Everybody has irrational things that they believe on some level, even if they have a reasonable amount of evidence to the contrary.

One of my things, for example, is that I believe that I could be a doctor. I admit this could boil down to an incomprehensible level of ignorance on my part, but I have my reasons.

The evidence of my eyes, and that is where most people’s reasoning about the world comes from, is that doctors don’t really need to know anything. This is because most people’s experience with doctors is that they sit in a room for what feels like a rudely lengthy amount of time, a somewhat non-chalant guy comes in the room, you tell him your symptoms, he postulates some theories, and then LEAVES THE ROOM. Then, after another amount of time, he reenters the room and tells you what he thinks is going on. Granted, he might check your ears or blood pressure before he leaves, but my main issue is that he leaves the room for a while and returns with his final analysis. How is he not just looking up my symptoms online? From my experience, I have no reason to believe that he does anything other than that, and that is why I think I could be a doctor.

“But what about the years of school? Doctors need so much schooling to get where they are, how could you possibly be a doctor without the training?” – You may ask. Well, I understand where that’s coming from, but that’s where my irrational belief really shows itself. Because I don’t think they need that training. A basic understanding of the human body will help, but if you’re just looking up symptoms online, then the main skill you need is to accurately search things up and parse through the information online. And yes, you have to be very good at that, but you don’t need that much medical expertise. Maybe it takes a real doctor to deal with big problems, such as cancer, but if people come in with the flu or stomache aches, and can tell me how they fell, I reckon I could handle it.

Sounds ridiculous right? I must sound like a real ignorant moron right now. But I don’t think I’m alone in that. I think you have beliefs that are just as nonsensical as mine. Everybody does. If you’re honest with yourself, you might even be able to name a few.

For example, you are prejudiced. That’s not an insult, that’s a fact of life. Everybody is prejudiced towards some sort of people. That’s not that bad if you realize it. The problems of prejudice come from when you honestly don’t believe that you are prejudiced, that every judgment you make about people is well-informed, and that you are not guilty of that which you criticize others about. That’s where real evil comes from because if you recognize that you are prejudiced, you understand that your assessments are not necessarily cognizant of reality, and you don’t take actions to enforce your will on others or preoccupy your brain with negative thoughts.

That’s not to say that everyone ought to love each other all the time no matter what. That is a disgusting rhetoric, and it’s exactly what I would want people to believe if I was a disgusting person.

If you claim that you love everyone, regardless of who they are, what you are really saying is that your love has no value, that it takes nothing to earn your love, that you do not respect your Self, that you have low expectations for humanity, and that you actually love no one.

The biggest heart of the matter here is not loving your Self. I believe everything follows from that. If you love yourself then, necessarily, you would not disrespect your love by giving it to the undeserving because that would be insulting your Self. You would not insult people who you love, not purposefully anyways, so why would you do it to yourself? Hence, if you love your Self, then you do not give out your love unwittingly to those that you see as undeserving of it.

I think this is one of the many things that people do not hear these days. I am young and so I will not entertain whether this was always an issue or not, I have no idea. But I believe it stands today that people are subconsciously taught that their love has no value and that they ought to love everyone. This is true at least in the Western world that is built namely on Christian principles, in which “loving your enemy” is told to be virtuous. It is anything but. You should not love your enemy and, if you think that you should, what does that doctrine say about your friends? If you are to love your enemies and your friends, then you are saying that you regard your friends as just the same as your enemies. That doesn’t sound very friendly to me.

I could have this wrong too, the big book does not specifically say that you ought to love your enemies just as much as your friends (not to my knowledge anyways) but only that you ought to love your enemies. It may be virtuous, according to the big book, that you love your enemies but love your friends a hundred times as much. In which case, I would say that is a less evil doctrine, but still one that devalues your love to the extent that you would categorize the people you hold in the highest regard with those in the lowest. You are worth more than that.

You are flawed though. For all that I talk about how humanity is the closest thing to Gods that you and I are aware of, that does not mean people are perfect. Throughout all of history, there have been Gods or God-like figures that represent or embody evil in some sense. The remarkable thing about that, is that it’s up to you which one you get to be. I think people can be a great force for good if they so choose. That is hard though, I know that. But it can be figured out through reasoning.

People do not have claws or fangs or remarkable muscles, but they have a mind and, through that mind, they have survived for as long as history. It stands that your capacity to reason is exactly what is keeping you alive and for what? Why should you be alive? You live and you use your mind to ascribe values to the experiences you have. If you haven’t killed yourself yet, then you know on some level that you are capable of dictating whether something is good or bad, heaven or hell. Being alive then, is something that is good, even if it is comprised of bad experiences. Suffering, I have said before, is inescapable. Everyone probably knows that. But they use their minds to try to reduce the amount of suffering and maximize the amount of pleasure they have in life. In some sense, we think like Utilitarians. But where the classical Utilitarians go wrong, is that they deal out the cards of utility to everyone equally or, if not, then they still place to much emphasis on other people’s utility.

The truth is that your utility, your happiness, counts for everything. A complete strangers does not count. That might sound selfish. It is. There’s no reason to apologize for it either. And you will see why.

Imagine that you are walking home one day and not in any particular rush. Also, imagine that it is January and you live in Canada. This might be easier for some to imagine than others. Now, on your way to your igloo, you notice that someone’s car is pointed perpendicular to the sidewalk. You hear the roar of their engine and see their tires spinning but it’s all futile. The driver then unrolls his window and asks if you can push his car.

If you take what I’ve said above, that a strangers utility or pleasure counts for nothing, then you might infer that you have no reason or obligation to help this guy get his car unstuck. You would be wrong, however. But it is correct that you have no obligation. Rarely are you ever obligated to someone else unless you’ve made a promise (in which case it’s more accurately an obligation to your Self anyways). But you might have a reason to help this guy get his car unstuck. That is whether you are willing to make the trade of your time for helping another person with their problem. There are plenty of ways of looking about this.

First, you will feel good after helping this guy get unstuck from the snow. This is true of every person everywhere from my experience, and this is often reason enough for people to help. Also, you won’t feel good if you don’t help this guy get unstuck. You will get an extra five minutes to do with whatever you please, but if you weigh that against the feeling you get after helping this guy, then I think it’s clear how the scale tips.

Second, this guy might not be a stranger. He is, in this scenario, but what if he doesn’t remain that way? After all, you live close to where he was driving, what if you were later in a similar scenario and asked him a favour? If he remembers you, he might not be so inclined to help you out. People older than infants have a remarkable capability to sacrifice immediate pleasure for their future. That’s what you do when you save money or, more simply, when you go to work. There is another reason to help this guy out.

