As we drove away, Lisa said: “Your mom showed me pictures from when you were young. You looked sad.”

I dropped Lisa off and drove back.

At the house there are my mirrors everywhere. There is something in them I can’t read.

I want to destroy the culture of the house. It is also my culture. It is the culture that comes from the blaring television.

I never realize it is difficult to go back until it is difficult to go back. I smelled an old self in the air. I hate him.

There is a wrecking ball and caterpillar tracks shredding the glass and steel of my false culture.

I wear the old image like a glove. It is in the mirrors and I can see it. I am in the paintings and in the photographs and in the space between the walls.

It is difficult to customize WordPress for free. Limited theme options have me pining for Tumblr (where I am “blogging” for The Hart House Review nowadays). It feels like I’m going to migrate over there one of these days. I want this place to look fresh, and it feels like stale rot.

Edit: Okay, maybe I like it a little better now.

There’s something about PJ Katie. I don’t meant sexually, though she’s undeniably pretty, and I can’t really rule out the erotic in my pre-adolescent attraction to her. I guess I watched so much television that at some point she became a kind of mother to me. It is heartrending watching these old clips now, as that time when I could look to mothers for comforting is over.

I don’t know if that was a different time, whether what she played then would play now. But she was an inventor. She was a storyteller. For millions of children she was that. Does that make the “Crayola” advertisements that burst out in intervals during her segments then troubling? I don’t know. I do know that at that age I was already aware of the limitations of the relationship, that money had to intercede, to limit, to impose.

Youtube regresses, brings us to our past now made readily available. Like all other social media platforms, it also reveals. Tonight I watched a broken version of a girl I once loved speak. When I knew her, the troubles she describes in her video I experienced. I wished that we could have shared and saved each other then. I’m afraid of the past I lost, for the past I am still losing, and I want to turn back and grab onto my life before it sinks into the sand.

We will all die some day. Another woman, in the “Related Videos”, looks something like the one I just watched, but much older. “I know I look tired […] I hope the sound quality is better, I had the microphone all along but I didn’t have the energy to change it, I guess I’m lazy […] We’ve been really busy, we’re so tired, we went through some tough times”, and then, presumably (according to the video information) 14 minutes on her mental health.

On the weekend as I was listening to my wife and mother talk I was doing odd work, translating and making literary facts as I was hearing them. I was elsewhere and I realized I have long been elsewhere, beneath, submerged, below and little, between, weaving rather than understanding. I have been telling my own stories. I haven’t been ready to speak.

No one ever runs out of hot water

The concierge greets you smiling

Your immunity to the million-dollar view is mysterious; girls like that

The pool is always there, clean & open

No one has ever used the pool, except those shawled Muslim women you once watched through the window

It feels nice to catch the door and hold it for the other residents

The same goes for the elevator

No one ever runs out of hot water

There’s alarm systems on all of the doors, even if no one can figure out how they work

En-suite washer & dryer

When the decor gets stale they paint the hallways for you

The carpets hanging in the service elevator make it look like the womb—comforting

Curtains are unnecessary because you are above all of the other buildings

If anyone tried to break into your apartment a neighbour would probably hear it

No one has ever been found rummaging through the recycling

The time you rummaged through the recycling no one caught you

No matter what time it is the light underneath the doorcrack never extinguishes, reminding you that you are never alone

The fire-alarms foster community

No one ever runs out of hot water

You’ve cultivated a kind of half-nodding, half-wincing relationship with the guy downstairs who is always washing the windows

The gym gets cable

Most of the community rooms are usually free for use

Your apartment sleeps eight pretty comfortably, as long as someone doesn’t mind sleeping on the bath mat

There are plenty of restaurants that deliver

The central air recirculates efficiently

No one ever runs out of hot water

That nice couple in the suite next to yours will give you gifts a couple of times, which you think about reciprocating until you realize that you never see them anyway

No one ever runs out of hot water

You don’t ever have to leave, unless you really want to