Friday, August. 28th

There are currently 7 people residing in my 4 bedroom apartment. This morning at 7 I woke up to my room mates phone alarm as it was charging in the hall. Our toilet broke this morning. Today was one of those days that seem to exemplify your whole life in its current state.

Macey and Kate just returned from 6 weeks in Europe, and seeing them again has been so good. I pretty much ran home last night to find Jen and laurel smoking on the balcony and urged them into getting ready so we could go to Nirvana to meet Macey. After some cookie eating, teeth brushing and a lot of excited yelling on my part, we managed to leave the house and make it to Nirvana for 10:30.

I was like a child, about to vomit from excitement.

Lately I’ve been feeling like things have been coming full circle. The end of the summer is getting close, and I can feel fall in the air. I love fall. As my hours at the Ultimate Cafe dwindle, and my trip to New York with Laurel and Jen (and Macey, if we can convince her) approaches, I can’t help but feel sort of introspective about the summer that is passing before my eyes like scenery outside a window from a train. At the start of the summer I was green with jealousy of Macey and Kate and their trips to Amsterdam and Berlin. I wanted to relive the previous summers trip we took together. I wanted to escape the city. That’s the point of summer, right?

Now, on August 28th, I can say I’m glad I stuck around. I got a lot done here. I read a lot, wrote a lot, painted, paid off some debt, and spent time with some radical souls. Sometimes staying in one place is just as enriching, challenging, and eye opening as the adventure. At the same time, I'm still really proud of my friends.

I had many “this city is so fucking beautiful!” moments this summer, particularly when I finished work at night and walked to King and Spadina, the streetcar stop at which has the best view of the skyline. It reminds me of my few trips to the city when I was really young. I was so riveted by the city, at once overwhelmed and impressed. And here I am now, a few years later, still overwhelmed an impressed. But now I have a better grasp of how to handle homeless people. And can drink in bars. But I still feel small in the city.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Tribe Called Quest lately. Particularly the song Excursions. I've been listening to it over and over again, which usually I am against. But this one I can’t help. There’s a line in it about how things go in cycles. That’s how I feel about this summer. Here I am, going back to school, getting ready to be focused and work toward a goal again.

I can't believe the summer is almost over. It seemed so long and looming to me in May, when I had a prospective 4 school-free months ahead of me. We see our future selves as entirely different people. I'm not so sure that we ever change though. Our toilets been fucked up this whole time at 322 Shaw st, people are generally in and out, come home and leave again, but I still feel the same through it all.

Book ADD

Andrew mocks me for my book ADD.

I, on the other hand, have no qualms with the fact that I read 5 books at a time, lamenting that I don’t have more hands to hold them with. But I finish always finish them. For the most part anyway. Perhaps my multiple book habit is due to a short attention span, a nurture complex that has forced me to desire much more than I need, (or simply the fact that I can’t read). Who knows? I just know I have always been like this.

I can see only one negative aspect to the inability to focus exclusively on one text. It translates to my other pursuits. I fear that I rarely get so involved in something that I lose all track of time and civilization and emerge to find I have created a masterpiece. My personal triumphs often involve the use of ambient music, tea drinking, and pacing, a lot of pacing. For example, I have never sat down at a computer and finished an essay in one intense fell / fowlie swoop. Or painted a large canvas without taking numerous breaks to gain perspective, inspiration, eat dry ribs, sip on a 40 ...

I think I speak for a lot of other young urban adults when I say all this. Look at the internet, look at the increasing presence of blog culture – short, captivating articles with fun pictures and captions. This is our world. This is our literacy. Our contemporary hieroglyphics are entirely ephemeral, floating in cyberspace for the lifespan of our computers. Do we have any substance? Maybe our substance was lost a long time ago with the birth of the computer, the looming death of the written word, our ever shortening attention spans.