Finally, even as antisocial as you are, you probably don’t value your five minutes more than this guy values his five minutes. He’s probably looking to go somewhere important. Now, that doesn’t factor into your decision, and it certainly doesn’t obligate you, but you are implicitly making a trade off here and might ask your Self what you would like in that scenario. For all the slave-morality that is taught in the big book “Treat people as you want to be treated” is sometimes good advice. It is sometimes not good advice, but I can get into that another time. I have a lifetime to be writing this anyways.

Notice that in no scenario do I mention the obligation to help this guy out. I don’t say that you have a duty to stand there and push his car, nor do I say that you are less of a good person if you neglect to help.

What I am saying that, in your selfishness, you can still reason that it is better for you to help people, even strangers who you know nothing about. Snakelike people like to claim that “people are social animals” (usually for the purposes of imposing their will on you) but that is only half of the story. People are also anti-social animals. Be honest with yourself, and you’ll know that to be just as true, if not more so, than “people are social animals.” But telling the truth is usually not a good way of manipulating people into doing what you want them to do.

To get political, although this really shouldn’t be a hot topic, that is why capitalism works. If you allow a system for people to work for their own benefit, then they will benefit others because that is the reasonable thing to do. The proof is in the pudding. I am not typing this on a machine created for the benefit of other people; you are not going to bed tonight under a roof put there for your sake; you don’t go to work for the purpose of your clients or customers. Obviously, people can be unreasonable, usually if they are too lazy to think, and the consequences of that are terrible, but that is a result of humanity and is not a consequence of allowing people the right to self-determination and the right to free trade.

That is why I say that people are selfish and that is a GOOD thing. Thank God that the people who built the house you are sleeping in were selfish and self-motivated, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered to create your bedroom.

The past couple of days I have not been sure what to write. There’s no sense in pushing to write things as the things I will write when pushed will not have any purpose. I figure I ought to write every few days anyways. I can talk about my day and see where that leads me.

There is an upper shelf in my bedroom closet just above the hanging rack. My bedroom is a funny place, it’s clean but it’s cramped. My bed is sandwiched between the closet and a bookshelf behind it. Since I store clothes and books in my closet, I took the closet doors off so that I could access it without needing to move my bed. Beside my bed, next to the opposite wall, is storage shelving with an alarm clock and computer related storage drawers. There is just enough space to walk with my bed to the right and the storage shelves to the left to get to the far end of the bedroom. Here is where I keep my desk and computer and bass amplifier to the left, with a piano to the right and a large industrial shelving unit situated behind the piano. I make a lot of use of vertical space in this bedroom as it is so small. My cat has beds on every storage shelf, including above the hanging rack in my closet.

Which brings me to this morning. This morning, my cat acted as if he were going to leap a great distance to the top rack in the closet to sit in his basket. He does this all the time. There are also books on this top shelf. Today, he leapt up and knocked one of the books down on his way up. That is what woke me up today.

It was about 7:00-7:30. I got up and had breakfast and made coffee and did a bit of studying before school. I got to spend some of the morning with Possum as I usually do, which is always a highlight of my mornings. I don’t do a lot in the mornings, to be honest; I need my time to sit and think and get ready for the day. It’s nice to have company, though.

I walked to Metaphysics for 9:00. The professor of that class apparently had some association with Wilfrid Sellars, which I found interesting. He is an obviously very smart man and I’m glad to be taking the class with him, even though I’m a computer science major. I don’t think I’ve had many professors/teachers as intelligent and thought-provoking and good at their job as this guy.

Then I went to Operating Systems for 10:30. The professor there is not very good, but I did very well on the midterm earlier this week, I’m pretty sure. That felt nice. It can be a confusing class but it seems that I get it with a lot of studying put in.

I went home after and studied and ate lunch. At this point Possum was getting mentally ready for work, so we sat next to each other as we did our own things. I consider it fortunate to have found someone with whom I can sit in comfortable silence. Not a lot of people are like that. Eventually, it was 1:00, and I drove Possum to work. She’s only about a seven minute drive compared to a half hour bus trip, so I value saving her 23 minutes more than 14 of my minutes. Plus, I simply enjoy driving.

Driving is similar to walking. When you walk, the bilateral movement helps your head think, at least I’m told. I think when you’re driving and you’re watching the road, it hypnotizes you somewhat and helps your head to think. I used to drive about an hour into the city and an hour back when I worked at the engineering firm. I would listen to music the whole drive and sometimes wished it went on for longer.

I got back home and pretty shortly had to go to Economics class. It’s a Statistics for Economics class, so we were doing z and t hypothesis tests. I ended up going to a work colleagues house afterwards. We hadn’t actually hung out before, but he showed me the place and the things he was interested in. He sold me a plant type of byproduct, which was one of the reasons we had planned to meet. It was nice anyways, as I have few friends in this city.

I headed home afterwards and put things away and cleaned a bit. Then, I fixed the sheet music for one of my songs I was looking to play with my band. It took a while to do as it was originally for three guitars and keyboard and bass and drums and strings, but had to be condensed into two guitars, violin, bass, and drums. I’m pretty much done it now, just had to write out the tablature at the end of the song which is easy because I already have the sheet music done.

I picked up Possum at about 6:45 and we went home and I made us a dinner which was pulled pork with habanero spiced onions over rice. Then we went on a walk around the lake in the park behind our apartment and came back home and I showered and wrote this and that’s about it. Now it’s getting close to bedtime.

During the summer, when I was 13 years old, my parents sent me to a week-long camp for kids. I think these things can go one of two ways: Either it is a magnificent time full of friends and fond memories, or it is just a disaster. This particular trip, was the latter category.

The camp was just about two hours away from home. The website told us that it was a fun camp for kids where they would go for a week and do outdoor activities with each other. They also mentioned that it was a Christian camp and that there would be prayers every day. Now, I think this should’ve been enough to dissuade my parents from sending me and my brother there, but I don’t think I can entirely blame them for glossing over this part.

First, they did not mention the extent of the Christian spirit inherit in their camp. The lord truly did live with these people, but I’ll get into that later. Had we prayed before meals and had the counsellors told us biblical stories occasionally as filler for the time, that would’ve been that, and that would’ve been fine. No issue there. But that is not what this camp was about.

