If you were in a rush, then you should have caught the bus.
I’m sorry but i’m walking. Its not a big detour.
I don’t like your tone.
I don’t feel well.
This is a drag. I feel the drag.
ugh my back.
The cafe today was nice. Walking walking walking.
Did some shopping. That worked.
All was fine.
Drank a lot of water now.
lots of sunshine.
Bed early tonight I think.
Walking with Claudia wasn’t that pleasant, what a boring subject I brought up.
How far did I run? And in what time?
She’s a smart girl.
Bike shopping was not a success.
I’m still run-down.
In time; I will prevail above this sickness.
Might just sit in and study.
Good lad.

So i’m still getting my bearings of campus, right.
Walking to my english class, I accidentally went to philosophy instead (completely wrong room).
I barge into the classroom and immediatly realise my mistake.
So i’m there, kinda awkwardly thinking how to fix this interruption.
I look around the room. Cool as, I ask:
“Why am I here?” And promptly leave.
Halfway down the hall I hear clapping and can only imagine it was from their classroom registering what was basically the philosophy version of a driveby.

I call it “dropin method” classroom teaching.

I am the poor.
Paurve. Impoverished. Sickly and invalid.
I am man.
What I do has no cause or effect.
Only what I attribute value has value.
To go beyond is to invite darkness.
Wishing from within to comprehend.
I came here to write but one thing-
but I, I forgot. I’ve come to the conclusion.
Memory is fickle, foresight is tragic.
In the moment is where beauty lies.
And this is what I call magic.
So here is.
Here be.
So resides.
A story in full.

View.

Introducing himself.
Introduced herself.
They individually identified, and touched.
Confirming their reality.

A true moment did occur between them.
The chemistry and registry of the universe fed back to them and itself.
Sight to hearing and finally touch.
There is the moment relayed.
Beautiful action.

Where did it all go?
Where did it all fucking go?
How have I made it to this, to this now.
Today, not tomorrow or yesterday. Today.
Now. But now is mucus, now is cold-sweats.
Headache, shivering, sliding uncomfort.
Squirm and sniffle. Ears blocked, eyes bleary.
Blindly, clouded mind in a new city.
Lost and all is forgotten. So easy to look to tomorrow.
But nay. No! Look to today.
Do not fret, from past to future; to and fro.
Fear not your strife, suffer not my woe.
For today, is grim and great.
Sordid and lavish. Oh boy,
This time now, for all to enjoy.
Self-Schadenfreude.

A see-through paper bag.
“Like a plastic bag”
No Jan a glass bag.

Man-Maid Beach
Now I know what eyes can touch.
Beauty flickers, afarway crutch.
Bronze and slick and sleeping still.
Vagabond vice, reaping ill.

Sight a sense for feel and need.
My eyes b’gouged, freely decreed.

You don’t eat meat but we’re packed in like sardines.
Do you think you’d eat human flesh?
It’s bad to eat your own genus, race, type, species.
(isn’t that what lead to mad cow disease)
“Pree-on” disease. I knew it.

Mooney’s Bay Park.

Major Motivation is all people is self satisfaction.
Your life’s accumulation of experience leads up and into your own self.
What you believe to be good and proper and normal.
Over time you solidify. Become choosy. Decide what is best for you.
These choices are informed off of other information.
Sickness, health and a complicated value structure.
As we grow up, we become harder. More real.
But like glass. Sand, fired to extreme temperatures,
our beauty lasts just as long.
Despite our type, mold or colour.
Glass is made to be broken.
We grow brittle once be solidify.
Enjoy yourself, be unique and shapely.
Pane or glob.

I feel ill. So sick. Tired. Achy. I’m in a bad bad way.
I have some sort of cut on my foot that has got infected and my leg hurts.
Yesterday at the beach I got too much sun.
I’m all fucked up.
I will spend today in bed, do washing tomorrow, and if i’m not better.
Then i’ll have to go to the doctor. Frustrating times.

Law, how do you think I came across tonight?
What was the impression that I gave?
“I don’t know”…
O.K.
“I’d say, always, just as your… (how do you say in english), your… yeah I dunno.
Acting according to your personality”.
“more something like true, not trying to say what you are, acting accordingly”
“Etre fidele a soi meme”. I am true to myself.
Do you think anyone was bothered?
“maybe Manuell, because she positioned herself away from others”
“I don’t think you hurt anyone’s feelings”
To me it was fine, it was good.
“for people who enjoy sharing their thoughts, i’m not well placed to answer correctly, i’d say”.
“I don’t think anyone was bothered”

Question- We saw a guy get hit by a car.
5 or 10 people were there. So we kept walking. It was a big surprise.
astonishing maybe.

As an ambassador for Australia, I feel obliged to be quiet.
How do you think people would like that?
Its a shallow stereotype, but there is some truth in these things.

If you take issue with my talking. Then it is you with the problem.
But noise is still noise. And pollution is still pollution.
“And if I’m destroying your cool, you should let me know”

We all have Easter.
We all have the expression that if you press a shell to your ear you can hear the ocean.
-Nobody found that amazing.

