infinity in ash
Hey everyone. I hope the recent heat waves haven’t caused you to lose too much sanity.
I have been traveling between Ottawa (where I work and where my parents live), Montreal, and Kingston quite regularly throughout this summer. I am writing this from Kingston, windows open, on the evening of July 13th. It is yet another muggy day where evaporative cooling has been rendered useless. The sweat soaked sheets serve as a stark reminder of just how bleak the current environmental outlook is.
I have been thinking a lot about air conditioning (more accurately the lack of it when I’m not at my parents). We are in a dangerous positive feedback loop caused by the need for air conditioning to survive the warming climate. The strain that places on our power grid is heating up the world further. It is hard not to feel guilty in the comfort of my childhood home where I am priviliged enough to be immune to the consequences of this heat. I hope you still dream of a future where the sheets stay dry.
Where do dead batteries go? I’m sure I could look it up but that is a step I’m unwilling to take right now—I will rot in my bed and ignore the option of turning off the alarm that is across the room. I will continue to assume it is an inconvenient process, incongruent with my current priorities.
In the meantime I will host these shells in my home, in desks, drawers, boxes and, for the lucky ones, in strong but indirect sunlight—water them once a week—and try not to drown them to death.
I have been worried that we do not take the illusion of free will as seriously as we should. Surrendering control to the twenty first century’s incoherent ideals and “Spiritual Frankenstein” has never felt like a satisfying answer to me.
I die in all of my dreams. We all live in limbo, between creation and destruction.
Over the past month or so I have gotten back into dating as I felt it was time to finally get back out there in search of a life partner. It’s been a jarring but pleasant experience (and luckily a much needed boost to my self confidence). For some context, I wrote the above notes on dead batteries the same weekend I took the dive into dating apps when visiting Montreal. In re-approaching, I didn’t want to take it too seriously and I decided to make my prompts and responses all related to dead batteries.
It was a fun experiment to see how people would engage with this concept and it was surprisingly effective at sorting for people who were respectful of their surroundings, observant of the world around them, and diligent in their actions towards percieved good. I only really intended to be on the apps for the weekend I was in Montreal but my time extended past that. I got back to Ottawa and very quickly matched with a friend from high school (this connection didn’t gain any traction but I include this because now I was really hooked on the apps).
Not long after, I matched with someone I had spoken to semi-romantically a couple of years ago. Thus began a week and a half of getting to know each other again before finally going on a date. In preparation for the date I thrifted some new clothes (in particular a shirt with the phrase “Lest We Forget” where the top left pocket would be… it was intended to commerate fallen Canadian soldiers). The lettering on the shirt was oddly stylish and I decided to pick it up—the sentiment “Lest We Forget” was oddly moving out of the context of the military. I have been thinking about the compartmentalization of memory into the collective conscious through art pretty much daily in trying to take a meaningful crack at songwriting. It was a serendipitious reminder of my raison d'être lately.
Picture me, “Lest We Forget” shirt on, walking into “Nan’s Parlour”—a cocktail bar that is self-described as granny chic. The date ran from 8 o’clock until 2 o’clock and the conversation never stopped flowing. I greatly enjoyed myself and felt the beginnings of a special connection forming. I dropped her off at home and in the last moments of the night she volunteered to let me know the next day what her schedule looked like so we could meet again soon.
I walked to my car feeling appreciative of how the night had gone. I was excited to meet up again, but a lingering sense of dread that the connection hadn’t materialized in a physical form stuck around. I struggle to stay grounded in trusting romantic intentions on dates without cues like hugs/kisses that give me more evidence of what the nature of a relationship might be. Stewing in this feeling the next day, I tried to lean into the beauty of the present in these relationships and living with the fleeting nature of love in all of its forms (I am self admittedly anxiously attached to people if those words even have meaning anymore in a world where people are scrambling to find the latest box they can reduce themselves into).
I am forgetting to fill you in on the chaotic in-between. After leaving downtown to drive to save my sister (from what might have been a potential breakup with her boyfriend) and then head home, Ottawa got its first torrential downpour of the year. In my reflective state, I began to manually compute the safest route to reach my sister given the electric car was running low on kilometers. It is deeply disappointing how unreliable and neutered these vehicles are compared to their gas counterparts. The infrastructure just isn’t there yet to support them properly.
Picture me again, driving on the highway in this downpour at two-thirty in the morning, watching the number of kilometers to the nearest charging station stay quite stagnant as the remaining kilometers left in the vehicle shredded away. At this point, panic set in, and I slowed down significantly to try and coast to the destination. I made it into the parking lot of the charging station, but not close enough.
I hear the car go silent.
The brakes jolt.
The car is fully dead.
I am immobilized.
You might wonder what happens when an electric vehicle runs out of battery. There are no jerry can equivalents to portably boost the battery of this behemoth. The only path forward is getting the vehicle to a charging station (which are much less common than gas stations). Electric vehicles are two times heavier and thus harder to push than gas vehicles so the only real option is to get it towed (despite only being 500m away from the closest charging station).