We were dropped off and moved our things into our dorm rooms. My brother, being over a year younger than I, had a separate dorm. I hardly, if ever, saw him during this trip. My dorm was small. In fact, it was just a room with two bunk beds and a small bathroom with a shower. The interesting thing, however, was that there was a hole in the wall on one of the beds big enough to climb through that went into the other dorm which was a mirror image of this one. Basically, we had two dorm rooms separated by a hole in the wall big enough to climb through. We had two camp counsellors. One was an elder, about 24 if I were guessing. The other, was the young counsellor who was to learn from the elder in the hopes that one day he might have what it takes to be an elder counsellor. I would guess the younger counsellor was 17 or 18.

Odd thing is, the counsellors seemed kinda gay for a Christian kids camp. I’m not implying anything, I’m just noticing. The elder counsellor was a short stocky guy who always wore tight colourful pants and pink Van’s shoes. The younger counsellor dressed more normal, but had that voice. You know the voice I’m talking about. These guys were pretty good in my estimation. They were probably confused Christian camp counsellors, but honestly I think they did the best they could and I wish them the best and hold no ill-will against them.

My camp colleagues, however, were a different story. We were all 13 to 14 year old kids, and we acted as such for the most part.

One kid was called Brent. He was a pale-faced fat kid and was always picking fights. There was a black kid, also fat, who’s name was DeAndre. Contrary to Brent, DeAndre did not want to start fights. He was a little more sensitive. DeAndre was the kid who I would call closest to a friend out of this bunch. The names of the other kids escape me. One, I will call Darwin. Euclid was a short, stocky blonde kid who was just a little younger than the rest of us. He valued intelligence and wanted to prove himself to everyone else. He was fascinated with the study of mythical creatures. I forget the actual term. I found him funny, at times. There was another kid I will call Simon, on account of his wearing glasses. That’s about all I remember about Simon. He was the one who most often got into quarrels with Brent though.

There was one more kid who I don’t think I’ll forget. Jordan. Jordan was a little odd, but so am I. The other kids did not take as kindly to Jordan as they did to me though. It wasn’t so much that they took kindly to me either, I just didn’t fall for the fighting traps that the other kids wanted to set. I can confidently say I was the most reasonable child here and the camp counsellors noticed that. Jordan was constantly picked on though, and I felt pretty bad for him.

The first day we met each other in our bunks, we were waiting for everyone to arrive so we could go to dinner. Some of the kids were meeting each other, I met shortly and would read my book. At the time, I was reading Thinner by Stephen King.

Eventually, the camp counsellors took us to the dining hall where there were at least 150 of us. It was a large area. We had the disappointing dinner that you would expect, and the camp counsellors started singing a welcome song.

A huge part of this camp was that it provided the counsellors, who’s musical ability would not have turned heads much less crowds, a faithful audience who had no other choice but to listen to them. Every single one of them played the guitar and sang, and every singly one of them sang vaguely about Jesus. We had no where to turn. We couldn’t leave, we were prisoners forced to listen. This is why the counsellors enjoyed their work. They were drawn to performance, like any pastor, but had not the ability to draw in willing and eager crowds.

After dinner, about two hours of Jesus music, and a similarly sad desert, it was time for the campfire. Like the Israelites followed Moses in the desert, so too did we follow the counsellors on the long journey to the campfire. A couple of the counsellors got to leave early to set up the campfire, and it was a roaring blaze by the time we got there. More than a hundred kids sat down around this fire as the counsellors started to talk. It was a sermon, essentially, and in between each sermon was yet another fucking song. That was drawn on for longer than it really needed to be, and then it was time for bed.

That is how every day would go from 5:00 to about 9:00.

When we all returned to our dorm, we went through questions designed to help us get to know each other. Where were we from? What schools did we go to? What do we want to be when we grow up? All of the classics were included in these night-time discussions. When it was time for bed, we’d all lay down and some kids would talk until the camp counsellors reminded them that it was time to sleep. I would throw my sleeping bag over my head and read until I fell asleep, which we weren’t supposed to do. I’m certain that the counsellors knew what I was doing, but knew that I was a good kid. There were a lot of times they let me do my thing for that reason.

In the morning, we’d all take turns showering and make our way down to breakfast. One morning, everyone left without me and the younger counsellor who woke me up and said he was going to go to breakfast and that he’d meet me there. I was alone in the dorm. I showered, and made my way down just slightly late for breakfast.

Brent would not shower, however. Instead, he would go in the bathroom and spray axe on himself. This got him in trouble with the counsellors and he got upset over it.

On our first morning, Jordan went to his bathroom on the other side on the dorm and found that there wasn’t any toilet paper. He asked somebody to bring him some and nobody did until a counsellor was made aware of the situation and brought it himself. Jordan was then referred to as “Poopy-rash hands” and that name stuck for the rest of the trip which resulted in many fights and many tears.

Breakfast fucking sucked. The food was edible. All the food was edible and you really can’t ask for too much at camps like these. It wasn’t the food that was the issue however, it was the fact that breakfast provided the counsellors another opportunity to play to their unwilling crowd and deliver sermons for three hours. I’m not exaggerating. There was a huge multi-counsellor sermon every morning at breakfast interspersed with more Jesus music.

Some wisdom I recall from these sermons was that God’s wisdom is as vast as the difference between East and West.

“How far apart are East and West?” Asked the counsellor.

There were groans in the audience.

“Like, really far.” A girl sitting in front of me muttered to her friend.

“INFINITELY FAR!” screamed the counsellor while whirling his hands in a spherical shape. “If you set out to go East, no matter how far you go, you will never be going West… That’s how great God’s wisdom is.”

One early campfirey night there was a sermon where the counsellor started his gripes with evolution. I don’t remember much about what he said other than:

“I mean c’mon! Monkeys don’t wear pants!”

That about covers our mornings and our nights for those seven days and seven nights. But what did we do in the afternoons? That’s where the camp almost became fun. Every group would get to do a different thing every afternoon. There was ziplining, hiking, archery, axe-throwing, and swimming. The last two days had every single kid participate in a huge game of capture the flag or zombie tag. I can remember I actually enjoyed the last two games since there were so many kids, it was pretty crazy to have such a vast organized event.

Every group also had their activity which was where most of the money went to. I got to do white-water rafting on the last day. My brother did climbing or something like that.

In between all of the afternoon events we would do, there was a free time. That’s where Brent and DeAndre and Simon would get into fights. Brent would call DeAndre fat who would rightfully make the same claim about Brent, and then they would hit each other, start crying, and get separated by the camp counsellors. By the end of the week, every kid cried and had to get a counsellor to intervene, except for me.

The one kid who did not believe. I will let you draw your own conclusions.

I’m not saying all of them are like this. But I reckon there is a statistical significance. Granted, this camp is not representative of all organized religion, just a subset of some sort of extreme and vague Protestantism. These kids were maladjusted in ways that made me look aptly socialized, and I think it’s clear that their religious upbringing must have had something to do with that.

