Seagulls
I am sitting in a small room in a small town and I haven’t the heart to write anything. I woke up late this morning – in truth, this afternoon – and spent some time watching a seagull simply glide in place on the wind while sitting on the bus with my head out the window having a cigarette. It’s raining here in Thunder Bay, but humid and somewhat warm, so it’s nice. It was nice to watch that seagull too; calming and a relief that such simplicities can still be viewed for what they are – the changeless comforts of nature.
The world is going to hell in a hand basket and we’ve secured a private box from which to watch. It seems to me that were a generation of greater intelligence and fortitude faced with it, the passion with which dissention and outrage is openly displayed would be far more significant. We are the bastard children of liars and charlatans and so do not render them faults, merely the basic aspects of our understanding of things. That will be our legacy – the knowledge that we inhabited a burning building, and although we knew it just and right to risk ourselves to save it, chose instead to listen to those that claimed it wasn’t on fire at all, but simply a figment of our imaginations.
Seagulls can sit in one place with their wings spread and simply float on the breeze, the world spread below for them to see. Just like us.
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September 30th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
If I had me days back, I think I’d be a gull………..
(A long ago stupid little thing a friend and I used to say back in NFLD………)
Get out and do something, see something, maybe take the bus out for a little rip, see if you can fit it through a Tim’s drive through. Make the front page of the paper or something….
Come on 11 Oct!!
September 30th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Makes me think of listening to the soundtrack for “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” performed by Neil Diamond.
September 30th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
oddly enough.. I woke this morning and sat outside on the back step before anyone else was awake… I was watching 20 or so seagulls just glide in circles… wishing I could glide above the world like them!
September 30th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
The season is changing here in northern Idaho. Every day it grows colder, some days it is as if summer is still here and during the day, the sun warms everything; yet most days like this day are grey and there is that chill that penetrates reminding you that winter is upon us.
There are so many distractions in this life, the blinking television or the call to arms of the nauseating video games many people my age are obsessed with. It is easy to miss those many perfect moments, like watching that seagull outside of your bus. I imagine it gliding there; it reminds me of the tree outside my apartment. When I open my balcony door, the noise of hundreds of birds’ glides at me from the oak tree filled to the brink with them. These animals do not know that the house is on fire and do not resent us for lighting the match. Soon they will be gone from the tree, off to warmer climate, oblivious to the peril we have created, and like them, we are oblivious to it too, through distraction and choice.
September 30th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Too true, brings to mind lyrics of the late Mark Heard…
In our hearts we are wandering gypsies
In our minds we are heirs to the jewels
To the poor we are swaddled in riches
To the rich we ain’t nothing but poor
We don’t know what became of our fortune
It could rescue or end other lives
We are gathering speed through this tunnel
To go down where the truth meets the lie
September 30th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Every day, I think about this. Every day.
I think about what we want. What do we really want? I think about what we need to sleep at night. What do we need to scream out our windows… And every thought is muted by one question: How do you start a revolution without creating more harm than good?
And with that fear, I fail. Over and over. Every day.
At one point, I thought all we needed was some kind of sound. Maybe a soundtrack.
And then that thought is quickly smothered with the Mission Impossible theme song…
September 30th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
I am kind of in that mood too, I just finished 5, 12 hour days, can’t even tell you how busy it was, and now I have to transition in a totally different routine tomorrow. I am wandering around the house, too late to really start anything, not late enough to sleep, and I don’t have the attention span to keep anything going for more than 5 minutes. I think it’s the seasons changing, getting cold here, (frost warning tonight), I don’t know, one those days I guess. News is too depressing, and nothing on Discovery.
I hope it’s sunnier tomorrow, across the Country!
September 30th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Rain, cold , miserable back here buddy.
September 30th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
[quote comment="27685"]Every day, I think about this. Every day.[/quote]
As do I, usually as I sit in my classes, wondering if my design classes will be enough. Wondering how much of a difference I will be able to make. Wondering if what difference I have been able to make to date is appreciated by those I was able to touch in some way. Wondering if they are going on trying to make some little difference too, or if they turned a blind eye and a cold heart to the world.
And sometimes, wondering if I care how much difference I make, thinking perhaps it is better to let the building burn to the ground, chains on the exits, and make room for something else.
September 30th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Aaaaaaw, sorry dude…
Hugs from a huge fan.
p.s. how do I tell my kid he can’t jump into the screen and play with those two cranes in that latest Iflickr photo? Poor guy.
Hugs from Markus and his mamma.
t
September 30th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
[quote comment="27685"]Every day, I think about this. Every day.
I think about what we want. What do we really want? I think about what we need to sleep at night. What do we need to scream out our windows… And every thought is muted by one question: How do you start a revolution without creating more harm than good?
And with that fear, I fail. Over and over. Every day.
At one point, I thought all we needed was some kind of sound. Maybe a soundtrack.