It rained.
My math was right.
The machine lied to me.
I’m so sorry, Mom and Dad.
You will soon come to learn there is no such thing as twenty-four hour tow truck service in the suburbs of the sleepiest city in Canada after frantically calling around for two hours straight. The car’s five year extended warranty ran out a month ago and as a result, the service attached to the car manufacturer is not able to come help. Too little, too late—early bird gets the worm—any other platitude that speaks on a lack of effort and time blindness.
You are alone. You will be alone until morning. Hold the pillow and pretend to hug it. Does that make it feel better? Are you actually alone? Does the rain pouring through the window (that can’t be rolled up without some power that the car currently severely lacks) and caressing your skin make you feel alive?
Are you doing something wrong in failing? The person driving by in the Tesla with “SECURITY” in big bold lettering—does he think you are a bad person? Does he think you are fundamentally flawed? You tell yourself you are just in need. You are vulnerable.
Is it a coincidence you happen to be beside a previous workplace of your most major ex-partner? Is this fated? Why do you still dream about her and the other loves that have been quote, unquote, cut too short? You must be a coward for not having told them how deeply you feel for them. Why do you allow yourself to be attached to a complacent future? And why does this unfortunate circumstance, being stranded in this car, leave you longing for love more than before? The date went well tonight. It should turn into something meaningful—something fulfilling.
You are stuck and there is no way out of this before seven the next morning. No one is coming to save you. How long can you remain still until the ethical burden lies on you to move by whatever means possible? You obviously are not trying hard enough. You’ve never tried hard enough. The first generation immigrant working a graveyard security shift is empathetic of your predicament. Inhale.
I lied on my dating profile.
Sometimes I smoke when I’m drunk. I hope you don’t judge me for that.
I lied on my dating profile.
Time has not treated my body well. I have curated and assembled a false representation of my being. I’m sorry. Was it the band-aid on my face to cover up the cut I got while shaving for the date? Was I too obviously human? I hope that you are still interested in me. I know that you were able to see a future with me before and I hope you still can. Please tell me it’s not as bad as I think it is. It will all be okay right? Your words are mirages.
I lied on my dating profile.
There is an organ donation signup letter in the mailbox that lies 25 metres away from my childhood bedroom. I will give you brain and body if that’s what it takes. Pinky promise you’re the one for me. You have to know by now I am a hopeless romantic. I only care about forever.
I lied on my dating profile.
The heat of the summer has made my rings harder to fit over my knuckles. I only wear this silver jewellery in the first place to fit into the greater societal image of what someone like me needs to look like to be seen as attractive. I have chosen the uncomfortable pressure of this ring in hopes you draw conclusions on what I am like before giving me the chance to speak them into existence myself. It is easier this way. Love is found in the unspoken.
I lied on my dating profile.
I am my father’s son. I accidentally stumbled upon the Notes app on his phone, which includes a paragraph he has set a daily reminder for. He is manifesting a world without nicotine. He knows he is better off without it, yet he can’t escape it. He is just as stuck as I am.
I lied on my dating profile. So I forgive you for cutting contact with no warning a couple of days after the empty battery incident. You didn’t ghost me. That would imply I am grounded in some tangible reality that you are leaving. I am barely clinging onto the physical realm. Exhale. (I didn’t actually lie on my dating profile)
We are both just smoke in a room. Smoke that turns into silver sulfide. You weren’t supposed to be smoking in here. You did anyways. You just proved the Bohr model of the atom. You can see the separation in the lines. One h-bar exactly.
You have done something special and you know it. But you were wrong. What you thought you found is not there. There is truth in failure. There will always be truth in your failure. The world is spinning constantly. The smallest components of the world are spinning constantly. You and every high-strung academic didn’t know that yet. You found it.
The whole world is spinning and you are oblivious to that fact. Feeling stuck is comical and you don’t know it until a few years later. The whole world is laughing at you. The outermost electron of silver has no orbital angular momentum. But now you know every single one of the octillions of electrons in your body naturally spin on their own. Harness that energy and do something.
Please do something.
Is there beauty I can only see in the haze of my vices?
I heard somewhere that one of the most defining characteristics of old indoor sports and concert photography is the blue haze that is present in an image like the one above. Cigarette smoke from the audience has taken on the colour of the light around it—volumetric dispersion. In the present day, we have rightly implemented and enforced rules to limit indoor smoking for the health of the general population.
Does beauty have to be in opposition to health?
The unsanitized, the gory—where is beauty when we remove these things?
Why is my best art made from a well of grief? Is there really purpose and fulfillment in my self-destruction?
How quickly am I allowed to unwind—and will my existence be statistically significant?
Will people remember me by a charred handprint on a window pane?