Pranks are great.
What kind of pranks? Salt upside down, lid off.
Replace/ salt with sugar.

I asked Laurent what he thought “commies” stood for.
They are a first year group in Arts that focus on comunication.
Naturally I thought of them as the Russians. They wore blue shirts however, so I was hesitant to bridge the connection.
So Laurent goes; Commies? It’s like “magic tricks for dummies”.
It’s not the real thing, its a play on words.
Amazing where the mind can lead you. So wrong, so out there.

Do you believe that you can actually influence people, or just comply with the rudimentary life and death question.

I wish I was motivated by sex like all the rest. That way my energy would be right for all, or at least some.
A constant. ICK.
To redress with girls of my teenage years. My chemical imbalances.

If you graduated and you could have something golden what would you choose to have?
“A golden carrot” (on a stick)

I would arrive, present from a waking dream. Toothless with half a digested golden carrot lodged in my digestive tract.
-This was a ramble to the young exchanges students I had for company.
Fleeting understanding of a group whose second language is my first.
Quickly now, down the rabbit hole; confusion and a stream of babbling follow.

“I let my subconscious throw up when it feels like it”

I met MARC – the Vice President “the guy with the money”, of uOttawa.
And then bumped into him again on the stairs later on that day.

This is an olive branch.
Give you my love’s chance.
This is me in earnest.
Trust the feeling as furnace’d.

So, many problems.
Issue to take.
All’ve got one.
For goodness sake.

‘Tronquil’

I am getting sick.
So fucking tired.
Jesus.

Today the international meeting thingo was on.
Tomorrow I begin university for real.

I still feel lethargic.
I think I need to go for a run.
Maybe give the gym a try.
Mix it up anyway.
A couple of early nights wouldn’t go astray.
Many many things to achieve.
Feeling a bit tired.
I need energy to tackle these tasks.
I want clarity to hold all these ideas in my head at once.

Today I realised a good friend of mine in Melbourne;
his younger brother is in hospital with pneumonia.
Scary thought, losing a loved one.
Especially a family member, like a brother.
I dare not imagine, and can barely fathom the hurt it would inflict to the fabric of my being. What a state.
So with that thought, accompanied by the ever present basic existential “Nothing matters really, except for that which you attribute meaning and thus give value”.

So I wrote him a poem.
Because poetry deals quite well with the tragedy of life.
It rhymes, its a cute little test that everyone can partake.
If they follow the poem, if they read it through; how it affects them will be different. Some will be moved, others without care. Relevant or with a prefix, people having read something so easy as a basic poem will be influenced.

So this is what I wrote:

Bed+Babes & Icecream –

His name is Mitch,
He knows how to party.
His company’s rich-
handsome and hearty.

Take not for granted-
times, love and affection.
These days he’s planted,
test-tubes in erection.

But soft we will pray,
better fortunes afield.
Bounce back today.
Best wishes are sealed.

“Mitchy, you’re a radical and energetic young man.
You have a loving family that will always be there, and a bright future to look forward to. I send my positive thoughts and energies your way.”
Sincerely,
Patrick.

Things are often defined by their contrasting nature,
Therein beauty and enjoyment can be found in sickness.
Recovery, patience and invalidity are reflective times.
Not something to become addicted.
But the idea that these times, simply by seeking out comfort can be good.
Mind, there is no feeling like freedom.
You are momentarily mothered again, your issues to be absolved.
This is only a buffering stage. You are required to recover.
Please, please, please. Recover.
Seek new feelings.
Sense the free world.
Find perspective, in this time.
Be rambunctious and pugnacious, fight-
By all means. But do so with good in intention.

No free store today.
“Gratuie magasin” – or something.
Practicing french every day. My spelling will grow.
English major doesn’t mean you can write in another language.
The phonetic rules are all off kilter.

Been doing a bit of poetry and thinking.
Nothing great.

Are we all the hero of our very own dream?

Psychological reactions?

One consciousness.

-MY MING-

I am the hole in a butterflies wing.
She was the warmth, that snowmelts bring.
BUT;
With change & food-high happiness, hinge.
Our full newfound (pockets)/comfort lacklustres, impinge
NOW!
Hope is but a niggle, new narcissus cling.
Wrought with richness forever fragile.

“I” believe in the power of human movement.

“Self” Actualize

What is “true”

What is “real”

As the old dog, what is expected of you. I mean. If we’re going to go out. What to do. Visit the country proper. For real.

I arrived par avion.
My french is not so good.
The people at the Canadian border said I won’t be able to work during my exchange; my heart breaks into a million pieces.

Customs takes a bit longer than I wanted it to, so I missed my lift from the airport.
Instead I met two girls from another university and they gave me directions to my campus.
I get off at the wrong stop. (one too early).
A girl jumps off the bus and drags me back on, SAVED.
*This is a good start, what nice people they have here in Canada*
-This will be a recurring theme for this exchange I feel.

The translation of “ON” in French is difficult.

So I get to uOttawa, its late. Maybe 11.30.
I ask a nice girl, wandering along with her boyfriend for directions
“Do you go to Ottawa U? Where’s the sign-in desk?”

