HOOOO-GRAW!! HOOO-GRAW!! A WAKA WAKA WA!

If This Little Piggy Could Talk

Some years ago, while living in Poland on a strict diet of pork and starch, I had a very compelling dream. In it I was kneeling across from a large pig, who was sitting on its haunches facing me. We stared in each others eyes for some time. After a while I began to notice that this particular pig was radiating beatific peace and benevolence. It remained physically the same but also became more and more beautiful with each passing moment. I realized all of a sudden, that this pig was Jesus. I began to weep and so did he.

Jesus the Pig looked at me with concern and sympathy clouding his earnest eyes and asked “Why are you crying?” Although my heart was wrenched with pain I somehow managed to reply “Because I’m so sorry that we eat you.” Seeing this heavenly pig cry made my suffering more intense and because I wanted to be able to comfort him I asked “Why are you crying?” He looked at me with such tenderness and replied “I’m crying for you because you’re human.”

Then I awoke and although life continued on in the same way that it always does, I realized that I had been granted an insight into the true dynamics of life on this earth.

The TRUTH about Broken-heartitis

‘The cardiologist Justin Ezekowitz of the Mazakowski Alberta Heart Istitutute in Edmonton has found that grief can trigger a rare condition called transient apical ballooning syndrome – in layman’s terms, a broken heart. The heart doesn’t break, but it does weaken and beat abnormally. It even visibly changes shape and looks like a deflating balloon, or a teardrop. “Extreme emotional trauma can hammer the heart with a surge of adrenaline,” Dr. Ezekowitz says. Thankfully, most of the time, the damage isn’t permanent. Most of the broken-hearted mend within a few weeks (or a brief stay at a local Australian hospital).

*Italics are this author’s addition

Please Stop Infecting Me with your Terminal Negativity (or Darling I love You But You Can't Make Me Smile)

It’s true that often times we grow up creating this fantastic story of what our lives will turn out to be like, and that that suit that we created eventually stops fitting. Like an overgrown adolescent trying to fit into one of those plastic Halloween suits that came with a cheap mask, holding on is sad and a little bit creepy. As we struggle with that burgeoning knowledge that sometimes doors get closed in our face, that tragedy is not poetic when its people you love, and that some sins are never erased our definitions of reality began to change shape. The thing you have to remember is that it wasn’t the suit that made the magic but the eyes you saw it with.

When I told my shrink that I wanted to be magnanimous, like the Buddha, she said “Have you considered that that’s an unrealistic goal for you?” “Why would it be?” I retorted, “If I was that way as a child I can be that way now. I remember being so quietly happy.” “Are you sure you were happy, and not just scared?” She responded. It was just too incredible for her to believe that my childhood was so infused with magic. That the rocks by the hydro plant glittered like a thousand diamonds in the sun, that furiously riding your bike was the closest we’ll ever come to flying and knowing freedom, that changing your outfit twice in one day was a daring rebellion against the hum drum rules of society, and that poverty was a minor detail relegated to the non sensical cares of adults. Does a rocket pop turning your mouth blue innately bring less joy now? Or are you too busy plotting the top of the hill to appreciate it? I know that when the lizard opens one eye I’m just a fucking peasant toiling in the fields, but when the other eye is a transplant from the exhumed corpse of Tolstoy, well, then I’m the fucking hero aren’t I? In second grade I harbored the dream of being a comedian and even though I’m not on the bill at Just for Laughs, when I say something funny I think I’ve succeeded. In university I wanted to drop out and pursue my newest passion to be a highly successful chef. Every time my spouse finds my meals so appetizing that he eats until he gets diarrhea, I think that I’ve succeeded. And even though my teacher implied that I’m not a real writer, well, what the fuck do you call this then? My point is that a sense of innate wonder and endless possibility is not immature. It’s merely childlike. But holding on to a premature and inorganic vision of the structure of your life is.

So the next time you look down on me in disdain as I fondle my paltry cabbage, remember that I can make cabbage rolls while you can only continue to write your name in coal on the sidewalk in the rain.

