How do you find a new friend? How do you ask a friend out? I have seen this covered by sitcoms before and they rarely actually get the full idea. I have friends, and I am not lacking friends, but every once in a while you may meet someone who you want to know more. It may be a man, it may be a woman, and there isn’t any underlying sexual tension or desires. You just meet someone and think, “Hey! I like this person and it would be fun to hang out with them!” But how exactly do you do that? You can’t invite yourself to a group outing, that can be odd, rude and I will go with odd again. Asking someone out could be misinterpreted. Being a man and asking a girl out to a movie may seem like a date request. Or being a man and asking a man to see a movie could be seen as a date request. So it leaves you in a weird position. I think about recent friends I have made in the past few years and it appears to be natural progressions from acquaintances at mutual events, to group hang outs, to one on one hang outs. It just sort of happens that way sometimes. For me, I am a bit inept at asking people out. Hell, I don’t really know how to ask a woman out on a real date more or less asking a person out on a friend date. Luckily I am not in the position to need to ask women out on dates. I wouldn’t know the first thing to say. But that is not really the point I am making. How do you ask an almost friend to be your friend? That is the hard question and I have no clue
Coffee is something I avoided for a long time. In high school I saw some people drink coffee in the manner that I drank Coke and it immediately turned me off of it.
In college coffee became even more common place and yet I still avoided it.
When I was working at a restaurant as a waiter, hell it was a Jack Astor’s, I hated coffee drinkers. I was supposed to always offer coffee, but it was something I dreaded. “Please don’t say yes,” I would think to myself. Even more maddening were the people who order coffee with their meal. I actually got upset to think of someone drinking a coffee with a steak dinner. I couldn’t understand the appeal. Of course the coffee containers were almost always empty and I would be forced to make more and wait for it to brew. I really hated the idea of coffee.
At the same time as my job at Jack Astor’s, I lived in an apartment across the street from a Tim Horton’s. I became obsessed with the line up of cars at all hours of the day. “There are 14 cars in line,” I would shout. “And it is 2:00 in the afternoon!” The time would always change. I couldn’t understand why people would wait that long. It is just a coffee! I would never wait that long for a Coke!
Yes, I know that if Coke was only sold at a drive thru I would be in line. Don’t site the facts!
I had one boss who was a coffee fanatic and he always had coffee breath. Some people’s mouths seem to keep the coffee longer than others. I know a lot of coffee drinkers that don’t get coffee breath; this one kept it all day long.
I used to ask friends out for coffee and such and I would order a fruit juice or God forbid, a Coke. I felt like an outsider but I secretly thought myself as the better person.
As I type this I am drinking a coffee. It makes me happy. It makes me warm and makes the day seem to go by better. I don’t know when I finally caved but I do know how it happened. I would drink a coffee with breakfast at a restaurant. Soon I realised that my eggs tasted better, the bacon was more bacony and the hash browns were tastier. My one coffee at a diner turned into 4 coffees at a diner. My once Saturday morning coffee creeped into being my after dinner coffee. Rehearsals for plays now involved a coffee. A Sunday morning now involves a coffee. Going out for a coffee means I am drinking a coffee. Dessert and coffee = awesome. I forget what eggs taste like without a coffee to go with it.
So I am now a coffee drinker. I don’t get coffee breath and I enjoy the warmth in my hands as I drink it. I don’t use too much cream or sugar and I don’t add funny flavours. But damn, I love that coffee.
I still won’t wait in a line of 14 cars, but I could see that coming.
Coffee and steak still makes me angry.
Just something I wrote.
Love makes living better.
Love enlightens the soul and allows it to sing.
Love makes you do crazy things.
Love can make you into a better person.
Love can hurt like no other pain.
Love can heal almost any pain.
Losing love can break a person.
Finding love can make a person.
Love cannot be faked, made or paid for.
Love fills the holes of your soul.
Love is commonly misused.
Love is commonly found.
Love is the greatest thing on the planet.
Love is something everyone should find.
Love shouldn’t be taken for granted.
True love can come more than once.
Love can co-exist.
Love makes you cry.
Love can dry those tears.
Love makes you strong and love can make you weak.
Love is finding that perfect moment of that perfect day and living it forever.