She happily pointed me in the right direction.
I arrive at the desk, get my key from a chipper young woman and a guy that sounded like he had a cold.
I then walked around for a little bit to find my student accommodation.
I quickly get lost, meet some french students that are in health and nutrition: they are selling sausages and burgers and chips. I make the easy joke. “First years huh?”
They are impressed by my wit.
I stand around growing more and more awkward.
A young man comes over, he’s french. He talks about how all the Frenchyz add an ‘H’ to their words when its unnecessary but subtract the ‘H’ when its H-Important.
‘Appy to meet you’.
I laughed, asked for directions and left.
Again I was lost.
I asked many people for directions.
I met a girl named Holly.
She held my hand; took me back to the sign-in.
The woman had told me my room number 135A, but not the building.
Maybe it was my fault. Jet lag + it was late, and I was tussling with the problem of eating a sausage from “health” students. It had more wrinkles than I did. Ick.

I found my apartment.
I listened at all 4 of the doors. The last thing you want to do as a new housemate is barge in on your new housemates at 1am. So I listened-
I did some deduction. Room D was getting re-painted.
So I figured room A was opposite or parallel but NOT diagonally across.
So I made an educated gamble.
Correct!
The room had no bedsheets. -Crap!-
So I throw down all my clothes and created a basic nest.
What a lovely night’s rest I had.

The next day I freshened up.
It was 11am when I finally rose from my slumber.
No food though. Eeee-gads.

Met my housies!
Edouard and Laurent.
Both French.
Ed sails and is from Normandy.
Laurent is from the south, I forget where. I call him “Law”

So we went and did some food shopping.
Then I went and did some bed sheets shopping.
Then we went out and met some other people – A heap of girls.
For dinner.
It was nice, a little overwhelming. Because there was like 8 of them.
And it was just me and my two housemates, and we’d only met that day.
We all ate and had one drink.

I went to the bathroom and got a profound nosebleed.
I felt like, if I was older and more unhealthy I would have had a brain aneurysm and died. Plenty of time for that when i’m older.
Fucking flying, what a cop out. The world is so large. Vast one might say.
Unexplored, unique and vibrant. Diverse! But yeah, cop out. Headache, ghostly white.
Nothing a cold class of water, lots of nose pinching, a tissue and patience can’t fix. (just a bad moment in time, it will pass)

After that we visited a games house. It was rad.
We all played Cards Against Humanity. It was good. (as the bible would say).
I had a coffee, went home, absolutely charging now – which was annoying.
It was about 4am when I finally packed it in for the day.
I’d made my bed, written some poetry, drawn some cartoons and done some diary stuff.
The boys bid me goodnight as soon as we got in.
These first few days sure have been expensive.
Taking a heavy toll. But that’s ok.

I need to buy a bike. That would be rad.
I got my bus pass today, that was 300 dollars. Which is crazy.
Meh.

Yesterday I woke up late which was no surprise.
We had made plans to meet up with the girls again.
I got my student card and asked some key questions, my room is coming together slowly. Additionally;I feel like I wasn’t prepared for this warm weather off the bat. Not to worry, roll with thy punches. I’ll try to go for a run every day to make the most of the pleasant sunshine.

5pm came around. I’d gone for a walk and bought some kitchen stuff. Utensils etc.
Needs must! All around Reidu street Riedu? I forget. I’ll check that: AH! RIDEAU street. Nailed it.

Anyway so then, we met up with the girls again.
We went to the baseball and watch Ottawa vs Quebec. It was a dearby(?) maybe not. Perhaps just your ordinary rivalry. Anyway Ottawa lost, it was sad.
I had a coffee, to get change for the bus and perk up a bit.
I found myself feeling like an extra (not the main character) in my own life.
It was abstract. Bizarre.
Totally unlike me, to feel things revolving outside of my control or care.
I was stagnant, defeated, boring and stuck. I was on pause; playing the silent, unsuspecting fan perfectly. Basically invalid. Weird.

Before the game, band with bad hair, strange mascott and chocolate cookies.
Marvelous.
During: people competed for a pizza, by celebrating and making the most sound. TOTAL ABSTRACTION – Circumstantially off-putting and crazed.
After the game, fireworks to the soundtrack of Lord of the Rings.
Stranger still. But I was transfixed. Such beauty. Mesmerized. (Z = USA)?

Circumstance changes to circumstanTially. Why the ‘t’? Why not a ‘c’?

Today I woke up early, got my bus pass, signed up for ARTS 101 week and shook hands with the new Prime Minister – which should be one word right?

Its a liaison! (weird spelling there)

I had the nerve to ask his name “Jacques” I suppose was his answer. A nice enough fellow. Considerate and well-to-do. Its all about who you know.

“I am 25. I wonder if I could be president”.
all you can eat bread buffet was on, I chatted to some political science students in tie-dye t-shirts and organised to go to an event this evening.

Might go for a jog now.
Anyway that’s the news at 3:20pm Ottawa time.
Long weekend this weekend.
All about the disorientation and growing comfortable.
Now I run to buy a soccerball.
Wish me luck.