Size Does Matter

They say it matters more when you’re in your twenties - that by the time you’re in your thirties you’ve moved past such shallow values. And maybe that’s true. But until I cross that irrevocable bridge towards certain demise, I insist on retaining my youthful perspective. Size does matter, so do cut, colour, and clarity.

I know that many men (and maybe even some deluded women) may feel threatened or offended by my statements. They might feel that such views are materialistic, superficial, and misguided. They might feel that only someone with a fragile ego would place so much value on a piece of pressurized coal. Perhaps they’re even right. I’m not here to argue that. I’m not here to argue with the sensibilities of the self identified morally superior. Rather, I’m writing here to make something clear. Let me simplify it: a proposer purchases a rock attached to a ring to give to a proposee as a symbol of their intent to marry. The appearance and monetary value of the ring (real or imagined) are meant to represent the value that said proposer places on said proposee. At the very least, that is how the ring is viewed by many curious women who coo and caw and then very subtly appraise its value. How gauche, I know. But we all do it, and those of you that don’t - good luck as your moral high horse races it’s way towards the finish line (aka heaven, aka the meek shall inherit the earth, blah, blah, blah).

Some might argue that the diamond in an engagement ring is a fairly recent phenomenon, spurned forward by the diamond companies in the 1940’s. Sapphires, emeralds, and rubies used to be quite common. My response is that if I were to have one of those stones, I would also require it to be quite large. A passionately red Asscher cut ruby would be quite lovely, with two smaller cut diamonds on either side in a red gold setting. Very art deco. Very moi. But I’m getting side tracked…

I was once an innocent waif, unaware of all of the complications that can come from choosing or being given an engagement ring. For those of you as yet uninitiated into this sordid world of commercialism and competition, I give these words of advice: if you want to keep the symbol of your partners love pure, where it on a clit ring.

Planet of the Apes

The nighttime growling has stopped but there's no one to share this exciting news with. And I suspect that no one would really understand. When I googled this problem I got a lot of hits. Of course none of them addressed the problem exactly. There were a lot of concerned pet owners who were assured that this was normal behaviour for their dog or cat.

When I posed the question to the limitless fountain of knowledge in cyberspace, I was referring to...

...myself.

I growl. Or I did, until very recently. In my sleep, of course.

The civilized merely snore, the troubled mumble, and I growl. When this interesting piece of somnabulistic peculiarity was revealed to me I began to theorize. My most promising theory was the post-Darwinian theory of de-evolution. I believe that during the day I was able to maintain the decorum and propriety required of a modern citizen but during the night my fantasies of confrontation, violence, and bloodshed reigned unbridled. My atavistic subconcsious was tapping into the universal behaviours encoded deep within my mitochondrial DNA.

I was becoming a monkey.

If scientists were informed of the 'problem' I was having I would most likely have been shot with a hypodermic full of sleeping potion and carted into a facility where they would perform tests on the newest missing link, "Aggie". They would marvel at my opposable thumbs, my locking knee joints and my love of Proust. They would be less impressed by my irritable bowels. But I get ahead of myself.

I began to reflect deeply and delved deep into my store of memories. I thought of that time I visited the Toronto Zoo, putting my curious face to the glass of an enclosure, and a previously benevolent gorilla leapt to its feet, storming the cell, banging violently at the glass as its distant relative enjoyed the freedom and pizza afforded by her ability to 'pass'.

I thought of how a baby monkey's pleading face could move me beyond words while a human baby inspired feelings of only revulsion.

The connections were revealing, though anecdotal. If my theory were correct, I had quite a problem on my hands. If I revealed my concerns to a medical professional I was placing myself at risk of involuntary incarceration. If not, total annihiliation of the charming personality those around the world had come to love! What a conundrum!

I decided not to be to rash, yet to take matters into my own hands I invested in a nighttime sedative. So far the growling has subsided but God only knows what mental and physical deterioration the future holds....

It's like a high speed chase. Shocking electric current streaming red hair parting, parting like the Red Sea.
Stop. You're chasing your own tail. The snake of endless perpetuity endlessly swallowing yourself and choking, gagging on the vile cannabalism of it all. Mirrored iris blind. REACH OUT. Flesh is solid touch on touch. The saviour wears a human face, just not yours.