How to draw a bird.

1. Look at a bird. Not a picture of a bird, a real bird. A bird is alive and a bird is what you want your drawing to look like. This is "How to draw a bird" not "How to draw a picture of a bird".

2. Reduce the bird to its most vital parts. How few features could it have and still look like a bird?

3. Draw the bird in its reduced form. Think of it as drawing the bird the way it is rather than the way it looks. In drawing the bird you are making it permanent and perfect.

Or a cat.

Or a fish.

I am too much in the snow.

The opportunity presents itself often. It tries to catch you off guard, to look oh-so tantalizing and lure you in. Its timing is always perfect. Maybe you just got home, and you're so exhausted, and as you're taking the toothpaste out of the cupboard your hand knocks the bottle of Tylenol 3's. The little orange cylinder rolls and rattles around the counter and reminds you, hey, you can stop all this any time you want. It's not that crybaby I-hate-my-life crap, it's the real thing, the thinking and calculating and wondering who would find you first. You're lying if you're telling me you haven't even wondered. Not wanted it. Just thought about it. Because it's there. Because you could. Because you could just let your car drift a little over the center line. Because that knife could just slip in your hand, or you could just take one more step towards the edge, or you could just fall asleep on the train tracks. When you actually begin to think about it, there are so many ways it could just "happen". And once you realize that, you start seeing the opportunity everywhere.

Ja mam yapkol.

For Katie.

For Megan.

Sometimes I lack the words.

Today I wrote two things which I planned to show to you. I tore them up because they weren't good enough and you deserve only the very best. Instead I will tell you about something that happened today. I found a letter which my uncle had sent to me sometime when we lived at the old house. This means that I must have been less than five years old. It is a nothing letter, talking about McDonald's and his toilet (we have a similar personality). But I kept it all this time, and I don't doubt that it's because I miss him very much, even then, in between the summers (he lives far away). He has taught me many things and been a third parent to me, and has had more influence on me than anyone else, even though I have spend maybe a couple month's worth of time with him total in my life. It's strange how you can look back on things that happened when you were a small child, and see how they affect you today, when you make choices, or even decide what to wear. Maybe you will find this post boring, or maybe you will love it and it will be your favourite one, but either way, people are waiting for me so I've got to go.

For the other side is not visible.

A slurpee top glitters into view in front of you. It's rolling on the road, carried along by the slipstreams and buffeting tires of the cars. You catch up to it at the same moment the latest group of cars to pass over the slurpee top disperses, and now the avenue is quiet but for you and it. Now you're matching paces, you on the sidewalk, the slurpee top on the road, and the glittering streetlights reflected in the slurpee top are all you have for company. You glance down at it for an instant. A shy hello, possibly murmured, possibly implied by your look; you do not mean to impose, and there is no where else to walk, but your brief concern is passing as the friendly blinking lights of the slurpee top assure you there's no trouble at all and you're quite welcome to join it for a walk tonight. Now you are friends, and now you are no longer walking beside the slurpee top, you are walking with the slurpee top. But soon the slurpee top's momentum wanes, and it begins to slow down. Then it stops. You look back as you realise. You would like to wait for it but you can't, you have places to go and people to see and things to do. Soon the next group of cars comes whish-hissing past, and now the slurpee top is trying to catch up to you, waving and calling out, but like you said; you have places to see and people to meet and things to be. Now you walk on without it, look away the way that a movie actor looks away when they leave a loved one, ahead, but also at an angle towards the camera, (what, you didn't know you were on camera?) angsty and milking it. Later you will see something similar to what you are reading now, and you will deny that this is an accurate metaphoric portrayal of your relationships. But denial is fleeting.

I get anxious when I feel I'm not in total control of my life.

Talking to this girl makes me so nervous. When she looks at me, the next-thing-I'm-going-to-say thoughts get mixed up because of the nervous I-wonder-if-she-thinks-I-look-good thoughts jumping around in my brain. Even though she's so polite I wonder if she's sincere when she asks me about my car. Did she see it? It's that red piece of crap, cost me 800 dollars, but it runs well and it's cheap on gas. And she turns towards me a little more and looks up; I-wonder-if-she-finds-my-height-attractive thoughts pop up now, then her amber eyes lock on to mine; oh-my-god-she's-way-too-pretty-to-be-real thoughts now and she laughs softly.

That's cool James.

And when she says my name a little light is lit inside me. I'll be in a good mood for the rest of the day, especially since I didn't spill any coffee on myself this time.

When I wear my favourite clothes I feel like I'm inside a force-field.

My goal is to try everything in the supermarket.

It is probably impossible for you to understand the things that I do and the words that I say, unless perchance you have spent countless days alone in your room reading through every book you could possibly find. Not to mention the music, TV, and movies which have seeped into my life. You'd have to spend all your time with them, constructing a world that exists only in your head and then living your life as if it were real. You still wouldn't understand me though, because you've never met my invisible friends, and I doubt you've caught all 150 pokemon.

I don't think run-on sentences should be grammatically incorrect, because my words are a window to my thoughts and sometimes my thoughts run-on.

