I did a yoga class with some friends today. I’d done yoga before at a beach resort I had been spoiled to stay. It was the best four days I’ve ever spent by myself. But, doing it again this time, in a packed little office space above a posh Vancouver street, I just realized that yoga is simply a class on Advanced Stretching and How to Hold In a Fart, where the final and most unwinding moment, lying dead on the floor in Corpse Pose, is ruined by a bass-heavy choir of relaxed sphincters.

As my friends were moving through poses with finesse, without shaking or cheating, I had realized that I could touch the floor with my fingers when standing, too, but I had to bend my knees to do it.

One thought leads to another and I’m stuck with the realization that, in life, my friends are so much further ahead than me. It’s so stupid and I’m not a jealous person, but… I guess I am, but it’s less jealousy and more that I’m mad at myself for falling behind.

I’m lucky to have such creative friends and to be joined by them recently in the big city, but all of these friends who I went through writing and film school with, even the friends in the year behind us, have been finding success networking, striking out with more filming, creating their own flashy portfolio websites, and, what the hell, doing jobs that I never would have thought of (motivational speaking? For fuck’s sake.) Not to mention I’m 30 and most of my friends are under 25.

Its so easy to think of life as one path and speed that everyone is stuck to. The race. I’ve always been competitive to a fault and have judged my output against that of others, but I can’t do it anymore because I’m hurting myself. I don’t hate my friends for their successes, I’m so happy for them of course, but seeing the glaring reasons for why I slip behind hurts: I have bipolar and I haven’t beat it like I thought I have.

You, too, can follow along if you don’t have bipolar. Substitute it for anything like depression or a sports injury. There was an initial incident: a crash or traumatic event. Then, there’s the healing process. For me, when moments like this hit me (in my case: cancer, family deaths, bipolar) I’m Captain Hero. It’s really no big deal and I handle it like a champ. And then I keep doing that. And then it gets out of hand.

Recently, I finished a huge success for myself, an editorial internship at a popular magazine. I was so jazzed after. I was going to take over the world and get a new, killer job at some fantastic company. And then I had some health scares that may have been worsened by my own out-of-control fear, and was hardly able to do anything at all, paralyzed. It’s that cycle of having a huge Go Me moment and being bitch-slapped back down by something that feels so out of my own control that the only possible way to survive is to hide away in the house and maybe sleep it off. Either way, i know I’m not doing anything with my life to propel me on that path and I hate my hating self for that because, oh look, the people I know are lapping me now. Sometimes I even feel like I should get out of their warpath and just walk away. Maybe because it will hurt me less to watch them.

But, no. That’s stupid. Realistically, my chest-beating that ‘I’ve got bipolar and it ain’t no thang’ has now shown its fault. If you’ve torn your knee during a marathon, you’re going to be pulled from the track. Next, you can’t be running around saying you tore your knee and everything’s good. You have months of rehab to do on it! So, no, I haven’t beaten bipolar. I have it, I had a crash, and now I’m on the gradual path to recovery.

And that sucks because I can easily beat myself up about that, too. ‘Psh, you should be better than this.’ But, I’m not, and everyone of my friends and everyone in the yoga class and especially me, all run on our own time. The exercise is to let go and accept it and to take the energy spent hating myself and transfer it to the recovery process.

I know my friends talk about me and I’m sure they wonder about my stagnation, maybe they don’t, but that’s what my mind is dreaming up. And in this case I find it so painfully difficult because I know I am different from my friends. I got bipolar and, yes, it does set me back. The fact is: I am behind my friends.

Beating yourself up, judging yourself, when we sense this happening in our scrambled minds, we really need to just dunk our heads in ice water before we cause ourselves some real pain. We’re raised in a competitive society and age has been the only thing we really time our life success points to in the same way women’s body standards are set by a Photoshop-backed media. You can’t really kill it because it’s also on the lips of everyone. You’ll rarely be at a party where friends are asking who’s been doing what lately. These are the times I completely shut down and look for ways to steer the conversation before it gets to me. It’s so stressful, rummaging through my mind for some sort of half-lie, maybe a vague concept, to throw at them when it’s my turn. “I’m freelancing.” Sad, but that’s the way it is. I have to learn that I have my own speed. It’s slower than other speeds, but this is part of the recovery process and maybe my speed will catch up. Or at least catch up with some sort of idea of where my speed should be. Or maybe with all of this thinking upstairs I’ll discover time travel.