Chapter 1
George Desafortundo was driving home after work on a very hot day in June. Today Mr. Desafortundo was especially happy, even though he sat in very heavy traffic that didn’t seem to move. Mr. Desafortundo was happy even though the air conditioner in his car was broken and the heat was beginning to make him a little faint. Mr. Desafortundo was so pleased that even though his car was low on gas and he knew there wasn’t a gas station for a long stretch of highway, it didn’t bother him. Mr. Desafortundo was so happy that even though the sweat that was dripping down his face and making his eyes sting a bit, he didn’t mind one bit. Actually, the stinging made the fainting a little more bearable since it kept waking him up.
Today was such a great day because Mr. Desafortundo had his brand new hat at home. He pictured it sitting in a round hatbox from Mad Hatter’s Hats and Many Other Hats Emporium on his “new hats only” hatbox stand waiting in his Hat Room. Mad Hatter’s was no ordinary Hats and Many Other Hats Emporium. It was the world’s best Hats and Many Other Hats Emporium. Mr. Desafortundo knew it was far better than Top Hat’s Top Hats and Other Hats Emporium. It was far better than Bowling for Bowler Hat Hats and Some Other Hats Emporium. Mr. Desafortundo had an exclusive Mad Hatter’s Mad for Hats Platinum Membership card. This was awarded to him on his one-hundredth-hat purchase. Mr. Desafortundo fondly remember the wonderful party that Mrs. Desafortundo put on for that occasion. Mr. Desafortundo wished that he could have worn his new hat for that party, but that was thirty hats ago and there have been many more parties since then. Mr. Desafortundo laughed to himself. “Mad Hatter’s,” he said. “Who could possibly be angry wearing a hat from Mad Hatter’s? Their irony kills me.” Mr. Desafortundo looked into his rear-view mirror to admire that hat he was wearing. His bright red face was covered in sweat, but his hat looked magnificent on his head. “Good ole number 78,” he said as he winked at his green crushed velvet bowler hat. Mr. Desafortundo looked out at the traffic and though that nothing could ruin his day, today was a new hat day and nothing can bring down a new hat day, even delays in getting to his new hat. Read the rest of this entry »
The other day I had to pick up Dog Food at the grocery store. It was after a rehearsal and the only item I needed. While driving down Erb past Weber, I realised I should have gone to the Sobey’s at Weber and Bridgeport. But alas, I kept driving and went to the Sobey’s by my house.
Once I got to the Sobey’s I noticed that all the checkout lanes were empty and this was going to be a fast trip. I walked down got my food and walked back up the aisle. At fate, luck or whatever would have it, the checkout lines now had people in them. I even let someone in front of me. As I waited in my line, it seemingly took forever. The young woman had an issue with something and the line took longer than I had hoped. By the time I got to pay, the young woman went on break and someone else took over for her. Again as luck/fate would have it, the new woman just happened to have a $3 off coupon for the dog food that I was buying in her hand. She looked at the bag and then at me and offered it to me. Of course I accepted.
While a minor story of serendipity, it illustrates something I have come to fully believe in. Things happen for a reason. I don’t necessarily attribute it to God’s hand at work or the universe correcting itself, but when I evaluate certain things in life, serendipity almost always plays a key part.
I look at longer courses of actions that have led me to where I am today and I look at minor ones. If I had not lost my job at Sunlife and joined a pool company, I would not have auditioned for a play, got cast, learned about Facebook (before the media attention a year or two later) and joined, decided to do a random search for a friend (while at the Pool Store) and reconnected and changed my life for the better. Would this have occurred anyway? Maybe I would have used Facebook. Maybe I would have found my friend. But I doubt we would have connected when we did and continued our daily contacts to this day. All of those little things led me to that point.
I am not sure what controls these things or if in the end it is just coincidence and I should disregard it.
Maybe serendipity is subjective and you can find it if you look for it. Life is a series of events and it will just happen when it happens and that is how life just works. I don’t like that.
I like to think that fate or something can bring people together or cause someone to have a revelation or in some cases even change someone’s life for the better. I believe it, I have seen it.
Regardless, I found my friend who means more to me that I can possibly put into words and saved $3 on dog food.
My love of movies has ruined my life.
Maybe I am being a little sardonic. I guess I mean that watching movies has fooled me into thinking that these grandiose events in movies can actually happen in real life. While not really the filmmakers fault, it still allows me to blame someone when my life does not happen like one in a movie.
