Nutshell Musing

I’ll start at the beginning. 

My Dad did not like me. We can’t even begin to describe any sort of love when like wasn’t on the table. He did not like my mom, and he did not like his children, besides maybe one. Even then he treated her like shit as well. He was a bad human who showed a glimmer of good human once every few years, just enough to think he was not a complete asshole. He was an asshole. He was likely Un-diagnosed with mental issues such as bipolar disorder, depression, and some variety of narcissistic personality disorder.

I begin with him because I am still recovering from the years of abuse that he laid upon our family. This is not a “woe is me” type of essay, it is an apology. One domino fell into another until I did some regrettable things that I have to take 100% accountability for. Having regret for your actions and taking accountability are not mutually exclusive events in your life, often they present as two ingredients in the same sandwich. This is what the following writing will entail.

Because my father never liked me, I lived the better part of 30 years oscillating between wondering why, hating myself as much as he appeared to, and making my whole life about trying to gain some sort of affection from a man that was incapable of affection.

At different times in my life, I have tried to drink those memories away, tried to fuck them away, tried to numb myself in any type of fashion available to me to forget, and finally tried to have anyone I met who didn’t show me affection eventually turn around and love me. Spoiler: that does not happen.

So, I struggled my whole life (until now), looking for a way for the world to love me. And I looked for that in the wrong people. The people who were rude, mean and generally terrible people became my mission. My whole reason for existing became to win the worst types of people over. People like my father, people that only cared about themselves and were generally incapable of love, were the ones that I was drawn to.

I was continually shown by these types of people that they disliked me and were willing to show massive disrespect to me at every turn. I of course would lap that shit up, as it became even more enticing to me the worse I was treated. I did this in my romantic relationships, I did this with my friendships, I did this with anyone I had met. I thought (until recently) that I was just showing loyalty and eventually they would see that I was a good person worthy of their affection and praise. When that never came, my self-worth which was tied to this directly, would plummet. And I would lash out against myself for not winning over the affections of bad humans. At times I would internalize, and at times I would have moments of clarity to disrespect shown towards me and overreact. But at the end of the day, it was me I was the issue. You can’t blame a snake for biting you, that is their nature, but you can blame yourself for getting too close to snakes in the first place, and I continually did.

This is not a plea for a returned reputation, that is far behind me. The problem with the types of people that I strive(d) to impress, was that they were often master manipulators. Narcissists with all the charming qualities that accompany them. So, the more I had moments of anger because of disrespect, the more they would try to control the situation in their favour and rip me to shreds in order to not have others catch on to the games they are playing.

I am not claiming to be the greatest person. I have many flaws and I have made so many mistakes. But at the end of the day, I have a huge heart, and I would do anything for someone who loved me, I have just been searching for that love in the exact opposite place I should be.

Well, that ends now. From now on I will turn towards the genuine and be incredibly careful when giving any piece of me away to anyone. I will let those know who are important, exactly what they mean to me, and how beautiful I think they are. I also have to make a promise to myself that I will be extra careful and judgmental, as I have already made the mistake of letting snakes in and the inevitable result is a world of pain and snakebite woes.

This is the catalyst for change in my life.

Thank you to all those who are genuine and especially thank you to the snakes for taking this as far as it would go, to show me that there is no succeeding in winning over the type of person my father was.

I still love, and I still care about people immensely. The only thing that has changed is an extra-sensory perception for those who do not love back, never did, and never will.

A Cubano Character Study: A Rambling

All you need is

Something on you feet, and a little bit of money, and a lot of time. This can be the best life imaginable. We are only held in by imaginary bars, unless you are crumbly and criminally minded, then the bars can be very real. 

Don’t be sad that it’s over, be thrilled because you experienced the neon. 

You are good enough to do this. It’s the only way. Don’t let the whole world break you down. A new day will come around. 

Slow dance through airports back home and go gather enough to get back as soon as you can. 

