Winnipeg Chronicles Epilogue: Where We Realize That The Problem Isn’t That We Don’t Know What We Want To Do, It’s That We Don’t Know What We Want To Have

Folsom Prison Blues – Johnny Cash

On the way back home from dropping off my cousin’s girlfriend at the airport, I decided to stop by the park by my house and watch the sun rise.  There are a finite number of sunrises in one’s life and I’ve missed far too many.  I’ve seen plenty of suns set though.  People should envy me.  While they’re hurrying to go to work or whatever, I get to sit around and watch time literally pass before my eyes.  If it were up to me, and God help me if it is, I’ll never work another day in my life.

I don’t know what’s scarier to me: That people will never understand me or that a few people actually do.  Take Michelle for instance.  Now she’s always been one to support me, even in my most abstract moments, but the last time I saw her she was almost too willing to accept my ramblings.  I was going on and on about this bullshit and that bullshit and eventually she postulates that on the basis of my perpetual contentment, maybe everyone else is messed up and I’m the one who’s got it figured out.  Bless her heart.  I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that they have a word for people who stubbornly refuse to conform to basic rules of human decency.  They’re called sociopaths.

And then Nitasha recommended that I read Siddhartha.  To sum it up, Siddhartha is about a guy who is raised amongst priests but decides that he needs to strike out on his own to discover true enlightenment.  While he moves from situation to situation, he never fully embraces nor does he condemn any group’s beliefs.  The book  extols the virtues of looking further and further inward until one finds Nirvana.  The plot is rigidly straightforward, driving home the single-minded nature of the main character and his mission.  I won’t even attempt to match the book’s eloquence in describing the story’s effect on me, so I’ll just say that it fucked with my head.  I’m constantly questioning my place in the universe so she tells me to read a book about how it’s okay to question your place in the universe?  Thanks, Nitasha!  Thanks a bunch!  Actually, I guess that was kind of thoughtful, wasn’t it?  Damn it.

Should I be worried that my number one reason for doing things is just so that I can tell people that I’m doing things?  For example, Max brought up the fact that Markham District High School is holding some kind of farewell gathering before they tear the place down.  I would love to go, but there is no way in hell I’m actually going to.  The sole reason is that I haven’t accomplished anything since graduating from UofT.  Really, nobody enjoys How are you doing?  What are you up to?  That’s great! conversations with people they haven’t seen in years, but they are inevitable. So I avoid those scenarios. I’ve done everything in my power to avoid those scenarios for a long time.

That is the question: Does my desire to be alone and at peace surpass my desire to mingle with girls in high school who were too hot for me to talk to back then but who I could totally talk to now just because I’m theoretically more confident? And so we get a bit closer to figuring out what we want in life. I do want to be able to talk to beautiful women. No matter what I end up doing, that is something that is important to me. What else besides that, though? Sometimes I feel like I couldn’t live without material things. My iPod, X-Box, television, all that good stuff. I derive great pleasure from these base, unsophisticated vices. There are other times where I want to rip off all my clothes and run wild until I hit water. I think about retreating to the red mountains of Cuzco and living amongst the simple folk. People are always asking, What do you want to do? What do you want to do? I don’t know. We do things because we want things, so what happens when we don’t know what we want? I’m sorry. I’ve been awake for about 19 straight hours and this is what happens when baby skips his nap.

*****
Some leftover Winnipeg stuff and other randomness:

Why?

That’s the question I heard over and over again whenever I told people that I was visiting Winnipeg. It doesn’t matter if the people were transplants or if they’d been there all their lives. They wanted to know why.

The truth is that I could make a habit of visiting the places that nobody else goes to. Hell, with the exception of areas that have been declared as war zones, I don’t see any reason why any place shouldn’t be considered visiting and this is coming from someone who hates leaving his house! The truth is that as undesirable as people seem to find Winnipeg, this is a place where people live. This is a place where people grow up, get jobs, fall in love, have kids, all that jazz. How much of a spiritual sinkhole could this place be?

I saw one homeless guy with a brilliant sign that read:

NINJAS KILLED MY FAMILY. NEED MONEY FOR KUNG FU LESSONS

Eve Muirhead. You’ve got to love the accompanying Franz Ferdinand music. I’d laugh at how obvious the choice is, but I can’t name another Scottish band that anyone gives a shit about either. Check out that UFC level work out too, geez! It’s curling!

While we’re on the topic of sexy curlers, here’s last year’s women of curling calendar. I’m definitely feeling Germany’s Melanie Robillard, who’s actually from New Brunswick. Her team recently beat Team Canada at the 2010 Ford World Women’s Curling Championship. Saboteur!

While we’re on the topic of sexy Scots, I’m obsessed with Craig Ferguson all of a sudden. He’s the new Conan. Here’s a funny clip with his puppet character Wavey Ranchero interviewing the radiant Kristen Bell. I recommend watching all twelve of Kristen’s appearances on the show in chronological order. It’s a solid two hours of entertainment.

I recently got a copy of Flight Of The Conchords’ I Told You I Was Freaky and was disappointed to find that the Korean song from the Simon & Garfunkel episode was not included. Apparently it was translated from a Mandarin song (check the video response) and there was probably some sort of copyright issue. One of my favourite moments from Season 2.

Ten minutes of fatalities from the vaporware project, Tattoo Assassins. And you thought Thrill Kill was the greatest unreleased fighting game. It’s my understanding that when this game came out, one of the gimmicks is that any button combination would produce a fatality. By the way, one of the creative minds behind this game: Back To The Future‘s Bob Gale!

Michael Larson dominating (read: cheating) “Press Your Luck”, one of my favourite game shows when I was a kid. What really gets me is his insane celebration after every stop (and before he even sees the results!). Dude, you know your getting away with something here, you might want to avert suspicion a little bit. For more, check out his fascinating Wikipedia entry. I guarantee you this is becomes the basis for a critically acclaimed film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman within the next decade.

You use that word so much. Responsibilities. Don’t you ever think about what that means? I mean, what does it mean to you? In your head?
Well, I use it to refer to that area of existence over which I exert a certain amount of control and influence. In my case, the realm and action of dreaming.
Hump. It’s more than that. The things we do make echoes. S’pose, f’rinstance, you stop on a street corner and admire a brilliant fork of lightning–ZAP! Well for ages after people and things will stop on that very same corner, stare up at the sky. They wouldn’t even know what they were looking for. Some of them might see a ghost bolt of lightning in the street. Some of them might even be killed by it. Our existence deforms the universe. That’s responsibility.

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