I can be sure about one thing, though. The constant interests in my life that comprise my personality, influenced by Toronto, university, friends, travel ... every one of them points me back to the earth. I write about the environment because it calls me. I don’t know a lot about it yet, in fact, the more I read the more mystifying it becomes (perhaps this is because I can never focus on just one book at a time). But I want to learn everything. I want to know how to resolve the gap between the people we once were, and the people we have become – products of a civilization that have no concept of true value. Everything in my life points me back to this.

Kicking the habit.

In past years I have had the displeasure of being close to several people with addictions. I was there for the hundredth last cigarette, the endless stream of liquor, the ugly hangovers. I was begged to be an ethical watchman. It made me uncomfortable, and it broke my heart to see the people I loved suffer. But how can a conscience be forced upon anyone? To be sure, we all struggle with addictions in some form or another, often times without even being conscious of it.

When we look for things, seek alternatives, when we are unhappy where we are, perhaps it’s time for an intervention. In the excessive western world I think that a lot of unhappiness is rooted in simply too much. We don’t appreciate things because we have never had to work for them. And we are too far into it to gain perspective. We don’t know anything else.

Should I feel sorry for those who can’t stop gambling / smoking pot / meeting married people in motels on their lunch break ? I have always wondered if the idea of an ‘addictive personality’ is a true phenomena, or if people simply say that to take the problem out of their hands, to justify their habits. I’m not insensitive to people who struggle, and I don’t doubt for a second that it totally sucks to quit smoking. In fact, someone once told me that I was ‘just like them – easily addicted’. I disagreed with this person and I still do, but addiction is in the eye of the beholder. Where is the line between a bad habit and the point where we throw our arms up in frustration and say “‘I’m addicted! Rehab, here I come!” We can justify anything to ourselves. It’s easy to believe that one more time won’t hurt, or that we ‘deserve this’.

Many religions view the flaws in our behaviour as earthly distractions, external factors that sink in as we get caught up in daily life. Confucianism, the Chinese philosophy and religion, places an enormous emphasis on the infinite potential of human beings. Perfecting the self through values such as filial piety, compassion, humanness is entirely possible. But how?

Two Confucian philosophers, Hsun Tzu and Mencius, both agree on the possibility of human perfection, but also acknowledge the existence of evil within human life. Hsun Tzu believed that man is inherently wicked, but can use outside factors to cultivate inner goodness. Mencius believed that everything is complete in the self, and he who knows his own heart knows heaven. We have to look no further than our hearts the find righteousness.

Each individual is a government in miniature, ruled by the mind, informed by the faculties, and guided by a heavenly directive. This comparison serves to explain the integration of all things – the self, the universe, heaven and the infinite potential of human beings. In order to understand ‘the way’ (of the Tao – a concept used in Chinese philosophies like Taoism and Confucianism and to illustrate the true nature of the world. Often compared to water – silent yet strong, clear, neutral),
we must make our minds tranquil and empty.
In his teachings, Mencius uses the analogy of seeds to explain the susceptibility of humans to be led astray by earthly factors. If children act out, it isn’t because heaven has given them different natural ways, but because their minds have been inundated. Seeds are sown in the same soil and planted at the same time will grow and ripen similarly. But if they don’t turn out all the same, we would say it is due to the difference in the fertility of the soil, or amount of rain, or because they were tended differently – How are humans any different?

The oppositional teachings of Hsun Tzu provide a practical way of attaining self perfecting in the employing of outside sources. Gathering information and internalizing it can achieve perfection. His texts employ analogies of craftsmanship, putting forth the idea that it is up to each individual to hone themselves. Without teachers, humans could never escape their evil nature.

I find these Confucian ideas refreshing. Inherent or not, they assure us that we can aspire to greatness – we just need the will to do so. Earthly distractions are cloying, and whether or not you believe that goodness is in the heart, or the answer is out there somewhere, it is a challenge to penetrate the layers of unimportant yet consuming details of life on earth.