NEON EXPERIENCE. 

 

Genius mf'n Song... listen to it on repeat until it becomes you

 

I’d go dancing in the dark with you anytime. But only the lucky have been around so far. 

Be fine treat the locals with a kindness as familia. Become tight with the locals, BE the local, whatever locality you end up in. Soak in the sun and dance in the rain. From the Favelas to the Penthouse there is always time for dancing. 

Everything is zen, at least I think so. Kiwanuka sang of cold hearts, and if yours was frozen mine will thaw for the both of us. I’ll give it to ya raw with no cookin’ but sometimes the chickens taste flawed and shook. Book it. 

I don’t know how to do anything but love, and some people hate that. I'm a sensitive drama fest half the time and will always wonder why you don’t love me back. 

Mi amore’ es Cuba. I left my heart with them and they have returned the favour. I am so grateful for the neon of it all and amazed at how the universe will at times return kindness unconditionally. 

Thank you Cuba, thank you Halifax, thank you Canada. This week has fully restored my faith in humanity and the absolute power of friendship. Thank you too (yes even you), if I don’t know you yet I’d like to get to you soon. 

Hate it or love it the underdogs on top. 

 

🙏 Muchos Gracias 🙏 

In the beginning there was...

He sat up and wondered out loud to nobody, Is this all that life is?

This time of the day always made Hunter ask these questions, it was 1:15 am and he had only woken up a half an hour prior. He looked around the dimly lit and barely furnished bachelor apartment he had called home since he was released from the Educational Holding Centre (or EHC) at age 14. He took a laboured breath of saturated air. In this time he hadn’t bothered with frills or decoration, he was the only one allowed in the apartment and there weren’t many decoration options available anyways.  

As he took a massive gulp of his government issued coffee he got up, cursed his sore back and stared at the single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. No windows meant no sunlight, and Hunter had only seen the actual sunlight a handful of times as a youth as he was transferred from one EHC to another part of town. The Complex he lived in was sealed and in it he had spent the last 15 years of his nights.

“Is this all that life is?” Human nature dictates that that these types of questions are asked by everyone at some point in their lives. Most of the time there is far more to it, we just need to find a way to see the sun once again.

Hunter glanced at his single bed and took off the old and musty blanket he had always thought smelled a bit off. He was allowed to wash one load a week and for the first few months he had always included the blanket but some small tears started to appear and the smell never left, so he gave up on the weekly practice. He now resorted to hanging it in the closet to hide the smell until he slept.

He always felt different than the others around but he was sure this was just another condition of the mind. Everybody feels different he thought, but if everybody feels different than we are all the same in feeling that way.

The future of...

Journalism used to be a revered craft. We once received our news from a fully functional, professional writer who had interviewed sources that didn’t always know if they should be giving up the information they tenderly spoke out loud. The articles we read were expertly written with great care and consideration for the art of words and language.

In short, it all seemed so very important.

As of the time of this writing, our news has been sequestered to the realm of the social media abyss. Just as we scroll by the major achievements of our children, the minor accomplishments of our own lives, and the mundane existence we bore outwards for a serotonin boosting thumbs up; we take in our news with an alarming indifference as it flows away from our vision.

Our heroes were writers, at least they were always mine. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was a giant of epic proportions, creating astounding landscapes from blades of grass and grains of sand. Tom Wolfe was a master of the standard in spectacular. Every journalist at the local paper had something to lose if they sacrificed their integrity, and that integrity was derived from a sense of accuracy and morality.

Influential-based money and interest-based censorship signed the beginning of the end. As soon as the opinion section turned to a monetary mission, the intellectual honesty of our information was sacrificed indefinitely and forever more.

There is a light at the end of the subway towards 1984. There are still those out there that have trust in the fifth estate. Those that remain a belief the watchful eye has a place in our broken society.

Every once in a while, there comes along a participation in the patronage of honest journalism.

