The Secret Life

There's a small street just below René Lévesque Boulevard (known to people older than me as Dorchester Avenue before the days of Separatism) whose name I don't remember, but which plays a significant if not really active part in tonight's narrative. This small street is in the shape of an "L," and I used to take it with my car to reach the autoroute in order to get home from my parents' apartment. I since found that it was slightly more efficient to turn left on René Lévesque and drive for one block, then turn right and go up the ramp from there (thus passing right by the other end of the "L"), and I have not driven on that street since.

At the corner of the "L" stands a very large white building with the words "Auberge Jeunesse" in large red lettering emblazoned somewhere near the third story. There are always people out front, even in the bitterest cold, and they are always waiting. Young people, since it's a youth hostel. They look like students, some of them just visiting, maybe European kids "backpacking across Canada," or students from out of town who arrived too late and are feeling the crunch of the housing shortage (0.6% vacancy rate, according to the headlines in the Gazette the other day). Always waiting. Sometimes there's a tour bus, angled awkwardly in the "L," taking up too much space but trying to be nonchalant about it, posturing as though to say: "What's your problem? No one ever uses this street anyway!"

An "L" in the crook of which is a dilapidated old parking lot and a gas station, one of the ones which still offers service instead of do–it–yourself pumps. There's construction going on not too far away, and a short French–Canadian man with an orange traffic flag and matching hard hat and safety vest who takes great pride in his work keeping the traffic flowing away from his territory.

I took my usual route home tonight, turned left on René Lévesque and then right on the small street that eventually leads to the on-ramp to the autoroute. It's an off-shoot of Crescent street, just as the small "L"–shaped street is an offshoot of McKay. As I crossed the street whose name I can't remember, I saw a car stopped at the stop sign that I've stopped at countless times in the past year: my car.

My rational mind knows all too well that it was only one of tens of thousands of beige 2002 Pontiac Sunfires out there on the roads, but for a few minutes I wasn't so sure. I didn't see the driver. And I thought to myself: "That could be me. I've posed that very gesture so many times. Maybe it is me."

Me if I had taken the road less travelled by. Not better or worse, just different. There's another girl almost exactly like me out there, who half an hour ago was driving her beige 2002 Pontiac Sunfire to her apartment in Verdun, and but for a few split-second decisions, we would be the exact same person. There but for the grace of God...

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I read Fight Club today. I was just as annoyed by the book as by the movie, until the last page. And then it blew my mind.

The reason for this? The movie cops out. The book doesn't.

Can't tell you more than that if you haven't read the book. Spoilers and what have you. I also felt considerably more sympathy for Marla in this version, maybe because she wasn't just there as a prop. Of course, that's ironic considering she gets a lot more screen time in the movie, but even though in the book she's very very two–dimensional, at least she's not made out to be anything more than that: a two–dimensional character who would be three–dimensional except that the book really isn't about her and makes no excuses for not fleshing out her character more.

The message itself is not wrong. The method used to convey the message is sick and twisted and fucked up, however, and then the message gets lost in the bloodshed and the pain and the emptiness of knowing that all you're doing is bloodying your knuckles on the cement walls of your prison.

It's made me see haikus in an entirely different light.

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I had a minor epiphany today in the car on the way home from work, and I decided I'm tired of being a euphemism. I don't know if reading Fight Club has tainted my brain or something, but I don't think that's it.

At least, I have no burning desire to go and punch the crap out of someone or have them punch the crap out of me, and I certainly don't feel like blowing up a building or making napalm out of equal parts frozen orange juice concentrate and gasoline in my bathtub. I think the latter part is a blessing, as my bathtub is still leaking.

Still, like the song says: "I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell." That's my mother's eupemism for me: unwell. She uses that word for everything, from migraines to menstruation to depression, cutting, bi–polar disorder and the sniffles.

I don't want to be a euphemism. I don't want to be a compromise. I don't want to be middle–of–the–road.

I just don't know how to leave the beaten track. Like a horse wearing blinders, I'm just going where the trail leads, shying at every crackle that comes out of the woods beyond the tunnel vision.

Goth Name Generator

firewillow posted this earlier, and I indulged shamelessly.

Real Name: Vicious Tongue, or Satanic Bitch depending on whether or not it's spelled with an accent. The first one is technically the more correct, as that's the one with the accent.

Bookworm: Beautifully Chaotic

I rather like that last one.

Another internet handle I sometimes use came up as Pixie Corpse.