I don’t want to worry you but I am dying and the people around me seem to be dying too. I can feel it now more than I ever have: in my rotting teeth, my creaking knees, and my damaged nervous system. If you have never felt your nervous system count yourself lucky—it is as uncomfortable as you can imagine it would be—a weighted blanket on a hot summer’s day.
One day when I pick at the jagged edges, the textured pits of the crown of my teeth—will the pulp begin to ooze? I imagine it would be feel similar, both physically and emotionally, to picking through wilted spinach in the fridge from a recent grocery run. Food never seems to stay fresh long enough to finish it.
How does the body allocate space for pain? It seems as if my vessel’s physical deterioration leaves me little room to wallow. Life has been dulled. Existence is multitasking.
I don’t see any sign of it getting better.
I woke up one afternoon in February after pulling an all-nighter to finish a song.
I suddenly couldn’t feel my hands and feet.
That feeling still lingers, although now more minor. I might never be the same. I have done this to myself. Don’t feel sorry for me. I repeat.
I did this to myself.
It is five months later and I haven’t properly sought out help for this. I am scared of the answers to my questions. I admit this to you through clenched teeth. I am poisoning myself.
I think of running around with potential children. I think of holding onto and pleasuring my potential partner. I think of the importance of hands and feet as a part of my being and its interaction with the world around me. Which parts of my life have I allowed to be sacrificed to the cause of my current trajectory? I think of the beauty in the naivety of being young—the exploration of the small scope around you and the broadening of that scope as you age.
If I become land-locked will I be able to find satisfaction in that smaller scope? Will you be able to love me for my mind alone? Will you learn to love my deteriorating vessel?
I believe it is possible. My grandfather—the “Thomas” in Padraig Thomas Greene—was someone who built boats. I was going to describe him as a boat-building “hobbyist” but that would be doing an extreme disservice to how necessary boats were to the survival of my ancestors. Boat-building was a matter of life and death. To traverse the ocean was to be able to feed your family and go to church—the latter of which was a routine that has been described to me as packing all of the family into a tiny boat for a three hour roundtrip journey to the nearest island with a church.
The sheer amount of resiliency that these people had to have had to endure their circumstances is inspiring. I hope I can draw more from that pool of energy as I am met with my own difficult circumstances. Pictured below is my grandfather visiting the island of Presque in Placentia Bay—his original home.
Presque was abandoned during the resettlement of Newfoundland in the 1960s/1970s when the Dominion of Newfoundland became a province of Canada. It no longer economically made sense to have so many fishing outports and disparate towns so Canada offered sums of money to those who were remote to settle in St. John’s. The province needed to consolidate these people in a city center to begin to take the steps towards modernizing the economy and fitting “the rock” into the Canadian mould.
Newfoundland to this day struggles to fill that role—its people have been displaced and left stranded from their homes, their inherited skills, and their origins. My grandfather luckily transferred his construction skills to start a company that built homes in Newfoundland. Many are not as lucky. The pictures of the resettlement are incredibly bittersweet to me. It is absolutely astonishing they were able to transport these houses across the water in the fashion they did—rolling them onto a raft of logs—but I am struck with grief knowing that their hand was forced into leaving the incredible lifestyle and community they had built in these places. Yet again these boats were integral to their survival and comfort, allowing for the transport of these houses to ports closer to St. John’s.
My grandfather bought a project sailboat early on into his retirement. It stayed put in the driveway of my grandparents home in suburban St. John’s, Newfoundland until his death. To tell you the truth I don’t think he ever really believed he would fix it before he died. But it kept him busy and it kept him dreaming.
When I am parked in the driveway will you let me keep you busy? Will you let me keep you dreaming?
I have never been able to do anything in moderation. I hope you understand. We are running a half-marathon together and I think nowadays I will only be able to run a few kilometers or miles. I know that must be disappointing. I know that it will be harder to run without company. I am throwing up at the aid station as we speak. I can’t keep it down even if I try to.
And my knees, they hurt too much. I’ve run longer and harder than I should have in the training stages of this race. I have never been able to prepare properly. The inertial forces on my body are extreme. I am a zero or a one. I let a good thing turn bad. I don’t think my body and mind were ever ready for this and I don’t think they ever will be. I don’t think I’m going to make it to the charging station.
But we have made a promise to each other until this race ends. I will make something out of what remains and lingers of you if you have to stop too soon.
I know you will do the same for me.
There is infinity in ash.
“Lest We Forget”
I have not experienced a deeper connection than this dynamic. My entire being rests on the shoulders of those I trust to do my life justice in anticipation of a quick, dramatic death. In this I find comfort.
I hope you can find comfort in knowing that I will do the same for you too.
I have recently found myself speaking like you.
Please reach out if you find yourself speaking like me too: blog@thisfindsyou.com
And happy second anniversary to https://substack.com/@2scared2tell
Endless love and inspiration flows out of Charlie and I owe him more than he will ever know.
The closing thoughts of this post interpolate some ideas he shares in the last paragraph of “screaming” and the last paragraph of “capillaries”:
🫶