Summer-sick delirium. Sky-high nightlight. Chilled-sweat cocoon.

Too aware for dreaming, I find myself in a flat-grey foundry. Edges glowing molten.

Envisioning a young, will-be mother who doesn’t realize I’m just a time traveler. An inter-continual tourist.

I don’t fill her in. Let her, uncharacteristically, close the range. Keep my distance.

She, too, finds herself nearly alone. Among new and intimidating strangers. Exposed, unlike me, to their immediate veracity.

I’ve seen them age. Soften. Know better than to believe they can hurt either of us.

Little more than a potential consequence of choices yet to be made, I am happy to extend the invicibility of my irrelevance. Or, perhaps, just impossibly practiced.

It could be reflex.

“He sounds nice,” I echo. “And who doesn’t have some baggage?”

Any hint of ominous irony long sinced divorced from my disposition. Intrigued by the possibility that this could all be a paradox.

Awakened, muscles trembling, head throbbing.

Day looming.

Forged impenetrable.

Cutting to the heart of the matter.

Adventure writing is not only what this project needs to be, but also an activity that will encourage me to ravenously consume the remainder of my days.

This is not a prayer for an impossible dream. As the saying goes, adventure happens when plans take a detour.

And I have no fucking clue where I am.

It’s exciting.

Encouraging.

But, with my writing pants on, it’s all too easy to focus on where I’m not. Instead of letting ideas blossom on the page, I let them nest in my brain. Where their rambunctious progeny convince me to genuinely pursue the realization of whatever experience I’m imagining.

No matter how ridiculous.

A couple weeks back, I was trying to figure out a way to flirt with a young woman who sometimes works the coat check at a venue I attend on an infrequent, but nevertheless recurring, basis. I have a standing rule against hitting on service staff, but fuck it. Rules are made to be broken.

Coincidentally, I recently bought a fabulously badass jacket, and decided convincing her to take extra-special care of it could be just the angle I needed.

“I know this is a big ask, but is it possible for my coat not to be on top of the pile of coats that everyone’s going to be having sex on?”

That, of course, being the coat check cliché.

“Somewhere in the middle would be fine.”

Fortunately, for both my reputation and my jacket, there was no coat check that night. She was selling beer instead, and I had nothing specific prepared for that topic.

Turns out we attended different programs at the same arts school.

Not exactly sure where I should have gone with that, if anywhere at all. It was an enjoyably scenic detour on an already interesting ride.

I’m not concerned with the destination.

She dances down the sidewalk, as the sun behind her rebels against the horizon.

Smiles at you.

Maybe you return the smile, and she compliments you on your jacket.

She likes the colour. A faded army green that blends seamlessly with the ever-resilient avenue.

You let her know it was a Christmas gift from your father. Maybe feel a little guilty. Wonder if she’s had the good fortune to receive many of her own. Wonder if her father knows how she’s getting by. If he knows her at all.

Wonder if you’re just a total asshole for making such commonplace assumptions about an obviously nuanced individual.

There’s nothing to do but lend her an ear.

“I got eight pieces of crack in my pocket I gotta get rid of.”

Genuinely sympathize with her hustle.

“Hope you can move that shit.”

Exchange one last smile.

Feel pretty damn confident that people are all right.

Fuck the details.

It’s a damn shame I haven’t devoted more of my life to reading books. My days are full of random, time-consuming events that leave little space for longer narratives. Accompanying a friend to a book store to hear a collection of other people read from their books, for instance.

By the time I showed up, the crowd was pushing shelves aside. It was standing room only for five readings.

During a poignantly joyful passage, I had to choke back some tears. And then calm down a boner during an alarmingly erotic one.

I met both challenges with masterful composure. In the face overwhelming emotions, chillin’ the fuck out is a must.

Although, in retrospect, I should have taken time at the end of the evening to express these feelings to the authors responsible for eliciting them.

“I almost cried” is probably praise so cliché as to be almost insulting. Almost. Without attempting to explain that I would have cried had I not been in public, because obviously I’m too insecure to cry in public—unless maybe it’s in a dark movie theatre and I think I can get away with it—the whole gesture is just qualified right into insignificance.

Thanks for coming out.

However, “Blood began rushing into my penis” is so apparently crass as to be assuredly uncommon. Startling in its objective bluntness. Weird enough to be accepted as genuine.

Is it inappropriate?

Or is it just life imitating art?

The words from your page, echoing through your voice sent me right out of that packed basement. I was neither the bashful giant nor the sultry palm reader. Rather, I became their experience.

It was so magnificently real that I had to will myself away from it by focusing on a shelf of full-colour science books written for elementary school children.

Shift my left leg slightly forward.

Maintain a level of decorum becoming of such an event.