My moods are always in extremes. They wash over me, crashing down storm-waves. They take over my body, maddening me, or enthusing me. Happiness is the strongest, highest, wave of all. With it comes to me a sense of total clarity. Everything is simplified. I can do anything right. It is at times immediately after this wave hits me that I feel an incredibly strong urge to burst out of my house and run barefooted on my lawn and spin and jump and dance and laugh and kiss and hug every tree and flower and cloud that I see and yell out at the top of my voice to tell the whole world that I love it and then start to run and run and run so far and so fast that soon my feet don't come back down to touch the ground and I'm flying away simply because this happiness has made me so light inside and I can fly away to a place of this endless happy-light-clear-love feeling.

But my feet always come back down.

Sometimes in the car, I open the window and close my eyes. I pretend the air rushing is me falling.

There is a girl that I see every day. I don't know her name. Indeed, I have never spoken to her, except for conversations played out in my head. She takes the same bus as me. She is beautiful. She has wavy auburn hair and blue eyes. China doll complexion. Tiny pink lips. About 5'4 maybe 115 pounds. She must ride the bus much further than me, for she is always on it already when I climb aboard, and she always stays on it after I leave.

Her eyes are electric. They see everything. I know this girl can do magic. I feel if she looked at me for very long, she could find out everything about me.

She is smart. She usually has heavy looking school books. Maybe she is a few years older than me? I don't know. I've watched her grow up. I started taking the bus to school in grade eight. I graduate this year. She was already on the bus when I got on it for the first time. She was sitting across from me, wearing a light pink dress with orange flowers. Her legs were folded down and I could see her knees. Her head was turned so she could see out the window. She looked to me like she was searching for something out the window of that bus. Like she was on a scavenger hunt, only the thing she was looking for was so important that she would die if she didn't find it. She still wears that dress sometimes.

I feel as if looking at her every day has allowed me to get to know her. I know it's ridiculous. But I feel as if I already know what it would be like to kiss her, what her breasts would feel like as she pressed her chest against me and squeezed the sides of my head with her hands.

Maybe if I stare at her long enough she will jump up and kiss me right there on the bus, in front of everyone.

She is the one reliable person in my life. No matter what, every day I'm on the bus she is there too. I wonder if she noticed this also. But she hardly ever looks at me, and when she does it's only for a breif second. She looks out the window so very much.

I wonder what she would say if I told her I love her.

If I find you boring, it's not your fault. You are not a boring person, I am a restless person.

An old shoe is like an old friend. Look at a shoe you have had for a long time, maybe a year or two, but more is best. How many memories do you have of wearing it? How much of your life have you shared with it, and how much of its life has it shared with you? Remember all the compliments you received on it when it was brand shiny new and still had that not-yet-worn smell? How proud you were! Why yes, these are new shoes, how kind of you to notice. And now it's scuffed and broken. It's not the shoe's fault, nor is it yours. This has happened simply because the shoe has worked so hard for you, and is becoming tired in its old age. But you've had some times together, haven't you? How many times did you dance-happy with that shoe on your foot? How many times did you wear it to go see someone special? And how many times did you stamp your foot in anger, sadness, frustration, only to be stamping the shoe? I suppose you realise, that means the shoe has felt all those emotions through you. After looking at the shoe like this, will you ever be able to throw it away, or will you love it too much?

It's easier for you to know.

It happens unexpectedly. Maybe you're walking down the street or sitting on a park bench. It's evening, it's dark. The light winter rain is making your skin tingle, like you've been kissed. Maybe you're just thinking how you should've worn a jacket when it happens. A couple walks past you under an umbrella, looking into each other's eyes and laughing. You don't think anything of it and you begin to make your way home.

But as you're walking, you begin to see more and more people, some in couples, some in larger groups, strolling along, standing in little groups outside bars, warming their hands on hot mugs in brightly lit coffee shops.

By the time you get to your building your head is down watching each splash your feet make in the puddles. You take the stairs up to your floor two at a time and you slam your door behind you.

You stand there, staring around your apartment, maybe your breathing is a bit heavy, maybe you're panting a little. You're staring around at all the things you own and you're trying to find one thing, that one special thing which carries with it the memory of a friend. Something, anything, to tell you you're not alone in your life.

Later on, you'll get tired and you'll crawl into bed with all your clothes on and wrap your fluffy duvet around you. You'll lie on your stomach and you'll reach for the notepad and pencil on your bedside table. In the lamplight you'll start to write a list of your friends. Maybe you'll get one or two names, maybe you'll get six or seven. Either way you'll feel like shit when you wake up in the morning.

My greatest insecurity is the fear that no one will notice when I die.

How do you know that the memories you have of your past are real? Yesterday and the day before are easy, they just happened and you still have the receipt from that cup of coffee you bought. It is the memories from years past, reaching back into your childhood that get distorted by the funhouse mirror of time. Remember the summer when you were nine and your rabbit died? Are you sure he was actually real, or was he a product of countless hours of loneliness brought to life by a hazy memory? Or maybe it was just a dream.

It is for this reason that I love finding things from my past. They prove to me that I am real and my life actually happened.

I thought you would enjoy these.

The bird flew into my window. I was very sad for its loss of life, yet I found its final pose strikingly beautiful.