Every athlete, every person who has gone through a trauma, has this moment. It’s the painful, spiteful moment right before committing 100% to the rehab process with a sharp view of the finish line in mind. I’ve had so many successes while having bipolar and I haven’t even really hit my correct stride yet. I know the faults I have to work on and I know that before all else, I have to be good to myself. I don’t know how to do that, I really don’t, but I’ll learn. Even if I have to bend over backwards to figure it out.

Yes, close your shutters and hide in your mutually arranged bomb shelters: my biological alarm clock is ringing, no, more: ranging. Babies? Not so much. That is another clock that will sound long from now, a grandfather clock strapped to a tank that bongs to the beat of Marvin Gaye and blasts me in the face with photographs of all the times I was happy and wasn’t a father. The clock and the cannon that don’t stop until I lie down beneath the tracks and let the good times roll. I’m such a guy right now.

I don’t have any problems with babies. I understand what they do, their needs and ruthless demands. Their strategies, how they use this “cute” routine we all know and record in digital format for America’s Funniest Home Videos to make lots of money. But I am very much against them right now.

My biological alarm clock is ranging for having a dog. No, two dogs.

Oh, just writing that made me so emotional, so glowing. I feel very much like a woman feels when she’s ready and excited to have a child. Except for the whole womb thing. And the, oh hell, okay it’s nothing like that I guess, but it’s definitely the closest thing. Like using a surrogate mother and different DNA. And a tail is involved somehow.

But, I want my dogs to be more like buddies. Childbuddies. Yikes, yes I invented that and it should only be used for dogs. Maybe for pet raccoons, too, but if you use it for cats prepare to be on the ass end of a whupping by quantum physics itself, and what I’ve referred to as catbarrassment. Childbuddies, or “dogs” as I will proceed to call them, are like 13-year-old kids that never hate you. And rarely talk. And you can cuddle and throw sticks for them to retrieve and no one will think of calling the authorities. I guess the con to the pros of dogs is the poop thing, but I’m used to that.

I should leave that comment as it is just to get your imagination going.

I think I will.

I haven’t really thought of names yet. Definitely a boy and girl. Mutts, but mid to large size dogs. And they have to have expressive faces with eyebrows that tell you their whole story, whether that story is for you to give them all the food on your plate or any food anywhere, food in general, a crumb maybe? Simple demands really… I love them. I just want dogs I can love and leave at home for a few hours – to their own devices, of course – and to hang out with some beers after a long day, petting one curled up on the floor with my socked foot and and the other stretched across the loveseat, paws owningly on my lap and a furry head under my hand. And think of all the outdoor adventures! Spelunking?

So, while I formulate my perfect doggies’ names and futures, I watch other owners’ dogs wantingly at coffee shops and beaches sitting beside 28-year-old girls that are doing the same at new mothers and their, eesh, babies.

Dogs. sigh.

Top 3 dogs I want in real life thanks to magic:
1. Dug from Up
2. Every cute/funny dog on YouTube bigger than a sofa cushion.
3. Whatever dog would result from a three-way between Benji, Marley (& Me) and a wolf. Assuming that the wolf is a very female wolf of the cuddly type.

Bonus: Laika.

When November clicked over into December, I was facing a couple creative complications of complex curiosity. That and trying to prevent my mind from hitting an iceberg. Or at least prepare the life rafts.Or at least putting on a dress so I’d be the first one off the boat to safety.

The greatest work opportunity I’ve had since being an intern editor in a government communications branch in grade 11 (brraaag), was coming to an end. I was interning as an editorial assistant at Western Living magazine and CONDO magazine, and the three weeks in December leading to my final day felt like I was reading the last paragraph of a book that had no sequel.