One afternoon, we had a quiet time where we all sat down and had to write a letter to our real father. Not our father, our “real” father, you know, the one who lives upstairs. I did not know what to write, and I don’t even remember.

Sometimes during our free time, I would hang out with DeAndre, who seemed very depressed during this time. Next to Poopy-rash hands, DeAndre probably got it the worst. I would walk with him and talk about whatever. We went to the vending machine and bought cokes with our canteen funds.

One the last day, our parents all came to pick us up. Luckily for my brother and me, our dad came as the pastor was reinventing his evolution rant. He reiterated how monkeys don’t wear pants as my dad was in the back of the room. I don’t know how easy it would have been for him to believe us if he didn’t witness the sermon for himself.

We left pretty quickly after that. A few years later, after many discussions with our parents, they expressed a sort of regret for sending us there. Of course, my brother and I didn’t try to make them feel bad, everything was in good humour as we told our parents all about it. Still, I don’t remember another time that my parents expressed regret and something they did that affected me.

My brother told a story how they went on a long hike with their camp counsellor. The hike went on for a very long time, kids were crying, and my brother had scratched up his legs walking through the bushes. Clothes were torn, feet were sore, and eventually they reached a point of nowhere. There was no summit, no finish line, the camp counsellor just turned around and said:

“That was hard, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I imagine the kids replied.

‘Well,” the camp counsellor smugly started, “That’s what it’s like following Jesus. It’s hard.”

Then, they turned around and walked all the way back to camp. That’s it. I fortunately was not subjected to that. It was more the kids I was with that I found to be concerning rather than the counsellors religious moral lessons.

They asked us at the last day of camp about what we learned at camp. I lied and claimed that I would read my bible more often. In a funny turn of events, I actually told the truth as I would end up doing just that only three years later.

That was the summer after I finished grade eight in school. Come September, I would be going to high-school. That was also our last vacation as a family. We went to Mexico a week or two after the camp.

Oddly enough, when I started at the high school, we had a mandatory retreat for all the newcomers to the school. We went and stayed overnight at a retreat which I think was similar to the religious camp I went to. It just so happened that our school was a public school, so it was just supposed to be a normal kids trip to get to know all your classmates. Fortunately, we stayed only one night, though it certainly wasn’t a bad time.

I changed quickly as a person after 13 years old. I think I changed a lot from 13 to 17 years old much more than I changed from 17 to 21, for example. Part of that is that those are very formative years in your development. They say that the brain develops until 25, but most of that development is done way before that. It only ends at 25, if that is even true. It was a difficult time, being that age. I assume it’s the same for everyone. I know for a fact that it was difficult for the people I went to that camp with. I know it was difficult for the friends I had at that age. Kids are constantly testing the boundaries and trying to fit in and distinguish themselves as an individual. They want to prove themselves but not so much that they become an anomaly. It’s human socialization, which I think is a mystery in itself. All of us are socialized, to an extent, so much so that we can’t even talk about socialization. To do so, would be through the lense of someone who is socialized, and we can only be so unbiased as a human talking about human relationships.

That’s it for tonight. I’ve spent far too long writing this and not enough time preparing for my computer midterm tomorrow.

In my earlier years, I spent my well-earned free time rotting away in a tiny apartment complex downtown. Although it wasn’t a pretty place, it was all I could afford. Occasionally, somebody would start yelling at their spouse, or they’d blast their music too loud; nevertheless, it was home, and I was content enough. Every night, however, there was one thing that annoyed me to no bounds. As I would try to drift off to sleep, a light tapping would reverberate through the walls of my room and it would often keep me up later than I would’ve liked. I thought about confronting my upstairs neighbour many times but decided against it because, to be fair, it wasn’t really that loud anyways; I just happen to be a light sleeper. The sound was similar to somebody walking in high heels, but not as loud. It was as if the person making the noise was trying to do so in a discreet manner. I doubted that my upstairs neighbour was making the noise intentionally, as it had gone on for approximately a year every night without stopping; in addition, the tapping had a very distinct rhythmic pattern to it that I didn’t think anybody would boredly mimic for such an extended period of time.

One weekend, a friend of mine brought his young son over for an afternoon. Apparently a pipe had burst in his apartment and flooded his whole floor, so the occupants had to leave while the mess got sorted out. I gladly welcomed them. Spending time with friends at our age was a blessing, and I hardly got to see him as he was now a busy father. He always had an interest in music, which I respected him for, and his son had an array of musical toys. As we were relaxing, his son started tapping on that little rainbow xylophone toy that I think every child from the last century had. My heart skipped a beat. The toddler tapped the exact same rhythm as the nightly tapping from upstairs. I immediately asked him what it was and he laughed.

“We learned it in school,” he giggled. “It’s called morse code. That’s the one to call for help.”

Well, it’s a new day. I don’t yet know what I’m going to write about. I’ll probably keep this one short.

I woke up and had my daily routine which consists mainly of coffee and breakfast. On weekends, I tend to sit in a sort of meditative state until work. I don’t like to use my phone much anymore.

On Saturdays, I drive Possum to work. She is a music educator. I’ll leave it at that, for now. I think it’s a very admirable job. I think being a cook is an admirable job too, but maybe not at the kitchen I work at.

I worked in a kitchen before which was quite a bit nicer than this one. I had some pride in the other kitchen because, even though a lot of the food was unhealthy, there was a lot more work that went into it. Our burgers were freshly shipped and portioned on site in the mornings, our sauces were all made in the mornings, our hollandaise was mixed by hand by my close colleague, our chef and sous-chef were hard-working people who always tried to keep a friendly and talkative atmosphere. We went above and beyond for the type of restaurant we were.

The kitchen I work at now gets burgers pre-packaged and shipped in every week or so, our sauces are usually pre-made in bottles or just a matter of mixing different sauces, our hollandaise comes in powdered form, and our chef is a little off-putting and doesn’t seem to work as hard as everyone else. The standards are much lower.

Today, I had the daily pleasure to be able to spend time with Possum before the working day. I think sometimes I take this time for granted as it happens every day, it’s hard not to. But today was a little different because she was going to play a bar show in the big city and would be gone overnight. The last time we spent a night apart was when I did the same thing in November.

I dropped her off and went home, took the dog out, and went to work where I spent the whole day. Now I’m back home and I have the place to myself. I just finished proofreading and editing my metaphysics paper and have been studying for my computer science midterm.