Spend the rest of the night feeling isolated and immature. Not ashamed of what I experienced, but lost in awesome adoration of such a superior and skillful manipulation of this curious craft.

I’m going to need to make time to read that book. And make sure I’m wearing comfortable pants when I do.

I spent my Saturday night with a friend on the precipice of a hefty breakup. One of her many concerns was the power dynamic in her plummeting relationship.

I really had nothing to say on the matter, because that’s not an aspect of relationships I tend to consider.

Like…

At all.

This could be why my last one fucked up so badly. A part that I didn’t even realize existed was broken.

There’s one thing the other half of that said to me back in December that’s been rattling around my heart since then.

“I think I loved you.”

I have just assumed that I should be reciprocating that sentiment. But I don’t share those feelings.

I know I love you.

I might not be happy with you. I might not trust you. I may have lost most of the respect I had for you. I might know that you can’t be in my life.

Even if you wanted to be.

But the notion that any of that should change my most simple, essential and absolute feeling for you is blatantly apocryphal.

I can’t pretend otherwise.

Now, I concede that my beliefs about the nature of love are, perhaps overly, informed by spiritual conceptions of the subject. Christianity’s agape and Buddhism’s metta, in particular. These are simply the core of my understanding of love, and regardless of its manifestation, I will always cultivate it from this.

Love doesn’t come and go. It’s not a delicately tenuous condition that needs to be constantly and carefully maintained. It’s a robust truth that nurtures us, even when we neglect to nurture it.

unconditional

infinite

powerless

Sometimes, when you’re stuck in detention with an amateur bull rider, the thing to do is blow up a watch in a microwave.

I’m not entirely sure what I’m trying to establish by bringing up this seventh grade escapade, but it could very well have something to do with the relativity of fun.

And relativity, as we know, is largely dependent on observation.

In this regard, I consider hipsterism to be somewhat akin to quantum physics. It seems to be a real thing, but even the top experts in the field can only sort of explain the parts of it that they understand.

So I don’t exhaustively concern myself with it.

If, at some point, someone happens to observe the superposition of my character occupying the hipster state, I’m probably not going to be inclined to dispute it.

Mostly because I’m trying to spend less time occupying the stubborn-asshole state. It’s probably bad for my chakras. Or qi. Or whatever.

This is why I’m backpedaling on an idea I had about the distinction between enjoying irony and enjoying things ironically.

For a while, I was really uneasy with the concept of enjoying something—a song, a film, a phrase—ironically. I feel that irony, as a component element of something larger, can absolutely serve to enhance its enjoyablity. However, to enjoy something strictly ironically seems to me to concede that it has no genuinely enjoyable qualities whatsoever.

Now, I enjoy a lot of silly things. But I enjoy them because they’re preposterous, not because it’s preposterous for me to enjoy them. I have come to think of this as enjoying something ridiculously, rather than ironically.

I think the notion has its merits, but that doesn’t make it gospel. What works for me won’t necessarily work for everyone else.

Several weeks back, I was cruising through one of the hippest intersections in the city. At two or three in the morning, it wasn’t dead, but it was pretty laid back. Some of the only other people around were two, knit-sweater-wearing twentysomethings rocking skinny jeans and thick-rimmed glasses. They were riding double on a bicycle, with the wind vigorously massaging their unkempt locks. The look on their faces was unmistakeable.

Absolute. Essential. Joy.

Now, I don’t know these people. Probably wouldn’t recognize them if they hopped into the shower with me. But when I write their story in my mind, I have a clear understanding of their motivations.

They’ve suffered some disappointments in their time. As a result, they approach experiences, extraordinary and everyday, with an almost unhealthy level of incredulity. More often than not, they derive a comforting sense of satisfaction from the accuracy of their initial assessments.

But!

When they’re proven wrong.

They experience an ecstasy approaching the unimaginable. Burning with the fire of ten thousand watches in ten thousand microwaves.

It’s a gorgeous August day in 2010. I’m wearing shorts and sandals and sunglasses.

And that’s about it.

I’ve got a bottle of ManMix in my hand.

And a brain full of fun stuff.

Did I mention that I’m hanging out at Shambhala Music Festival? With about ten thousand unreasonably sexy people? All writhing to the low end from six stages worth of PK speakers, which shake the otherwise quaint West Kootenay paradise.

It’s like living inside a tricked out, uncensored episode of The Raccoons.

Run with us.

We’ve got everything you need.

The marketplace is the central hub of the festival. A collection of food vendors and other services connect to pretty much every stage. If you’re out for a shamble—the act of aimlessly and inevitably wandering into adventure—you should pass this way.

It’s here that I spy the cops. Just hanging out.

I can’t not talk to them.

“Do you mind if I ask you guys a question?” I interject into their afternoon.