And actually, I was really stoked. I felt prepared. I contributed to a ton of issues and even a two-page spread for Vancouver magazine (check em out at my site JamesRoxby.ca!) Everyone thought I was the bomb (which one of my superiors had said during a drunk karaoke night that culminated in me being so drunk and happy I found myself walking into Stanley Park instead of home – in the other part of the city – and a police officer driving me home. Yep, the bomb.)

So, in my mental preparation to forcibly write my own sequel to this final page, I looked at this blog and said, “Damn, Roxby, you’re giving out all of your best material! You could write a memoir!”

People always tell me to write a memoir. But, I’m 30 and it seems pretty highfalutin’ (I don’t even care if that’s the wrong usage, that word has so much swagger) that I should beat people who have been through war to the punch.

But hey! I fight my own wars with slapping the shit out of cancer and winning round-after-round with bipolar, and life in general. So, right after I write a children’s story about an animal that builds a rocket to escape Earth I will start in on submitting you all to a real book about me.

That’s why I’m gonna take it easy on here and share fun and curious and maddening and inspiring things in… get ready for it… SHORTER POSTS! It’s like I’m adding 3D to my blog!

In related news, I hate 3D, but I like my blog. So, if we’re all gonna get along in a world where there are 3D movies, 2012 doomtalking, and a Katy Perry we need to be nice to each other. Do one good thing for some today. I don’t care who. Tell someone you love them, or give up your seat for a stranger on the bus, or high five a senior. Whatever. We all need to be nicer.

And that pretty much wraps up everything that’s been on my mind the last couple months. Oh, and girls and money blah blah blah. And there you have it. I’m the bomb.

in which I need to learn some new songs if I'm really going to exist forever.

Remembering that I’m going to be dead at some point is usually something I don’t plan. I don’t have an appointment set in my calendar that pops up with a 20-year-away reminder: MEETING: DEATH. “Oh, shoot, right. I have to do that eventually. Good thing I put it in my calendar. Almost forgot!” It doesn’t cross my mind much, but when it does it’s in weird semi-sadistic ways. For instance, I was walking along (not on) a very rush hour-ish road one night and saw this guy in a black leather jacket jay-sprint, not walk, across four lanes of traffic right in front of a roaring bus, and I just went into my head and visualized him getting hit and dragged two blocks, his jacket being the only thing that remained intact. Whoah, bad brain. But then I thought, “hmm, I could have been that guy and BANG, gone. Or even while I’m walking the ensuing tangled mess of crashing and flipping cars would hurl the back end of someone’s sedan at me.” All of these little death-to-me scenarios that sometimes entertain my mind always have one result: I’m poundcake.

I won’t lie, I’ve cried over the thought that I will be “no more” at some point. I’ve cried many times as a kid, too young to know that it’s the typical ‘glass that’s half full or half empty’ situation. I guess, I never think about death being like an exciting surprise I get to open one morning when I’m scratched off the big man’s list.

When I was with my grandmother as she passed away, I surprisingly witnessed it as an amazing experience. My mom and I watched her move from a total bed-ridden state – her mind already gone, she was simply a body slowly letting go – to sitting up in bed marveling at someone in the corner of her room, her eyes twinkling with so much life, the way they did when we gave her a crystal ornament each birthday decades ago. It was grandpa there. It had to have been. It’s what she’d been waiting 30 years for. We had brought in an old timey CD to play for her those nights, and the beat to Bing Crosby’s voice had her feet, which she had had no control over, tapping away like they did when she used to show my sister and I her “moves.” She held a teddy bear and we held her. She was never happier.

Death and I are really tight now, homeys from way back. He and I cross paths in the cemeteries I explore with friends, but we respect each other. I don’t mess with him and he doesn’t mess with me. I already gave him shit for the whole cancer thing and he took off, so I think we’re good for awhile. And really, if he shows up I’ll be fine. My grandmother put her trust in him.

