Organizing My Disorganized Life

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I’ve always wanted to get my life organized, Then I’d know what I’m doing now, Maybe tomorrow too. It would also help compensate my past disorganization. What is that saying again? “If I’d only been organized, what my life could have been!” No, that’s not it, but it’ll have to do.

Truth be told, I am an organized person. My space is neat and my pens are in a row. I have an agenda, and I love to make lists. I’ve got things under control. Even if I don’t. What it is is that I’m organized in my disorganization.

My thinking is that being too organized is worse. You’re left staring into the abyss of “what now?” With everything sorted and labelled, boxed and stacked, pruned and jarred, all the plans and people in your life ordered, there’s only the plans for the plot and stone. And that’s just stupid. Better to have never bothered at all.

The ephemeral is the thing, the magic and tingling, the joy of stepping out and seeing what’s next. And so, yes, to the organization, but only to the point where the moments are furrowed so that things may happen, knowing there’s a drawer full of clean underwear for the morrow.

The Ennui of a Game Seven Final

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“Game seven,” offered Toronto Blue Jays John Schneider on the eve of the 2025 World Series finale. “No two words are better in sports.”

I must disagree. As exciting and intense as the contest might be – and was – it’s the finality of it that strips it of its sheen, leaving one to ask “What of tomorrow?”

In other words, as much as tomorrow might creep at its petty pace and life be a walking shadow, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, it’s sure as hell a lot better than the alternative: waiting until next season.

Trump ‘n Hegs: Peace Creates Hate

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Trump: We shall have a stirring world again.

Hesgeth: This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors, breed ballad-makers.

Trump: Let me have war, say I. It exceeds peace as far as day does night. It’s sprightly walking, audible and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.

Hesgeth: ‘Tis so, and as war, in some sort, may be said to be a ravisher. So it cannot be denied but peace is a great maker of cuckolds.

Trump: Ay, and it makes men hate one another.

(Not really Trump and Hegseth – obvi! – but the more well-spoken war-mongering Servingmen in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Corlioanus.)

Verisimilitude of What Ever Shall Be

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I was not of age, a year or so too young, and I had found a secret lonely lovely place, the corner of a bar on Yonge Street below Dundas, The Hard Rock before The Hard Rock was The Hard Rock, dark and empty, the street outside like that too, a Blue Diamond stubbie on a Blue Jays cardboard coaster, one other person here, the bartender, an old guy, probably in his 40s, in this magic lonely lovely place.

I was thinking about why I hated teachers, how they liked to yell and assert their bullshit because they could, the bully of bullies. “If you don’t listen, I will kill you.” It was supposed to be funny. It wasn’t. She had assigned a 300-word piece of verisimilitude, as much detail as possible conveying a thing or moment. I had chosen a tea kettle boiling, the click of the switch, the bubbling and steam, the anticipation. She said that I should try again. “You haven’t quite captured it, have you?”

It was my first rejection of many to come. I didn’t know that then, but I know it now. I’m not getting it apparently. “It just isn’t the project for me right now.” I think about, imagining the world on hold, back in the dark lonely lovely place, an old guy in his 40s, slumped at the end of the bar, and have another drink.

At the DMV

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I had all of my documents, passport, old driver’s license, social insurance, proof of residence, everything. I just needed to pop in for my picture and a signature.

“Do you have your appointment?” The security guatrd offered a friendly smile.

“Appointment?”

I waved me over to the window. “Scan the QR code.”

“Oh.” The website listed every DMV in the state, a litany of addresses and zip codes. I was fucked. I would have to come back. I scrolled down and found a slot in just 20 minutes. What miracle was this? I showed the security guard my screen.

“Check in over there.”

“Thank you.” I filled out the form and sat with my ticket, U0091.

Now serving U0091 at counter 11.

This was insane. I had slipped into some other dimension where the DMV was an easy, almost plesant experience. I gave the woman my ticket and signed the document.

“Please look at the camera. You can smile if you like.”

I was aghast. “You are so efficient!”

She gave me my ticket back. “Sit and they will call you.”

“What do you mean?”

“They will call you.”

Now serving U0062 at counter 19.

“Oh, okay.” I sat and looked at my ticket again. U0091. It was beginning to make sense. I looked around at the many others all waiting quietly, staring up at the screens.

Now serving U0063 at counter 4….Now serving WF0045 at counter 21

What was I thinking? Of course I would have to wait. I scrolled through the news, my mind glazing over at more Trump insanity, assembling the generals, telling them that the cities were training grounds. This fucking guy.

Now serving WL001 at counter 12…Now serving LR045 at counter 7…Now serving EN008 at counter 17…Now serving LE018 at counter 14…Now serving U0064 at counter 10.

This was going to to take a some time. I wouldn’t back to work on time.

Now serving EM009 at counter 21. Now serving U0071 at counter 12.

Very late. I texted. Sorry about that. The DMV, you know.

Now serving LR0047 at counter 11. Now serving U0072 at counter 4.

What did matter? I was in the queue. It would happen sometime. I scrolled and liked and posted retorts to the brazenly false images and data on the White House Instagram account and wondered when they would come after me. Crazy world. Interesting world. Whatever.

Now serving U0090 at counter 15.

I looked up. My time was almost up. I checked my papers. Did I have everything? Odds were low.

Now serving LE022 at counter 6. Now serving EN012 at counter 4. Now serving LE023 at counter 7.

Crazy fucking world. Why couldn’t we just make sensible decisions and get along? I had a friend in college that always said that. “Why can’t we all just get along?” He was a first-class moron.

Now serving U0091 at counter 14.

I stood sharply, stepped the wrong way, turned, and realized that that was the wrong way, that I had gone the right way the first time, and approached counter 14 and handed in my paperwork.