I am referring to love stories for the most part. The great love stories usually have the relationship that just cannot work. There is an obstacle in the way that prevents the true love from finally taking place. But the hero (either the man or the woman, there are very very few gay romance movies) finds a way to overcome it or just disregards it and runs through the rain or the busy subway terminal and rushes towards his love. He makes an astounding speech detailing everything he feels, and all the problems melt away and they embrace as the move closes. I am thinking of Say, Anything or Some Kind of Wonderful . Even Before Sunset has that perfect romantic feel of two people and that connection. We don’t get to see what happens to Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke’s characters but we can certainly imagine what took place next.
Unfortunately these endings just don’t take place. I wish they would and I dream that they will but in the end it doesn’t work. Instead I think of Cutty from The Wire and when he attempts to win back his love after 14 years in prison.
Cutty: It hurts to look at you.
Grace: Then don’t look.
Even as I write this I still hope for that ending. I still feel that true love and truly conquer all and anything can work its way out.
I’m not sure what the point of this post is. Is it to woo someone? Is it to work through my own feelings? I think a bit of both. I am a romantic at heart and I honestly believe that learning Portuguese and rushing into a restaurant to propose marriage would really work. I think that sometimes the wrong people are together and that somehow, someway they find the one they are supposed to be with and it works.
If you haven’t seen it, watch Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. Just do it.
This is part two of my 38 part explanation of passion. Part 3 will come out when I truly understand it.
After reading Ebert’s post about making out, I have been thinking heavily about sexual passion. It is truly something that cannot be faked. I know of the fake orgasms mentioned in Seinfeld, When Harry Met Sally and probably Sex and the City. I don’t mean faking an orgasm or even faking pleasure. Those can probably be reasonable faked. Perhaps, I have been fooled by them in the past. It’s possible.
But I have not been fooled by fake passion. Real passion comes from a place that cannot be described, only felt. It is that feeling that as you’re kissing someone all you can think about is the next kiss and the same kiss all at one moment. Nothing else matters around you. You can only feel her and you want to devour the moment whole and eat it slowly at the same time. Everything that you do is within the same moment and the moment is too short, yet it lasts forever. Your heart cannot grow and take in any more, yet it keep filling up with the passion and never overflowing. It doesn’t have to end with sex, the kissing can be enough to satisfy all urges. The taste of her lips can last longer than any orgasm.
Passion can be those moments between two people before they touch. The electric energy that fills the room and draws the two together. You feel it surround you and it waits to explode. The exact moment that first touch occurs, it does not explode, it intensifies and your breath is stolen but you breathe it all in.
The passion doesn’t stop with an orgasm. It is still there burning within you and wanting more. This is what makes the sex great, not the moves or the ability to bend in a certain way. It is the passion that guides you and the passion that enhances the experience.
Anyone can have sex. Passion is experienced, passion is lived, and passion is not forgotten.
I sometimes think I assume too much. I will usually realise this after I say something that I would think everyone else would agree with and then it will turn out that they don’t. For most of my beliefs or how I view the world, I think I have come to the most logical conclusion and therefore any other person with a reasonable sense of intelligence must agree with me. I know this is wrong, but it is just how I think. There are not a lot of subjects that I come across like that, but they do happen.
Things I think everyone should agree on:
- Bush was a bad president.
- Transformers 2 is an awful movie.
- Gay marriage should be legal.
- Murder is bad.
- Stealing is wrong.
- We pay way too much taxes.
- Fox News is crap.
- There were no WMDs in Iraq.
It always blows me away when I find someone who disagrees with one of the above listed topics. I really don’t know what to say. It can really affect the way I view a person and the ability to call them a friend. I do realise that my political and social leanings are left of centre. I know that in Heartland America and some other places that my views would not be so readily agreed with. But in Canada and even in Ontario, I have grown accustomed to the many of the people I know sharing my viewpoints. In the office space that I work, I now know that I need to just shut up. Not everyone will agree with me and I could be viewed as, “that guy”. I can be misinterpreted as a “loony lefty” which is far from the truth. My social views are left but my financial ones tend to be very right. But I won’t go too far into it. I have learned my lesson.
My point in all this is that we usually surround ourselves with people with similar interests and views on the world. I think this robs us of our ability to understand what others are thinking and why they think like that. My only real access to “other ways of thinking” are over the internet or watching TV. The internet breeds a lot of extreme views and writers that do not listen to reason and are not open to debate. This happens on both sides. I need to find people with moderate views and logical thinking. I have never heard a good reason why gay marriage is so bad. They use the bible and allegations that it will “ruin” traditional marriage. But no one has ever explained why. I keep hearing how the HST will save businesses money but I still don’t know why.