But, today it wasn’t my mortality I was realizing – I realized my immortality.

What! How does that work?

I was on the Skytrain heading to see my dad before he drives down south where the sun is visible and I was thinking to myself “Hey, I’m really happy right now.” It was a little me-party I was having in my head, really feeling it for the genuine and complete moment it was, just pure “nice”. It was a pretty good day I’d had. Earlier, I had partook in a luxury watch store’s media party with my friend, Jenn, was given a big bag of swag (my first swag ever, if you don’t count birthday goodie bags), on my way to the train station I leaped to open a door for a woman with a stroller carrying twins, and then I chatted with an elderly woman who told me she had gone all her life without seeing twins until that day – to which I had this really strong feeling of empathy for her in that moment. She’s going to tell so many people.

I was sitting with my swag bag on the Skytrain and looking at the streets and buildings of people flipping by as I passed on a bridge, caught my smile in the window with my silly Cowichan “tea cozy” hat pulled low over my eyebrows, and said, “hmm, my mind is prompting me for the obligatory ‘worry about an earthquake striking while I’m up here speeding along, hurtling me into the water where I could die at least 52 different ways’”. A silly fear, but a fear I deal with. Yet, today something new is coming through the worrying mind murkiness.

I epiphanied that if I die, there’s no way this inner monologue is going to switch off. It’s just too damn… there. My body’s gonna go for sure, totally gone, but thinking about everything tonight, I know I’m going to have this forever, the ability to humour myself by the people I encounter and the things I see, and better yet, the things I make up. It was a moment where I felt I could be locked up in solitary confinement and I’d be okay. I have enough really pleasant memories, astounding situations, I feel the love others have of me, and hey, I can make better movies that Spielberg can, and these are far more advanced than 3D.

There’s an episode of BBC’s Planet Earth that showed the floor of a jungle. Ferns would shoot up, cutting the light off to the vegetation on the floor. It would be overtaken by another fern, and its plant matter would be reused into the soil. This worked on every scale with every species in that jungle. Everything leaves behind some residue when it apparently ends, nothing on this planet just completely zaps right out of existence. No, Death does not own Star Trek weapons. So, the essence of this moment for me is that, if a 747 were to drop on my head or my Skytrain splashes down into a megashark’s jaws, my body will definitely be mash potatoed, but this thinking and feeling that I hold with me all day every day since I was born, I’m going to have that forever.

I’ve been with myself for 30 years and have just now realized that I’m in it for the longest haul of all time and I’m very happy with that. I had always felt robbed that I wouldn’t get to see what happens on this planet a thousand years from now. But maybe this is a good thing, that when my body dies I’m not anchored to just exploring Earth, I can Wall-E all over the universe, still making better movies than Spielberg, even if he’s up there with me. Thank God for imagination.

in which someone knows you better than yourself and you celebrate it.

It’s easy to tell someone how they make you feel, or how “I understand what you’re going through.”

“Knowing you, I’m sure you’ll…”

“But, that’s just you!”

“That’s Roxby, always laughing when the shitty things happen to him.”

“Typical.”

I’ve always had a problem with my identity. I look at myself in pictures and don’t know who that guy is. I’m told stories of things I did or said and I nod my head and keep the conversation going, but I can’t place myself. In the mirror it’s a stranger. But, the worst for me is that I get scared of people perceiving me wrong to the point that I go mentally mental if I hear that a friend or someone I met thinks I’m a certain way.

I had a friend who confided in our shared friend, my best friend, that I’m a university grad asshole, strutting around like I know everything and making people feel shitty when they don’t.

I know the guy was one of those alpha males with a thin crust and an insecure centre. He gets jealous. I can relate, I was that guy in high school but at a beta male level. I was never one to consider myself the type of person others would get jealous over and it makes me so angry. I just want people to know I’m nice, humble and caring. And if I do correct people about things it’s only because I’m honestly a geek when it comes to learning things and I want to share that with others.