And then that thought is quickly smothered with the Mission Impossible theme song…[/quote]
OH MY!! Dude, you made my day, seriously….. I hope you put a smile on other people’s faces too… It just made me smile, I can’t explain it.. but thinking of Thandi Newton in those jeans I would only kill to have an ass for, just gave me the inspiration I needed..
September 30th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
And like the shit-hawk we shit on everything….
September 30th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
I’m glad someone else sees the good in seagulls. We’re overrun with them in the summer and all people do is complain about how they pester you for food. Personally, I use lunch breaks to walk along the river and watch them do what they do best: exist without asking why and loving every minute of it.
September 30th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
[quote comment="27693"]And like the shit-hawk we shit on everything….[/quote]
Bubbles, there are not such things as shit-hawks.
September 30th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Wow…. true statement on how complacent we are to watch it all burn with tears in our eyes but, not willing to lift the fire hoses to put out the fire.
September 30th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
I feel sometimes like the weight of it’s going to crush me, and if I could just scream loud enough, people will stop and realize it’s time to change the world.
Of course, if I did, they’d just keep walking.
September 30th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Speaking of moments…I still remember returning from the MG show in Montreal, Apr 2003, listening to “Pledge of Allegiance” in my tiny Honda while wet spring snow came down. I had recently been posted to Quebec after returning from Canada’s first mission to Kandahar in 2002. I spent that whole spring alternating between CBC coverage of the invasion of Iraq (and reflecting on my own recent adventures in Afghanistan) and “Avalanche”. It was a troubled, lonely, and conflicted winter, and that album, and indeed that evening, encapsulized my confusion and concern.
I had spoken briefly with Pat Steward during “The Dears” show, and I did a very poor job of explaining how important “Avalanche” was to me at that time; he was patient with me, but it was loud, and my words were clumsy and unwieldly
But the snow coming down and the swing of the wipers…”Avalanche” remains a soundtrack to that evening and that chapter of my life; without it, I really would have been alone.
September 30th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
I feel as if im floating when I listen to Avalanche. For around an hour I feel like the world has paused and im merely the only one that knows this world.
September 30th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
and on that lovely note- i just watched Master and Commander again, drank too much Australian Shiraz, and listened to some damn lovely classical compositions- and, at least for this moment, the world seems lovely. Seagulls and all.
We are fucked beyond our wildest imagination, and sometimes, you realize how even in the midst of that, the simple little things are all you can truly count on.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
speaking of seagulls, george bush comments on mercenaries working in iraq
http://youtube.com/watch?v=V5xT1DGJMoQ
September 30th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
that was nice…
it’s raining back in the good ol valley…it’s downright depressing (is it so wrong to like bad things?), but great to hear on the roof when you’re trying to fall asleep… and nice to look at…
September 30th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Hee hee…
Years ago when I was in highschool and we had two homestay students stay with us they used to point at all the seafulls.. They had never seen them before… They asked me what they were called and I said “Shitters”… Ohh it was funny when we would be out and they would point at them and yell ” Shitter… shitter…” oh it was funny
September 30th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
If, as this building burns, we are only given empty buckets with which to fight the flames,
then our only solution is to save that moment, rather than ourselves.
Today, I was surrounded by 13,000 plus people in the first bone-chilling rain of the season. Together, as in multiple cities across Canada, we were there for loved ones, friends, and heroes. All of us, to be there as one, and say “Fuck you!” to a disease. Honestly, I expected the mood to be similar to the wheather…but instead I experienced a bonding feeling of community with so-called strangers. How strange can they be if we have the same emotions, desires, and attitudes about the future as a race? I was alone in a crowd where I thought I would cry, but instead, was overwhelmed with an absolute ferocity of life.
For the rest of my life, I will remember how it felt today. So when the times of despair arise, I will have that sledghammer with which to knock down that wall.
We can only control that which is in our grasp to do so, but from this, a revoloution can be cultivated.
October 1st, 2007 at 2:05 am
Nice catch Brett!
October 1st, 2007 at 3:35 am
hey sunking. drop me an email if you can!
October 1st, 2007 at 4:20 am
If I had a university class with Matt I’d want to sit next to him….I figure he’d take better notes then me - or at the very least he’d make me laugh.
Neglect not the gift that is in you …” -I Timothy 4:14
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A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
Mohandas Gandhi
October 1st, 2007 at 8:51 pm
aww matt you sound like you could use a pick-me-up.
I’m giving you the biggest hug (as long as a scary bouncer dude doesnt tackle me or something) when you get here :)
October 2nd, 2007 at 2:35 am
we all need a break from our lives..a moment of nothing to write is amoment to think about something else…or nothing at all… looking at somethign so innocentand free, something so unscaved, something so free…somethign we all wish we could be ourselves… have a good “day off”…enjoy it…:0)
October 2nd, 2007 at 2:52 pm
One other thing cool about seagulls, is when they go “Mine!, Mine!, Mine!, Mine!”……………………….