I am open to listening to these answers. I can provide my own as to why I think the way I do.
Except Transformers 2, it just sucks.
I hate opening sentences and I love them. The opening lines of “On the Road” and “Murther and Walking Spirits” are some of the best in fiction. While “Murther” was not a masterpiece, it sure started great. I think Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone should be up there as well.
That was my attempt at avoiding a great opening.
I work for a government organization. I am an Information Security Officer. I did not expect myself to be doing a job like this 10 years ago. I always thought I would do other things. I thought I may have been an actor or a comedian. I thought about directing and writing films. I wanted to write a great book or even a series of books. I wanted to be a Crown Attorney. I thought about writing film reviews and I even considered motivational speaking (albeit a brief thought). I didn’t really achieve any of those things.
I fell ass backwards into my job and just went with the flow. I started to make decent money at it about two years ago and now I make very decent money. While I do not love my job, I also don’t hate it. It exists. I am fairly good at what I do but I am not exceptional. I don’t have any delusions that I am a sought after commodity and can get a job anywhere. I lack the passion that it takes to become exceptional.
Passion for what you do is a relatively rare thing, I think. I know people that love their jobs and would not imagine themselves doing anything differently. It makes me quite jealous. I wish I could have a job that makes me feel like that. I just don’t and I am pretty sure that I never will. I have allowed my pay cheque to prevent me from following my dreams. I also have a family that I have to support which makes following a dream irresponsible if it costs me my house or the ability to provide for them.
But the passion for a job is something I still wish for. I look back at my career choices and I wonder if I would ever have that passion. I proved in film school that the passion can be lost. I had it when I entered and lost it when I left. Over that short time it left me pretty quickly, so I question how deep my passion really was.
I think in my ideal world I would be acting, writing and directing things for the stage. I could see myself doing it all the time and have proven that I really don’t lose my passion unless the project is underwhelming. Even on my underwhelming projects, or shows that I felt were bad, I still enjoyed the process and sometimes even the end result.
I am lucky enough to be able to do my passion even though it is not my job. It makes my life a little more fulfilling. Between my family and the theatre, I am able to balance everything and make it all work.
If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would quit my job. I wouldn’t quit the theatre. I think that is something that I can live with.
Overall I am a pretty lucky guy. I have a good job that pays well, has a fantastic pension and great benefits. I have a hobby that fulfills me and allows me to be creative and experience great things with even greater people. Most of all I have a wonderful family and I love dearly and passionately. I also have found passion and love with someone that I care for deeply. She knows it, but I am not sure if she knows how much. Irish eyes are smiling.
All in all, it is a pretty good life.
During my rehearsals, I have wanted to start with a story about my grandmother. I haven’t done that yet. My intention was to allow the cast a chance to get to know the woman that I am dedicating this show to. But I have a feeling that it is not always an appropriate time to do it. I think eventually I will get to do it, but not quite yet. Some (or one) of the cast will know some of the stories. I have told them before and I was even going to do a monologue (comedy act?) about her for something called Battle of the Bards. I have yet to do it. I have only done one about my odd upbringing. Maybe I should tell those stories here as well.
The first story I will tell is about when she lived on her own. After my grandfather died (Alzheimer’s) she was left alone in her little apartment in Kitchener. Just her and Zhara, the cat. She was lucky enough to have a volunteer take her shopping (“but she always rushes me”) and that was fantastic. At this time she was unable to drive and was legally blind, even though she could still see most things. But regardless of her new disability, she continued to live life normally. She would go for long walks outside or would walk the halls of the apartment building if it was too cold or rainy. She always wanted to stay active.
Her comment about being rushed always makes me laugh. Once I took her to Zellers to get some socks and a few toiletries and we were waiting in a short line. If you have ever been to Zellers you will know that the checkout lanes are always crowded with displays and bins. While waiting (and she was getting very impatient) the lane next to us opened up. Without hesitation or even a quick check over her shoulder, she put her elbow into my gut and shoved me aside so she could run to the lane. Imagine this, she is about 4 foot 11. I am 6 foot 1. She is about 100 pounds (if that, but she always had a little junk in the trunk) and I am about 200 or more pounds. Regardless she pushed me aside like I was small child and made it to that counter first. As I approached she just laughed and smiled at me and said, “I just had to get here first!”
Too funny.