I think that might be all for now. I’m oddly tired tonight. Work was very busy, I suppose. The restaurant made about $8’000 in sales by the time I left. It’s funny because we can deal with all the people at this restaurant so much easier than the other one I used to work at. I think that’s partly because the food is generally not as good and quicker to make.

I remember one day working at the other restaurant, it was the middle of the day, roughly 3:00PM. Back then, I worked 9 to 5 which was pretty great. Now I’m 11 to 7 which is still okay but I like getting to work earlier. Come March, I’m going to be doing 7 to 3 which ought to be interesting. I’ll be doing a lot of prep. Anyways, It’s 3:00 at the other restaurant and it’s just me and the sous-chef as it often was on Saturday afternoons. My close colleague (who, interesting story, now works with me at the other restaurant) just left, so it was just the two of us and an empty restaurant, save for the few waitresses in the front. Suddenly, as we were told, a middle-aged douchebag walked in the restaurant and asked the waitress.

“Are you having a good day?”

“Yes!” she responded as if she were someone being paid to be personable.

“Well,” the douchebag started, “It’s about to get a whole lot better.”

Suddenly, 12 people were walking in the restaurant. This bastard brought with him twelve fuckers without calling and reserving, and the sous-chef and I panicked.

We made sure the line was stocked and, when the bill was rung in, we threw everything on and cooked it as fast as we could. It took us all of 12 minutes. Even the servers were impressed. But we felt good after that and, luckily, more cooks showed up right after.

The reason I’m telling this is that 12 people coming in at that restaurant unannounced was a big deal. We needed to be absolutely focused, fast, and ready to make all that food in such short order. The restaurant I’m at now, however, seems to find it easier for some reason. Also, the customers are much worse at this restaurant. We regularly get 13 tops who don’t call ahead. If there’s a hockey game nearby, we’ll easily get 30 tops unannounced, and that’s just fine. It always goes by well. Honestly, I wish it didn’t. I wish I was a little more challenged. But we’re never panicked as much as we were at the other restaurant. I remember having 40 open at the other restaurant was a huge deal and everyone would’ve been shitting their pants at the thought of 40 waiting, hungry mouths. But we get 40 open every night here. And it’s just slightly annoying.

I think I thrive on the challenge. I don’t think most people are like that and I don’t think most people would enjoy being a cook. But I don’t feel as challenged at this restaurant.

At the other restaurant, everything had to be perfect. “Perfect Plates” was the motto. Here, our chef just goes by “Good Enough”, it seems.

That’s it for tonight, I think. Overall, I’m pretty alright with my current job. There’s a lot of annoying things about it, but there were annoying things at the other restaurant, and it’s a good experience I think, since I won’t be a cook for my whole life; it’ll be cool to know it’s something I did and more or less found fulfilling.

Emotions as we experience them can often feel so overwhelming. When we start to experience negative emotions, or even profound emotions, it feels unbearable. It’s difficult. Even if those emotions are good things.

It takes patience to deal with those emotions, but more than patience, it requires time to think. You can’t simply sit on your emotions in the hope that they’ll resolve themselves. No, you must do the work. That work, I have found, is simple reasoning.

A lot of people overcomplicate this. They talk about their emotions as if they are a cloud of magical steam that looms over them and need to be let pass by. They say that you must imagine your Self as an ocean and your thoughts as beach balls floating in that ocean.

I like to think that I am more grounded in reality than that.

You can reason through your emotions, it just doesn’t work how most people might think, or it’s harder than people think.

When you feel a disturbing, negative, or irritatingly profound emotion that you need to ease the burden of, you must have the curiosity of a scientist. The thing a lot of people don’t understand here, is that you must be honest with yourself and the ugly facts of your mind in order to reason through your emotions. If you can’t do that, then you are deceiving your Self, and it’s no wonder you don’t believe you can reason about emotions. Ask your Self why you feel these emotions, and be honest. Then do it again, Why? Why? Why? After enough recursions, you will arrive at a (probably disturbing) truth. Then, you can begin to heal.

Today, I woke up late. It was shortly after 10AM.

I have the week off school. It is reading break, so I don’t have much to do. Nevertheless, I am trying to fill the time with productive things, which I don’t think is too hard for me.

When I spend time alone, the things I choose to do are productive.

When I spend time with others, the things I choose to do are things that, I think, facilitate human connection. Since I yearn for human connection, I much prefer to spend my time with others. I think it’s a good thing that I tend to do things that are meaningful alone, but that doesn’t compare much to doing silly things with others. I much prefer silly things with other people, especially if we get to talk while doing it, assuming I am close enough to talk with the person.

There is a barrier experienced by all people concerning human connection. In order to truly be yourself around others, you have to be vulnerable; in order to be vulnerable, you need to feel safe; in order to feel safe, you have to trust the other person. Human connection, therefore, relies on trust. To connect with someone, you have to trust them enough that they will not take your vulnerabilities and make you feel shame for them. You must believe that they will not reject you for your flaws, or what they perceive to be your flaws. This is obviously a very difficult thing for people to do who have been harshly criticized for those potential flaws during their early development.

When you are growing up, your brain is acutely attuned to the world that surrounds it. Your human DNA is not enough to tell you how you ought to take the world; it relies on experience to program it, in a sense.

I do not believe I was raised harshly. I do, however, believe my upbringing was inconsistent. Inconsistency can be more detrimental when it comes to forming and understanding your place in the world. Laissez-faire parenting is strongly correlated with misbehaved, out of control children who grow into aimless adults with loose morals and an ill-conceived perception of right and wrong. Over-controlling parenting often results in anxious, fearful, mindless, programmed robots who are so enveloped in their fear that they cannot form their own thoughts, opinions, ideas, or beliefs. But harsh parenting can also result in exactly the same rebellion that Laissez-faire parenting does. If a harsh parent tells their 15 year-old daughter that she cannot date before sixteen, she might believe that the rule is based on illogical premises (which it is, but she might not argue it that way). What happens then, when her parent tells her that smoking pot is bad for her? Is she really going to listen to her same parent who believed they could control her dating? She’ll probably have a spiteful desire to smoke more pot to make a point to her parent that she knows and is fully aware of her parents humanity. Her parents, she knows, are flawed. If they make an argument made on bad reasoning, how can she trust them?

When I was about seventeen years old, I walked for two hours to buy an energy drink at a gas station. I drank these occasionally in a way that is perfectly understood to not cause any health issues (providing you have no underlying conditions).

I bought two energy drinks, drank one the night that I went out, and saved one for lunch-time at school the next day. But before I could go to school, my mother invaded my privacy, searched through my backpack, and found the energy drink.