If I ask you if you’ve seen the Shining, for instance, and you haven’t, I will sit you down and watch it with you to share the excitement of the emotional impact. I love to see people’s reactions. I lose a little bit of myself because I get thoroughly get involved in interactions with people to the point where I just have no sense of me. I’m like energy moving about with absolutely no physical recognition or understanding of how others see me. The only thing I ever wanted was to know someone who knew my psychological inner workings, the gears, the Freud stuff, what my daily experience is like and the stuff that runs through my head at night when I turn the lights out.

We all just want to be understood.

And it’s great when your partner gets you, but it’s better knowing what others outside of your tiny bubble see.

Last week, Meghan Bell, made this image for me. She’s quite easily one of my most inspiring friends of all time due to the fact that she’s a Category 5 hurricane of creativity, just blowing people away with each project in a chaotic central eye of deeply perceiving perfection. One day we were laughing about her twist on good writer friend Will Johnson‘s self-published book cover that she used as a prop for her play last Fringe Festival. It portrayed the hipsterest of hipsters chilling back with a pen and a look of egotistic nonchalance. She took a photo of her actor like so and digitally just made it awesome and vibrant, simple and somehow deeply perceiving.

I doubt you’ll ever find a more multi-dimensional image of a hipster, which I guess means that the photo was hipster in itself. Absolutely planned.

“Oh my God, I’m going to do one of you!”

Shit, I thought. I really didn’t want to see it. My weirdness with photos and utter loathing for people misperceiving me was thumping my ego.

“Oh no, I totally know what I’m going to do. Trust me!” And she cackles.

Fine. She’s very convincing. I almost always lose to girls, especially hurricanes.

So I got an email the next day: “See the attachment!” And then in true Meghan form a second email: “No wait! This one’s better!”

And this is that image. My first reaction was that she used a photo taken by my former girlfriend and longtime friend Julia during the best summer in Tofino. So that had a reaction that was good and sad, looking at a me that was very much in a whirlwind of love and excitement. It was a rare image in that I absolutely recognized myself and the complexities of my life experience then.

With that thought fading, I took in this image and I just remember having all of this wind escaping my lungs and hearing OH SHIT escape.

She absolutely nailed my entire personal experience with life. I was never able to tell someone how being bipolar affects me day-to-day, let alone how I go about life everyday, how my mind and heart go about navigating through it.

This image shows that despite the hardships I’ve endured, be it the emotional scars of the cancer I beat, but especially living with bipolar, I see and walk through life with only the utmost positivity, optimism and see the good in things. And it’s completely correct, though this is a side of me that I’ve never had the awareness of it. And for someone to see this in me, to show that I am perceived this way, I’m understood and to put it in front of my face in such simplicity, reinforced a lost confidence in myself.

I nearly cried, but was so elated that the only thing I started doing was texting her in all caps lock and madly forwarding it to all of my family. Facebook profile photo six seconds later. In essence, this is my profile photo for life.

I always saw myself as too complex and hard to explain to people. I think we all do. But, now I get that I was struggling with explaining it to myself and needed the right mirror. I hope everyone has a Meghan Bell in their lives. I really do.

here, I was annexed and split.

Elementary school for me was great. I was Mr. Popular and married my second true love on the jungle gym with a twist-tie ring (my first stomped on my foot when I kissed her, understandable since that was the first contact I ever had with her.)

And then grade 5 happened, an unfortunate education experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong. I remember trudging to class in the winter and seeing smoke from the chimney not being too surprised that the entire teaching staff was probably stuffed in the boiler.

Instead of being awesome in the main school building like always, I was forced to attempt to be awesome in an annex – an annex that had been the pre-school school. It was a shack that toddlers used to run around in, nap in and loose their bowel control in. I was the first to consider Occupy the Main School Building, but my parents demanded report cards so they could justify their method of parenting.

Bell rings. I stroll in and see a bunch of LAME GRADE 4 KIDS. I smile and walk out. WRONG CLASS SWEET!