In my own hometown, a contender for sanity has emerged. Sprawl (in Calgary) has carved a path towards what they call “slow journalism.” Taking time to realize a story that many of us had no idea existed at all, and turning that into a fascinating report of suddenly essential media.

In this web-based easy access way of life, the prospect of a deranged initial vision is always a possibility. If the model of slow and crowd funded news becomes more the norm than the fringe, we will all be much better served towards a brighter future. One in which we can still have our watchdogs and servants dedicated to righting the wrongs most times previously unseen.  

Apparition Musings

Dean Miller believes an apparition is defined simply as “the sudden appearance of something surprisingly remarkable.”  

Upon experiencing an apparition presented on canvas, the ultimate goal is to activate a part of your mind that you don’t usually access. A swift presence of the unexpected.

Dean Miller

Often the reality of our collective struggle in the human experience is strikingly comparable. When the everyday existence we all work through is considered, apparitions become a sort of bar that is out of reach. We know there is more than what is in front of us, we just have trouble taking the blinders off long enough to see the beauty all around us during the journey.

Tunnel vision creates problems that creativity attempts to solve. Without our most bizarre, our most sterile become our most standard, and the vibrant colours that make us human will fade away into a dull gray background.

Dean Miller

Without an unexpected appearance or an apparition, the predictable will easily become the normal way of doing things. Without distractions we become the scenery, as we march towards a certainty that was always expected. Without the sudden appearance of something surprisingly remarkable, nothing is remarkable anymore.

For What it is Worth

"Art is leaving a piece of your soul to stand behind when the ashes of your once existence have long blown away. "
- Dean Miller

The moment you realize that art has a life which dictates and documents the ebbs and flows of an individual experience. Art is our beckoning desires and greatest impulses compressed into a physical creation of which means so much and so very little at any given moment.

Dean Miller

Constantly redefined by every step and every experience, art becomes its own world. Rising from a spark of black emptiness, the ultimate markings of pure imagination take form.

Art is so internally human and something so vaguely alien, art is something that is from another plane of existence yet keeps us rooted with our own sense of history. So incredibly individualistic yet so unbelievably connecting, a landmark of our shared world in each unique vision.

An attempt to define the undefinable, a stab at something more, a legacy left in an eternity of infinite possibility. Have we ever existed? Or have we always been present to experience the scope of what is truly possible?

I am either an artist or not an artist at all and I don't give an actual shit either way. Some have been tapped to release their own vision and some are just trying to survive the reality in front of them.

A hierarchy of needs creates a vacuum of urgency for the majority. The potential of a true artistic expression becomes hindered by the bleak political and dire landscape that has been constrained by the desire for more. That pressure, in turn, creates a yearning to produce diamonds and occasionally succeeds.

The Journey Never Ends

The last time I posted anything here, I was on the trip of a lifetime.

Having never completed the travel blog throughout the whole trip and ending up with far more adventures than I wrote about, I considered relying on recollection to see it to the end. Memory is a fickle bitch however, and is quite possibly the downfall of humans in general, so I will not attempt to finish those blog posts.

I ended up going to Malaysia and Burma, living at a tattoo shop, falling in love with at least 4 more people, and clinging to the brink of existence on several occasions. (You'll just have to trust that it was all very insane and surreal).

I'm sure the scope of my reach with these posts will be far less than it was before as the scope of my life is far, far less.

I have since entered the wild world of procreation and succeeded beyond my wildest expectations of raising a child. My son is now almost 3 years old and he is the joy of my, and anyone else he meets, life. I plan on taking him to northern Europe in a few years and starting back up on the ol' travel blogging hitch.

Until then, whoever is reading this is stuck with my internal musings and overall weirdness about life. And if nobody reads, well at least I'll have a journal to look back on until Skynet or Ajit Pai or whoever becomes aware and destroys the internet completely.

So yeah: Guess who's back, back again... Skippy's back, tell a friend.