants fake tits, bigger hips and all that shit. Beauty never goes hungry; it eats all the time.
I can remember looking at my self in the mirror when I was a teenager. I can remember staring so long I could see someone else, it was me, but I was a monster. I had long hair. I was the only boy in my school who grew his hair out. The first time I was ever allowed to grow my hair out, I wasn't even a teenager. I was eleven, and I got made fun of. My mom wouldn't let me grow it all out, just the little bit on the back of my neck. It was awful, but I took what I could get, and I got it.
I wanted long hair forever, but at soccer practice while waiting to run drills I was made fun of, by this asshole with great hair named David. "Fag tag!" he'd squat. His fucking sarcastic voice, it bothered me! I was eleven, I cut it off. As a teen I had more nerve, I was ready for ridicule by then. Except things were different. The world wasn't what it used to be. I was living over sea's on another continent. I was the only boy who wore his hair long among all the boys in his school. I had this French teach there, she was from Belgium, she was beautiful, she told me to cut! I had the biggest crush on her. Here class was unique, it was somewhere I could be myself. That was strange, since she always told me I'd look better with my hair cut.
The classroom was filled with other kids that were mostly raised in Riyadh, they were all brought up in Saudi. I was one of the only Canadians there, except I fit in because I had already lived in Europe and I was multilingual. French class was easy for me, but that wasn't the case for everyone. Some of the other kids were Lebanese but they were Christian and they spoke French. There was a few American girls there too. All as American as they can be being raised on a Compound in the Desert in the Heart of the middle east. There was on local in the class though. One real local, his family fought for Royalty, they fought for control of one of the most iconic Religious sectors on the Planet, and I guess they lost. He was rich though, like real rich, Terrorist Rich. I remember him telling me that the Arabs didn't hate Canadian, he said "Naw, just the English" he smiled and would say "and the American." The French teach loved having him in our class, so we got to hear so much about the struggles of a thirteen year old, almost prince.I remember listing to the stories.
I was so alone there. We lived on the outskirts of the city, on a military compound. My mom was working for the national guard hospital. She was a single woman, that sent her weird teenage son from Canada to an inner city school, in the Capital of Saudi Arabia. There was no grant funding for that. I was one of a kind. I was so alone because of the way it had to worked over there.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

working is easy playing is hard

"Being pushed against a wall and a hard place only gets harder when you're hungry!" Yeah, that's what I told myself when I sat down. I feel nauseous! Maybe it was the half-a-can-a sardines I tried to eat before deciding, "I'm not that Fu&king hungry!" I tried though. I had a late lunch, so I'm only kinda jittery. It's not that I don't necessarily have the money for food! It's that I have to feed my kid. I know, it can't be that bad I live in Edmonton. I work for lots of companies, seriously I mean lots! All reputable. It's just that what I do means nothing to them it's good it means so much to me.
I've been pushed up against a rock and a hard place for years now. It doesn't bother me. My son's never going to go hungry, the economy on this side of the planet is far too good for that. We live in one of the richest areas in the world. It's not only rich in natural resources, but it's rich in money too! So much is here to offer, not only to the people that live here, but mostly what we have here is for the rest of the world to enjoy. Where I'm from is the top of the world, it's a hard spot, it a diamond in the rough. It's the only place I'll ever be from and I'll never feel welcome.
Now I know it must sound like I'm preaching to the choir! This place is spectacular to anyone looking in, and in fact to most looking out. But to a certain few, a small percentage, it's a glass cage, with a mouth of golden teeth, ready to snatch at and eat anything that dares reach out and share. I was born here almost thirty years ago, in a hospital on the west end, next to the biggest store in the world. It sounds like a joke but it's not. I was born into a family of three, a second son to two immigrant young parents.
Life was always good here, no one ever went hungry at our house. My parents were smart people, both of them very hard working. I remember growing up in the city center, I can remember the bazaar next to the hospital with my grand mother when she came to visit from Europe. She didn't know a word of English and neither did I! She bough me colorful handfuls of popcorn. It was hard and crunchy, we would never have dreamed of being hungry. But things have changed since then.
My parents grew up, and apart. The years spent together were unforgiving, work was hard, life isn't easy. I remember getting excited the first time an absents was being offered to me. At this point, my family had reached its pinnacle, our community had watched us nest and root. Me and my brother were well worn in languages. I was well into elementary and my brother was deep into high school when the stock had to die. I was twelve and rooted, it's something I remember vividly because it was my birthday, the 29th, the end of the month, a hot summers day when my mother decided we were better off not living with my father.
It wasn't a bad thing, but it changed the face of the foundation I built my society on. When my parents were together we never had cable, not once was I able to watch The Power Rangers without needing to visit a neighbor. But after the split there was more channels to watch. T.V found itself nourishing me! And the channels always lead back to the music videos and the electric guitar. It was the guitar that got me to do my first job. I had to go to work to get what I wanted. And all I wanted was this bright red guitar. I still have that guitar and I play it! And I think about how I ditched that job the moment they paid me. Working is easy, playing the guitar wasn't.
The Apartment my mother chose to move us was weather warn, and so were the people living there. So unlike the crisp cookie cutter streets I grew up in. You see when my parents were together, we were rich. My father built the house we moved out of. My mother destroyed it. Now it didn't actually happen exactly like that, but more or less. My brother was the last to have his revenge on the house, for the family, he was always the angriest. He took his emotions out on the frame, and for good reason, it couldn't afford to keep us. The four of us were a rough crowd. Looking back I was ready for that ghetto my mom moved us into.
At least I thought I was.
There was this time, she was working the night shift, when she met another kid in the lobby of the building. He was my age, I forget his name, but he was a lot like me. We played together, the two of us for a few hours. It was sweet. I bet I thought I had finally found someone. It was a good night until the next morning, when I realized that he had stolen all my money. I guess I never caught him red handed cause I would have never thought about that. He never came back either, in hind sight I wonder where that kid was from.
The guitar came later, almost a year after the move. It came at that time when my mom started applying for jobs in other parts of the world. It was a facade I thought, she kept saying "we don't have to stay here!" I never knew anything else though. Well, right before the separation I did get to travel through Europe.... Twice. But still I was from St. Albert, I was going to go to french immersion till the day I died. Hey I was young, and at that point I still hadn't realized how much ambition my mother really had. She was always a tough bitch looking back, she never really ever found anyone after my dad, I think that's one of the reasons I'm so selfish. Because after the second move, it was only me and her, we were each others only companions for a long time to come.
The first time she threatened to move away form Canada it was to New York, about then was the time I first started to dream. I was just a little boy, an athlete at that. There was this time at soccer practice, I was with my dad, he was watching me from the sidelines as I told all the other boys on the team I was leaving home to move to the Big Apple. They laughed at me. "Yeah right! You'll get shot!" they said. I told them I would get a gun. When my mom came back from the interview she looked elated but drained. "It was beautiful" she said, except in Polish. She got the job, but she didn't want it. "It's not for us!" she said, "I'd have a hard time if I brought you!" and that was that, she couldn't leave. I've been hell bent on becoming something fit for New York ever since, and at this point if there is one place you might need a gun, I'm calling it home. And no there's no apple, least not yet!