I would think, to most parents who’s knowledge isn’t stuck in the fear-mongering of 2006 that this would not be that big of a deal. Young adults drink energy drinks occasionally. But my mother was often uninformed. She feared for my safety which can almost be excused. I am not entirely sure of my feelings regarding this, but I do know that I am still displeased about her behaviour regarding this (among MANY other things).

She found the energy drink in my backpack and poured it down the drain. Energy drinks, she claimed, had 1000 milligrams of caffeine. She shamed me and told me I just wanted attention, to show off at school that I was cool enough to drink energy drinks. I wanted to “flaunt” it, she said. I remember that specifically because my mother would often claim that I wanted attention when I was young. If there’s one thing that has been incredibly difficult to forgive her for, it’s that. That is the type of thing that, when you tell a child over and over again, will probably result in the mindless, emotionless, fearful robot that I talked about previously. This was a mistake on her part, a big one.

The reason I am telling this is to demonstrate my previous point with better clarity. Imagine you were in my shoes. You had been drinking energy drinks occasionally for about three years now. You are a healthy, fit, young adult. You make a little bit of your own money cleaning towels and floors at your mothers spa, and decide to spend it on energy drinks occasionally. Then, one day, your mother invades your backpack, finds an energy drink you spent your money on, pours it out, insults you, and claims that energy drinks have 1000 milligrams of caffeine.

Will you, having experienced that, find it easy to trust your mother again?

I hope, if I explained this well enough and if you are being honest with yourself, that you would say no: it would be difficult to trust her again.

My mother was an inconsistent parent. With a harsh parent, or laissez-faire parent, a child will know what to expect. He may grow up with a sense of self-hatred inside, and he will have problems, but he’ll at least have a somewhat consistent view of the world and his place in it, no matter how fucked up that view is.

But inconsistent parenting has it’s own hidden demon. How do you develop your view of the world and your place in it when the world seems to change at the whim of an adults poorly-regulated emotional state? You will feel hopeless; you will feel lost; you will feel unloved and like you do not matter. Most of all, you will feel unsure of your Self. You won’t be able to trust the evidence of your eyes and ears.

Parenting is impossible to get right. The facets of the human mind are plenty and impossible to reign in to form a perfect, ideal being. Nobody is perfect. But at some point, you must be able to point these things out and recognize “Hey, there’s a big fuck up.” I know people don’t like to speak so objectively these days. Like I’ve said before, in writing these things, I don’t mean to criticize my parents like they might have criticized me as a child. I am working through the ideas that have come through my own mind. I reach some conclusions, but telling things like they are is separate from anger, resentment, or criticism. I do not feel when I write these things.

Tomorrow, maybe later today if I feel it. I might post one of my fiction stories. The issue with that is that I’m going to have to read it line by line and copy it onto my computer monitor as it only exists on paper now that my school email is gone. I’ll see whenever I do that.

Today, I finished two economics/statistics quizzes ahead of time. I did some studying using a practice midterm for my Operating Systems course. Later, perhaps tomorrow, I will start writing my Metaphysics questions. The metaphysics questions will be pretty simple, I think. I like to write and think I am capable (if I take my time) at forming my thoughts clearly and coherently. The Operating System midterm will take place after the break. I don’t know how I feel about that. I’ll study hard, but the instructor is just not very good. She’s the head of the department, unfortunately, and people go easy on her for various reasons, but I think she’s one of the worst two professors I’ve ever had. The other worst professor I ever had is an entire story, I think. This one just spends half the class writing things on the board that are already on her slides presentation and stumbling over her words and failing to answer basic questions from students. I wonder how familiar she even is with Operating Systems, or Computer Science as a whole.

Later tonight I have a band rehearsal with Possum. It’s nice weather out today which means we might get to walk over, which I always enjoy. That’s it for now, I think.

Maybe it’s time I talk about Possum. I debated between doing this today, and between finally digitizing some of my fiction. Truth be told, I wanted to wait to write this for a little bit, but for some reason I feel it might be time.

I will give a faster account and perhaps engage in more depth in the future if I feel it is warranted. When it comes to this subject, I feel that further engagement would be warranted. But I’ll start with the real basics at least, the key points I remember.

There is so much I want to say, but will have to leave out for some semblance of brevity.

On April 17th, 2023 I had my final exam for the semester of school. The class was Programming Languages, a third year course at the university for students in the computer science program. The class seemed to combine some knowledge we’d experienced in previous semesters. The exam asked us about algorithms involving triangular matrices, regular and context-free grammars, and we had to read snippets of Fortran code. Looking back, it was a fairly broad scope for a course.

I remember our course project was creating a programming language like they might use on Texas Instrument calculators. We weren’t writing real complex programming languages, but I’m proud of the work I did anyways. Especially because I did it all by myself. I never talked to anyone in that class. I’ve talked to people in computer classes before, but that class was one of the ones where people didn’t really say much. This is more common among computer science students, I have found. The course project was for groups of three people. I did it all alone, and I did it well. I remember the countless days I spent working on it. The code was written in Scheme. I had to implement a compiler from scratch and everything that goes into a simple programming language.

I felt bad walking out of that exam room. I didn’t know it at the time, but I passed the class. I think it was because everyone did as bad as I did on the final exam or worse. It seemed like a lot of the material on the exam was not actually covered in the course. A lot of the computer instructors I have met at this university were rather poor.

I walked home from the university after that. It was warm outside with snow on the ground. The snow was melting and pooled on the sidewalks making puddles I had to avoid. The walk home would normally be 20-25 minutes for me. I live on a residential road that leads to the intersection that goes to the university. I made a stop at a grocery/pharmacy store on my way back and bought face wash.

I may have done this subconsciously because right next to the grocery/pharmacy store is the liquor store I used to go to every day. Buying face wash was my way of avoiding that, perhaps. At this time, I would’ve been just nearly 5 months without a drink.

I went straight home after that. and put the face wash in the shower. Then, I read from the Programming Languages textbook, trying to piece together how well I did on the final exam. After that, I started cleaning the apartment.

The apartment was always very tidy in a homely sense. You walk in the door and have the kitchen to your left, the dining table to your right, and the living room in front of you. Also to your left, right past the kitchen, is a hallway with two bedrooms on the right and a bathroom on the left. At the end of the hallway is a storage closet.

Everything had it’s place here. There were a lot of things occupying each area, but they were put away and out of sight. Except for one area. The larger bedroom was completely empty except for a desk and a shelf. The carpet was vacuumed, the windows were cleaned, and the closet was cleared.

I was looking for a roommate.