“Your slip.” She looked bored. At least she wasn’t angry.

“I’m sorry?”

“I need your slip.” A little irritable perhaps.

I gave her my U0091 slip.

“Okay.” She waved for my paperwork.

“Sorry about that.”

She highlighted my problems in green. “Your full name.”

“The signature too?”

“Just write out your full name.”

I returned the form.

She highlighted more. “And check the box.”

“Which one?”

“Just check yes.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

There were more highlights and fixes, and suddenly it seemed I was almost there.

“Follow the prompts on the panel.”

“Okay.” It was the voter registration stuff. I registered as a Democrat, even if I was only marginally so. I mean, it was obvious what had to be done. Get this guy out of there. But the boxes wouldn’t click. “Uh…”

“Tap. Don’t press.”

The screen worked half of the time, less than that. I kept at it, tapping not pressing, and eventually made it through. She gave me my old license back.

“I keep that?”

“Oh no.” She took it back.

I offered a smile. “At least I got that one right.”

“How are you paying? Credit?”

“Yes.”

“Follow the prompts.”

She gave me a slip of paper, my temporary license, and I was away. I had done something big. I had a renewal for eight years, the enahnced one. I was enhanced. And no one was chasing me down. I took a peak back around as I thought that. At least not yet.

My Fever Dream About Fever Dreams

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My fever dream about fever dreams begins with a man rising out of the East River and approaching the shore like MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. He strides with certainty onto the island and into a hotel. He proceeds to rise up through the ceiling and crushes everything around until the space metamorphises into a ballroom.

The music blossoms – for this appears to be a music video fever dream – into a kind of Indian techno. The room is filled with spectacular light and joyous people. It pulls back to the dreamer – me – trying to embrace and share that vision with others, waking, wandering out into the night, telling others, old friends, strangers, students, even casting them, promising roles, searching out the exact location for each scene. Everyone is inspired and encouraging. This really could be something.

He – I – cannot use my phone and then pee into the front engine of a car, sure signs that this is still a dream, not as fevered, but soldier on, trying to remember all of the details of the genesis and come up through the layers, less feverish now, and awake, holding on to the key moments. This is the thing that will reach others, to you. You will understand me now. And so I write all of it down.

The Best Times Are When I am Alone

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And yet, I think of who to talk to all of the time.

On the dock at Ahmic Lake

The Art of Procrastination

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I meant to post this blog a long time ago…

I was going to do it first thing in the morning. That was the plan. I’m good at procrastinating, and I was going to write about that, all the things I do instead of the things I’m supposed to do, but I needed to get something to eat. And the apartment needed tiddying, the plants watering. The windows were dirty too. And I had the laundry and the shopping. And so…yeah. I would have to get to it tomorrow.

I wrote notes the next day – or maybe it was the day after that – about tiddying and dirty windows. And then I opened my emails and deleted and answered, one an announcement about a Stereolab concert and bought tickets to that, and fiddled with my playlist. My CDs were a mess, completely disorganized; I had to reorder those.

I went for a hike on the weekend, certain my mind would get moving on the trail, and came up with a script idea about a woman, more of a spirit or witch, something like that, who wanders about and subtly moves different people in the right direction to keep the world in some kind of order. I’d finish the blog when I got home and start the outline.

I didn’t do either. It was a long week, calling and emailing, convincing, buying and answering, following up, calculating, choosing alternate dates, transferring, confirming, calling again, reminding, booking, dealing and answering again, listing and crossing off, adding again, feeling like I was getting somewhere when I wasn’t.

And then things got weird. I was a trapezoid person running along a shoreline. I was trying to out-distance death. The more I ran, the more I turned on myself and tried on different meat puppet skins, some electric, others baggy and old fashioned. I checked my head again and again to find out what wasn’t working, what was working too fast, and realized my lungs were outside myself. I was racing along the shoreline again.

Goya sketch

It was a trap, my little trap, being conscious of one day never being conscious again, as if that meant anything, but I could blog about that, Yes, the procrastinating blog, and even while thinking about why bothering with anything, especially that, I began.

I can’t believe I got this done. I doesn’t feel like it.

Knowledge Messes Up My Self

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I had something in me that was real. I remember it. I don’t just remember it. I was wholly in that, everything raw and wild. That was when I was a kid, and I didn’t think about it like that. I was a kid and the world was open to anything I could imagine. I want to get back to that.

My head is old now. Experiences have eroded my wiring, bashed it about with learning to kowtow, inebriation and pretending to know. The desire is the thing, on tippy toes, to keep getting up like that. And I cannot.

It reminds me of a realization of love, that thing as it was at the outset, pure, the excitement, that anticipation, all of that wonder in the eyes, then realizing it was not magic, but a drug we’re self-prescribed. And now I can’t think of it as anything else.

The light from a childhood window, the smells from the hall, sounds of people downstairs, someone approaching, a mother, maybe not, knowing that space, looking back, realizing you are there, no one to answer to, just for the moment, in that world as long as you can make it, without closing your eyes, for as long possible.

You Want Me to Care? Is That It?

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If I die, then I die. The loss to this world won’t be great. I run through the memory of my past in its entirety and can’t help asking myself: Why have I lived? For what purpose was I born? There probably was one once, and I probably did have a lofty calling because I feel a boundless strength in my soul. But I didn’t divine this calling I was carried away with the bits of passion, empty and unrewarding.

My love never brought anyone happiness. I loved for myself, for my personal pleasure. And maybe I will die tomorrow. And not one being on this earth will have understood me totally. Some thought of me as worse, some as better, than I actually am. Some will say “he was a good fellow”, others will say I was a swine. Both one and the other will be wrong. (From Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time)