ambivalence = good

to quote a guy i once knew: i have no emotions; i have theoretical constructs.

problem being, not only do i have emotions, i "have" all the emotions within a fity-foot radius at any given time. i experience my emotions, your emotions, the repressed anger of the suit down the hall, the latent grief of the security guard downstairs. if "you" are sitting beside me feeling stressed out, chances are, my gut is churning. sometimes i read the globe and mail on my lunch break and four hours later go home and weep. i do it to myself, i do, and that's what really hurts. i like to keep abreast afloat anipple of current events, i do, but i feel each and every event. every rape every murder every elderly widower bilked their pension every rejected baby elephant death. every sadness another blow under the rib cage.

in the age of mass pharmecueticals you'd think there would be a pill for this. after all, the marketing companies eventually pathologize each womanly bodily function, every gendered construct. your menstrual pad smells like old blood? gross! use these perfumed pads! you're eighty-four and can't get it up? what kind of man are you? take this blue pill! grieving the injustices of the twenty-first century? take this red pill! and what could be more stereotypically gendered as female than the oversensitive nervous system? all stimuli, all response, all the time!

the cabbie who drove me home from work had a voice like charlie kaufman and let me cry in his cab. here's me in the corner, losing my vocabulary. i don't even pretend to write anymore. going back to Calgary for a business trip on wednesday, and if i were to sit back and gauge my thoughts re: this i would have to say