No matter how clean the apartment was, I had to spend extra time cleaning it today because I had a viewing. I wasn’t too glad it was on a day that I had an exam, but I scheduled it that way. I burned some candles while I read the textbook. I played piano and bass. I watched King of the Hill. Frankly, the day escapes me. I remember the things I did, but not the order.

I was in the process of writing a song that I have not released. Many of the songs I write go unreleased. This particular one was almost good enough, but I decided after nearly completing it that it was too unmusical. The music was good enough, except the last phrase repeated twice too many times. I was not sure about the vocals though. It starts off about a guy singing “I don’t want to live anymore” over and over again in a sort of homage to annoying dance music. The chorus is an instrumental polymeter. The drums are in 4/4 and the guitar and bass play in 7/4. The song is in two parts. After the second chorus, we go into a groovy blues line with an almost rap-like vocal line where the guy expands on trying to find a reason to live. After that, there is a piano section followed immediately by a long solo section which concludes with the guy saying he found a reason to live within himself with the inital line repeated in a major key.

So, that song was something I worked on for hundreds of hours. I will release it one day, but not for a little while at least.

I passed the day doing the things I found myself doing, until dinner, when I made a cheesy pasta dish. It was shortly after this that I turned the lights correctly, blew out the candles, received a phone call, and made my way down stairs.

The apartment is on the third and top floor of the complex. Nobody lives above me and nobody lives below me. I also only have one neighbour as my apartment is next to the stairwell. It really is the perfect apartment, especially for the price.

The phone call I received was from a woman who had an obvious accent that I couldn’t place. She told me that she believed that she had arrived at the apartment. I told her I would let her in. I walked down the long way thinking she, like most people who viewed the apartment, would have arrived at the front door. My apartment is the farthest one from the front door, however, so I always use the back door. She had gone to the back door though, and I met her and her dog by the tree in the yard.

“Pay no attention to the dog.” She said.

I did not look at the dog. We introduced ourselves and I took her up to the apartment as I told her all the points I wanted to tell. The dog rushed my cat a little bit, who I forgot to keep in my room. She gave the dog a lot of treats as she was training her. The dog was young, a new adult, just like my cat. She seemed to like the apartment, but had some reservations. She expressed that it might not be the type of place that would work for her and the dog, but she’d think about it. She talked about her Russian heritage. I expressed that I would be more than willing to, after living together for some time, help out with the dog. I wanted to show to her that I would be an easy roommate to get along with because I think that is true. Part of that might have to do with my desire for connection, but I think another part of that is that I’m a respectful and understanding person.

I don’t have any weird things that I stickle about. I expressed this to the woman who viewed the apartment. A lot of people renting out apartments or basement suites had weird conditions on which they would rent. No smokers (not ‘no smoking’ literally ‘no smokers’) no drinking (because the landlord didn’t drink), no pets including betta fish or simple tank animals. I dislike the things that the renters I heard about did, and I wanted to rent based on actual humans interacted with each other.

If you’re sharing a space with somebody else, it is for both of your best interests to become friends. And you make that very difficult when you tell somebody what they can’t do in their own home.

The woman who viewed my apartment ended up invited me to an open mic event the upcoming Wednesday, which was two days after she viewed the place. I came at 7:00PM, when it started and thoroughly enjoyed my time. I saw her band play. She played the violin, very well too, which I knew as she had told me when she wanted to rent that her job was a violin instructor. I played a song that I wrote for more or less solo piano.

The thing about playing an instrument very well, is that the average person probably can’t tell unless you’re playing something obviously technical. But when you’re playing something folksy, for example, the average person might not be able to tell the particulars. How can you tell an incredible musician when they are playing something easier? They play it flawlessly, AND they hold back. A good musician will want to prove themselves all the time. A better musician will know to hold back when the song calls for it. That’s one dimension by which I could tell this woman was very good at violin.

We sat next to each other that whole night, roughly three hours. We stayed until the close of the night. We talked about simple things that people who just met each other might talk about, especially those with similar interests. I talked about her formal music education, and what she listens to. She asked how long I had been playing. We left very shortly afterwards as we only really had time to talk after the open mic ended and the cafe closed.

A few days after the open mic, she scheduled a second viewing of the apartment, which I happily, and nervously, obliged. Happily, because I was glad that she still considered the apartment. That meant she liked the place and, more importantly, liked me. Nervously because I knew that this meant I was likely going to have to get close to another person, and another woman. For all that I crave close human connection, it scares me because I am reminded of how every person I was ever close to has abandoned or left me.

She came bearing gifts of friendship chocolate. I made us coffee and we sat on my shitty futon and talked for a while. I showed her the laundry room on the first floor and the mail room which she hadn’t seen yet on account of being responsible for the dog. We continued a conversation that I recall seemed to ebb more naturally than I had anticipated. We talked about work and school. I remember she talked about her parents and how how her dad had interesting politics. She remarked that she was apolitical, she couldn’t listen to or understand politics, which I appreciated. Because it’s not that people are too invested in politics, it’s that people are too enveloped in one political ideology (especially in universities). To hear that she thought more about things that matter or make a difference was a nice change of pace.

The next night, I believe, was when she made her decision. She decided to move in. I knew then that something major was going to change in my life. Every day, she moved some things in the place with the help of one of her bandmates and owner of the cafe at which the open mic took place.

The owner played the flute in her band and owned the cafe with her daughters who all helped her move in. When it comes to talking about Possum, these people I think are very important. She says that Possum is like family to her. She has extended this to me as well. I feel undeserving of being called family though. I don’t know why. I guess I’m confused as to why they would consider ME to be family.

On May 2nd, she had moved everything in and spent her first night. I remember the night before I had cooked Cajun chicken breasts and vacuumed. She had moved in some tea that day that was very strong and calming and I had drank that while eating the chicken I made. I remember thinking of it as my last night with the place to myself, which has been mostly true. The smell of the Cajun seasoning I used was powerful. I used it to make quesadillas shortly after she moved in and I’ve found it to be a meaningful reminder to me of how much in my life I value. I remember where I came from perhaps and it doesn’t scare me (maybe a little) but makes me feel hope.

We spent a couple weeks testing the waters, seeing how well we got along. I would get up in the morning and study a little bit in the living room. She would take the dog out for her daily run. Sometimes I put music on. She might return and do some work from home or art work. She is also an artists, which I haven’t mentioned as there is so much to be mentioned about Possum that I would not be able to keep it straight. Sometimes, we talked, sometimes we did our own thing.