“Sure,” says the tall, moustachioed constable.

“Well,” I begin, “You guys know there’s some illegal activity going on around here, right?”

The stockier, coal-haired officer checks behind himself, looks back at his partner and then right through my sunglasses.

“I don’t see anything,” he shrugs.

I test the limits of my grin, confident that the law is in good hands with these mounties.

Run with us.

We are free. 

Remember that time I made a drunken pass at you on facebook?

When I told you that you were the sexiest woman in that class we took together?

Well, I still feel bad about it.

In part, I feel like I never should have done it. You really don’t deserve to be harassed like that just because you’ve got some alluring curves. I’m sure you’re somewhat used to it, but that in no way excuses or mitigates my behaviour.

I’m a bit of a dirtbag.

But I’ve had some cause to reconsider this exchange over the last couple weeks, and my biggest regret is not doing a better job of justifying why I felt that you were—and are—so goddamn smokin’ hot.

You’ve got a lot going for you.

But it’s your apex confidence that dominates it all.

Seductive, sensual excitement bleeds out of you.

Intoxicatingly.

Infectiously.

Invasively.

Indulgently.

Indisputably.

I could almost get lost in it. But we’re clearly different, you and I.

As much as I’d love to ignore that, I’m pretty sure we could never be as real as you.

There are a lot of attractive ladies at dance parties.

Sometimes I speak with them, but it’s almost exclusively in the context of simply establishing some half-decent conversation on a random topic.

The Hospital Records podcast.

The death of Muammar Gaddafi.

Skittles.

Which cousin shot which cousin.

Leave-in conditioners.

Normal stuff.

Someone named William Dean Howells once said, “The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.” Taking these words to heart has made me a reasonably-capable conversationalist.

But also a terrible pickup artist.

Until recently, I had accepted that my general lack of success in this area was entirely the result of some flaw in my character or disposition or nature. I never really examined the considerable role played by my own agency.

Almost exactly a year ago, I had a young (drunk) woman, who I knew, hanging off of me at an event, whispering that she was ready to leave with me whenever I wanted. I guess a lot of guys would jump at this chance, and I’m not particularly interested in specifically faulting them for it. As far as I’m concerned, it would be inaccurate for me to say that my first thought was that taking advantage of this situation would somehow be wrong, because it actually entered my head at the same time as another thought.

I’d kinda like to stick around for The Glitch Mob.

And Breakage.

As much as I want hot women in my life, I’m really into exploiting a comfortable place to shake my gorgeous ass.

The previous anecdote notwithstanding, I have always assumed that a good number, if not the majority, of people who go out dancing are looking for basically the same thing. And I had essentially been telling myself that women, in particular, needed me to respect that. While the truth of this premise is almost undoubtedly debatable, it’s also immaterial. Faulty or not, I operated under it.

Now, as I write this, it seems damn near certain that I just invented that entire reality. Within it, I can focus on going out and losing my shit to skullshaking beats without needing to gauge my sense of self worth as a person, who happens to be a man, by my ability to influence—and ultimately control—other people, who happen to be women.

In framing this position, I had initially been thinking that I didn’t want to squander an awesome dance party on futile attempts at seducing ladies, but I’m not entirely convinced that I would consider successful attempts to be any less wasteful.

Women are everywhere.

(A fact that I appreciate. However.)

Dangerously enormous soundsystems helmed by world-class artists are not.

Perhaps Dragonette’s Martina Sorbara summed up my point best with her guest vocal on Martin Solveig’s Hello.

“You’re all right. But I’m here, darlin’, to enjoy the party.”

Perhaps the greatest pitfalls I navigate on these excursions are my desires to vent.

Too often, I sit down and do just that. Then I stop, read back over what I’ve written and realize it’s rubbish. That’s when I start asking questions.

What do I want to write? What would I want to read?

The answer to both of those is pretty fucking simple.

Something awesome.

Recently, I was gifted the maxim that humility is not thinking less about yourself, but thinking about yourself less.

This has probably been the most rewarding challenge I have accepted in this project. It’s one that I consider especially testing as this is essentially a continuing collection of minimal, experimental, personal essays.

Writers are taught to consider their audience. I have come to address this simply by asking myself if I’m doing anything beyond tending my own ego.

Ultimately, what people want from narrative—and me as both a writer and, I truly feel, a person—is the reassurance that everything is OK. And that it always will be.

Happily everafter.

So maybe, instead of adamantly reasoning out what I perceive to be the truth, I decide to fudge it. Just a little bit.

Or maybe a lot.

I change names and places and events.

I challenge my own knowledge. Create a context where I can judge it by comparison.

That everafter, after all, is yet to be written.

Might as well write something you’d like to read.