Someone calls out my name Roxby in the way a balloon deflates behind a chair in the livingroom weeks after a birthday. It was Clay, the bad kid. We never talk to each other, but this must be what being a “war buddy” is like.

Our teacher was Mrs. Apple, who looked more like an upright accordion with an old, black banana peel drooped over the top. That’s her hair, and kind of describes her head. We used to bring bananas to school all the time and do puppet shows all lunch break. My mom thought it was great that I was eating healthy.

Banana Head was very proud to announce (but the ‘proud’ with a hint of: [INHALE] ohgodIhopethisworks) that this is the first split class, 4/5 split.

I figured it was because some other school collapsed in the summer and my school was bumrushed by a squadron of kindergartners.

The obvious was that I hate to put up with these wimps, knowing that we’re destined to slowly become friends. Make that, ACQUAINTANCES. It was a sick melting pot of predators and prey, and no one know who was what.

The mind games were pretty traumatizing and I’m still left very confused when I’m around people younger than me in tight spaces. Does that guy want my Handi-Snacks? But, I don’t have any Handi-Snacks. Stay away from my Fruit-by-the-Foot! SPITBALL

The not-so-obvious was that I had to repeat the unit on First Nations’ culture on our island, a unit that felt like it shrunk recess into a 30-second break between boxing rounds. Nothing against First Nations at all (I loved the National Film Board totem pole animation and I became pretty pro at building longhouses out of popsicle stick and gluey macaroni), but forced repetition goes with kids like a hot mouth of jalepeno peppers goes with a gulp of gasoline.

And this leads me to raccoons. The raccoon unit is the best because raccoons are the cute bad ass of the natural world in my neighbourhood. They have those bandit masks, but if you’ve ever seen a raccoon you know they never sneak around. They saunter. They stroll.

They really don’t give a fuck and they’ll just kick over your garbage the morning after you’ve spent all that time sorting it out and plucking that crumbled flier out of a bag, placing it in the recycling bin for Wednesday, and sealing it all up and being pretty proud of your achievement because that’s that off the big to-do list and

they just knock that shit all over the driveway rip it all apart and facepaint that motherfucking garbage all over your garden.

They are raccoons and we’re just grade 4/5ers with the only intentions of making them our pets and finally being awesome again.

With all other units, we would either go on a field trip (ice cream cows) or someone brings something in (snakes that lived in the same Tupperware container my mom used at home for her crafts). I mean, we used to go to the museum to look at First Nations totem poles and that creepy shaman wall photo until the budget got cut. So, you think they’d at least round up a raccoon, maybe knock it out with a garbage can lid for irony’s sake and haul it into class in a sack or something.

But no, and I really don’t mean to be whining. I really don’t. This is more like exasperated frustration built up over many years. The type of thing that SUCKED, then you got older and forgot about it until your friend Dave talks about field trips and it all happens like:

hmm… you sense something, kind of smell it mentally, what is that? Was I…? Did that…? And then you reel a bit as if your favourite music artist released a new album, but it was a gospel album (unless your favourite music artist does gospel in which case Hawaiian pop music will be a sufficient substitute for you). After that reeling phase, well, you’re now functioning 30% socially and 100% internally dwelling. I’m not really sure where that leaves Dave in all that math.

And then there was the day… as we all sat patiently in class screaming at each other over Indian Rubs and eyeball-targeted paper footballs, a woman dressed in white slacks (yes, slacks) and some sort of tunic (still not sure what that means) stood before the room with a gym bag. We all stopped being idiots and gave her our completely undivided attention, as much as grade 4/5ers can do.

We figured, with our Sherlock skills, that due to us being in the middle of our raccoon unit, this MUST be a raccoon, but the bag wasn’t thrashing around. So, then we got depressed, thinking maybe this was a DEAD raccoon. Makes sense, you can actually grab it and put it in your husband’s stained gym bag.

“Hello class.”

“HI!”

“I’m Jeanette,”

(quite garbled and over-lapping) “HI JEANETTE!”

“Um, erm, yes… I’m a school educator for the Canadian Lung Association.”