I tried my best to give her space by doing things that needed to be done and taking my time. I needed to get groceries, so I’d hop on the bus and go to the second closest grocery store and take my time picking things out. I went all the way downtown to pick up some shirts as I figured I could use a few new ones. A few times, I would just go on walks.

I remember one particular day very shortly after she’d moved in. She left with her bandmate adopted mother to pick some groceries from a store. Housewarming, I think was the occasion. She said she would be heading into town and that I could text her if I wanted anything from there. She had a beautiful blue dress on. I don’t know how these things work, but seeing her that way left me unable to think straight. When she left, I had a sort of internal crisis. I didn’t know what was going on. I felt unsure if it was a good idea for us to live together with the feelings that I was feeling. I wondered if it would make me an unfit roommate in ways that would be difficult for me to see.

I decided to take a walk. I hopped on a bus going in a direction I hadn’t gone in before. It took me to a neighbourhood I had no reason to go to. It was far enough away, a little more than an hour walk back, if I stretched it out. So that’s what I did. I got off at the furthest stop and read my textbook at a Tim Hortons with a coffee before I started on the hour plus walk back.

Yes, now you know. I initially did not want to talk about places in my first post. But now I’ve done it. I’ve gone and named Tim Hortons as the coffee spot. You now know the country in which I live.

I was only in for about twenty minutes, during which Possum texted me asking if we had cooking oil. I told her we had olive oil. It felt like the first real roommate grocery-planning we had ever done.

At this point now, I need to take a tangent break. As I was writing this (I’ve been writing for a couple hours now), Possum asked me about it. I told her about how it helps my mind to go through things in my life and see what I feel and what it might mean. I gave her an earlier example about how I wanted to be a good roommate and how I think most renters are setting themselves up for disaster when they try to control what people do in their own homes. I think part of my desire to do so comes from my yearning for connection. Possum has it too, she admitted. I told her I go on way too many tangents and that the few people who read this are probably not terribly happy about it. She said I should start labelling each tangent “Tangent 1”, “Tangent 2” etc which I found funny.

The point of this tangent, before I got distracted on that tangent, was that looking back to the time when I saw Possum in her blue dress and I felt conflicted between desire, admiration, and the need to be a courteous and professional roommate, I remember how much anxiety I felt that early May. I am still prone to feeling that way. Very prone. But I also feel supported. There are no doubts and no reservations when I express my terrible, sometimes ugly, feelings. It’s hard, I imagine, to listen to me sometimes. You can probably tell from reading this. I feel very grateful is what I suppose I’m saying, and I think I’m a better person than I was nearly a year ago.

When I returned, she had been back for a while and was making a ramen type of dinner. It smelled very good. I ended up restringing my bass and likely read later that night before bed.

There was a pattern we ended up doing before bed that I found to be very comfortable. Sometimes we watched something together. We watched a show I don’t exactly remember the name of about a bunch of kids that are half people and half animals. They’re all different animals and some people want to help them, and others want to hunt them down. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic Earth. I remember it quite vividly. We watched that and then later we would talk for a long time before we went to bed. There were a few nights like that. Some, we spent up talking until 2:00AM before we finally went to sleep. I remember she’d show me some weird music and funny videos, and I’d show her funny videos, and we’d talk about our childhood and growing up, and friends we had. We made tea. It’s crazy to think about how simple it is for us to get along and perhaps that’s something that people take for granted. When you live with someone long enough, maybe sometimes you forget how miraculous it is that they are in your life; you forget how fortunate you are. I forget that sometimes. I aim to minimize that. I think it’s impossible to never forget. But I can remember to remember more. It’s good for you and also for them.

Some nights we watched the Sherlock Holmes series with Benedict Cumberbatch and the guy who plays the main guy in the first season of Fargo. I don’t know why I don’t remember his name. I might be really bad with watching movies and TV. We watched that often, and ended up finishing the series. It was Possum’s second time watching it as she saw it back when it was a thing I think in 2013 or something like that. Now we’re starting to get into the latter part of May as Possum moved in. We are more comfortable with each other. I had been joining her sometimes on her walks to the cafe in the morning. She’d bring the dog and run her in the fenced off area by the cafe. She’d kick the ball and the dog would fetch it. I’d do it too. We’d talk as we did it. Sometimes we’d do our languages as well. She inspired me to pick up Spanish again through Duolingo on the phone. Eventually though, I started learning Russian instead.

One time, she wanted to pick up some grow lights for her plants before work. She invited me to join her. I wanted to see the plant store and figured I could pick something easy to grow. We sat on the futon talking before we left and our arms touched. She didn’t move. our arms were touching each other and that was okay. I felt warm in that moment. When we left to see the plant store and I dropped her off at work, I said goodbye. She did too. While I was waiting for the bus ride home thinking of her, I realized that I think she likes me.

There is a small castle made of garbage near the university I go to.

The university is situated atop a large valley. Below is a river splitting the valley in half. On the side of the city with the university, there are plenty of residential neighbourhoods with gas stations and schools and parking malls; on the other side, is the rest of the city with the industrial and commercial areas, the college, grocery stores, and everything else.

But in between in that valley is something that not many people are aware of. It’s not hard to find, if you know where you’re looking.

I asked Possum about this, but she had never heard of the garbage castle. So, we planned on May 21st, I would take her there, and we would see the sunset at garbage castle.

And that’s what we did. She looked beautiful with her dress and her hat and I wore the homeschooled kid style that I feel I was never able to shed.

There are two levels to garbage castle. We climbed to the top one and couldn’t really make out the sunset, but it still felt right. She looked at me in a way that I’m sure she wanted me to kiss her. But I didn’t know for sure.

We decided to walk towards the direction of the sunset. We climbed up the valley into the neighbourhood as she told me stories about parks in Russia where old ladies would pick all the blueberries, the bears would starve, and the park rangers would get mad, or something like that. As we walked along the neighbourhood, it began to grow dark, so we started to make our way home. We kept running into cul-de-sacs and thought it was funny. Eventually we got really close to almost being home. She told me about an imaginary friend she had as a child that helped her deal with moving across the world. I found it touching.

Once home, we watched the Sherlock Holmes series. A night prior, our arms were touching as we watched it, as the dog had chosen the side of the couch she usually sat on. I asked her if she was okay sitting so close to me. She said she was. I told her that I liked it.

That night, she brought it up, and said that she liked it too. I asked if she wanted to be closer. So we cuddled on the couch, and I put my arm around her. She said she didn’t want to rush into anything, as she had before. I concurred and we left it at that because it felt right. Eventually, we put some sort of Three Musketeers movie on the background as we drifted off to sleep right there on the futon. The next day, we made steaks to welcome her into her new home.