Ohmygod. They’ve come for our lungs. WHAT’S WRONG WITH OUR LUNGS?

She told us about smoking, that thing that those older girls did at the park behind my house. I didn’t think it looked cool. I thought it looked like they didn’t enjoy hanging out together, puffing and blowing and looking away very serious. They used to laugh at me when I played Bill Murray with the Ghostbusters backpack I made. I really didn’t like those girls.

“I’m not here for your lungs. I’m here to show you what could happen to you if you START SMOKING.” Her voice boomed a little at the end there.

We watched Jeanette reach down behind the desk, the zipper zzzzzzipped. We couldn’t have leaned any more forward. I had it with that plan and just stood up so I could see better.

She had some stacks of plastic containers and she passed them around.

LUNGS. Dead people’s lungs! Actual lungs that are inside you lungs.

Some were flat and whitish pink like the sole fish my dad would fry and stink the house up with until he made garlic bread.

Some “lungs” were black and well, they looked exactly like massive burgers that were on the barbecue too long. That’s exactly what they looked like .

She advised us that the healthy lungs were the smaller fish ones and the BAD SMOKER DON’T EVER BE A SMOKER lungs were the big burgers. We were pretty sure, in out post-lung event recess break debate, that the Lung Association people in their white slacks couldn’t get any diseased lungs because if the lungs are truly dead they would just turn to ashes right away like our grandparents did.

But then, how the hell did they get healthy lungs from a healthy person? That’s just sick.

There’s an association out there that’s devoted to taking your lungs to show young children how they shouldn’t be the types of older kids that don’t enjoy each other and talk about stealing.

Before Jeanette came to our class, we were finding our paths in this annex community. I was realizing my role as an older kid and the grade 4s were looking up to us for cues like I watched those girls. But, now… now I just didn’t want to get older. I just wanted to stay in the annex without lungs and hoping a raccoon would come crashing through a window.

it what's on the inside that counts.

I hate starting with, ‘so I had this dream’, but…

SO I HAD THIS DREAM

I was curled up at the beach with this goldilocked cutie who was obviously my true love. In a dream, you just know. The whole environment was just vacuum sucked and there she is, crystalline in focus with this aura that hurt my chest so much she was perfect.

And she turned to me with these green marble almond-shaped eyes. I just kept falling in love, over and over, just falling down these stairs of immense passion repeatedly. She was cute, damn cute, just like I like. She smiled, looked off to the waves, basically gazing at nothing that mattered to me at that moment, I thought about kissing her then, and then she spoke,

You know, I think blue is going to be the new pink.

I disagreed with this statement on so many levels, but I think it hurt more that such a thing would leap from the lips of THE PERFECT GIRL EVER.

Typical.

I was still in love with her. I felt it like a muscle being twisted. But, I was also very passionate about totally debating the shit out of this. And my argument was solid,

Okay… mmmhmm… wellll, blue historically symbolizes males and pink symbolizes females.

But, transgender awareness and the LGBT movement are quickly challenging those archaic stereotypes.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING IN MY DREAMS

and is LGBT a movement? I thought it just is.

WHY AM I LISTENING TO THIS DREAM GIRL

I woke up. Not because it was a nightmare, but because my heart wanted to remember her as she was, the girl I was in love with.

I’m still in love with her. It’s been a day and I miss her. I’m lonely. I want to debate more and win. I miss her body curled in mine. I miss the hurt chest and the crystalline and the almond marble eyes.

I wonder how I’d react if it was real, if I’d be moved to think about where my future is going with her and think about the girl I work with at the coffee shop who talks about Mythbusters, David Mamet and her portable record player and giggles when you get her going and has nice hair.

She’s smart and I’m pretty sure she would know if LGBT is a movement. She wears pink sometimes.

it happened on this boat in particular.

I’m on the ferry and this little boy is crawling all over the seat in front of me. He’s really giving it his all and I wonder if it’s because he has to pee and he regards the seat as the singular obstacle between him and a toilet.

He’s got a look to him. I think he’s Turkish. I’m not sure if that’s explaining it right, but I think you know what I’m talking about. Not too middle eastern and not too Italian looking. I’ve never been very good at guessing people’s backgrounds by looks. Same with ages.

Oh, just now he almost landed on my lap.

Anyhow, this whole thing with this boy got me thinking because for the first half hour of the trip at least, he’s been shouting that we’re leaving ‘his’ boat and his mom has to keep telling him that we’re on ‘his’ boat (I’m going to stop using those ” things because it’s getting annoying) and we’re leaving the terminal.

So, when he was on the terminal, he saw his boat and wanted to go on it, but now that he’s on it he thinks he’s on the dock and the terminal is his boat sailing away?

Was I this stupid?

This doesn’t even seem cute. I mean, half an hour at least! I hope I’m not being one of those types of passengers. At least I’m typing about it instead of shifting my weight all over the place and sighing and grunting like the entire future of my positive experience of life is threatened by a 2-year-old.

I feel really bad for his mom trying to explain this whole dock/boat situation to him because he sure has to use the toilet.

The late Lady Dunsmuir said "Hi" as a reflection in a door window in her castle. SHIVERS. I wrote about ghost hunting for the Canadian Encyclopedia this week.

Ghost encounters is actually a really serious thing for me.

When I was five, I had the Ghostbusters fire house playset and and crept around my house with a cardboard/crayon/duct tape ghost trapper as Peter Venkman. I even had Bill Murray’s lazy drawl. But, I never saw or heard a Slimer (or Slimoh, as I called him) until I was in the sixth grade.

My dad used to recruit my sister, Mriss (I think she was originally a Marissa), and I to help him clean the local high school he was custodian at. It was usually on a weekend night. We got money and he got to hang out in the staff room with his feet up on the desk eating trail mix while listening to whatever hockey game was on the radio. I’m pretty sure he was writing a book, too.

Mriss and I were pushing huge mops around the lower hall with a ghetto blaster playing Salt n Peppa when we started hearing other sounds. I turned down the volume.

Echoing from upstairs was the exact same sounds from the hall upstairs during a normal school lunch period. Voices, running, desks moving, lockers. We dropped our mops and ran bawling our eyes out to Dad.

Now I hunt them. And I find them. It helps me feel more connected to a deeper reality that I’ve felt is there and have heard about. It justifies my suspicion that there’s another level going on in life that we just don’t see, hear or touch. We feel it sometimes though, don’t we? Ghosts are a serious thing. They’re real souls, real people and real experiences trapped here somehow. Maybe I’m trying to find out how not to have that happen to me.

So I wrote about it and Victoria’s haunts for the Canadian Encyclopedia, “A Field Guide to Ghost Hunting”. Happy Halloween. Don’t get too possessed out there, kids. I’ve seen it happen.

The life blood of my year: frozen dried cranberries. At least it's not meth.

Hello again,

Other than love from friends and fam (and some emails from you THANKS,) the only constant in my life these last seven months has been my consistent daily need and intake of frozen fruit. Red grapes, dried pineapple rings, dried cranberries…

Cranburries. © Roxby, 2011

Seriously, you gotta do it. Just stick a bag in a freezer and you’re good to go (Science Note! The high sugar content doesn’t actually freeze them completely, leaving them like a popsicle… OF REAL FRUIT.) Has this really been what my life boils down to? – Oh yeah! And frozen Kit Kat bars are also awesomefilled with cold, chocolate wafery goodness. Now the reason people look at me weird isn’t because of my bipolar! Success!

So yeah, seven months of frozen dried fruit and chocolate. Sounds like a friggin’ neanderthal end of the world survival diet. Well screw that, things are changing, including my attitude towards blogging, which is… to do it more. And to eat more steak and vegetables.

So, like the great emcee Rakim said: “I’m sorry I left you/without a dope beat to step to.” I fixed up my jamesroxby.ca website, but that was work. And now it’s time to play.

Oh, and also I have been cheating on you with Teletoon Retro reruns. My bad.