and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

Trust me. It's a lot harder than it looks and it's not getting any easier. It's as if, with practice, I get worse. Tennis is like that for me. The first match of the season I'm on fire. I'm beating people I shouldn't be beating and I'm serving less than 50% faults. I'm wary, of course, cause I know it's not right. I hit tentatively and react slowly. I get caught on my heels.. So from there on out it's all downhill. My mind has to start playing catch up with my feet until it falls so far behind it trips on itself. I overanalyse.

Tennis is a great sport to watch because it's a real thinking man's game. Lotta ins, lotta outs, what have yous (god I crack myself up). Since there is so many pauses in the game and it's a solo proposition, you have nothing to do but think about your game and how much it sucks.. Until you psych yourself out. You can see it in the player's eyes - the intensity of a man who thinks he is on the verge of making the wrong decision. Tennis, really, is a game against *yourself*.

Well look in my eyes, folks. See that intensity?

I might be about to make a wrong decision, but then again, I'm always about to - depending on how you swing that whole "fate" thing. Me, I don't believe so much in that because it doesn't make sense. Sure, it makes people feel good - as if someone planned a path out for them so - good, bad, or ugly - it's "just the way it is" and people can live with that cause it gives them an excuse.

Everyone's looking for an excuse. Me, I'm taking responsibility for it, no fate for me.. I got plenty of excuses for other stuff. Life ain't one of them. My decisions are what makes me, so why pretend they aren't you?

So a little off tonight after stopping by my friend's couch on the way home from work, if you get my drift, and so when I dangled I drove around a bit - even though I was late to meet someone - and when I finally got home I called the bartenderess. Why not? She gave me her number, after all. I could go into details but the bottom line is that she gave me her number, not the other way around. I sat there on that barstool for three years - I met her when I moved to town - admiring maybe but not overstepping my bounds, not hitting on her like a creep, not even flirting really. And don't think I didn't have a crush on this one from the moment I set eyes on her. Don't think for a second that she hasn't been on my mind for three straight years. And so when I told her I was going back to McGill she said "Give me your number for when I visit Montreal" as if we were all pals, as if we'd chewed the fat on many occasion, as if - really - we'd have all this catching up to do someday up there in the frozen north. And so I told her, no, I don't have a number up there yet and so she called me a doofus and scrawled her digits down on the back of some receipt paper out of the credit card machine. She gave me her number. And because of that you'd think the game would be different this time around... but it's not. The game remains the same. Call, voice mail, wait.. wait.. wait. She won't call because she never intended for anything to happen in the first place. She was just being friendly. You know, in that "Hey we should go running together sometime" way. Nobody goes running together. It's one of those empty hollow promises that is just accepted as false.

Using it is, almost, like guaranteeing your fate.

So she didn't say we should go running together but proverbially, that's what she meant. She wanted to say something to the effect of "Hey, you're a really nice guy.. Good luck with that", as if to say being a nice guy was a disease.. as if it's something I should try to get over. As if she would love to date me .. if only I were a little more dark and mysterious. Maybe more brooding.

Yah yah, brooding. She'd like that. I should maybe have a warrant out for my arrest in New Mexico, that could add to the allure, and I could have creditors chasing me down all the time. I could have a few metal pins in my neck from that motorcycle crash and - she is a bartender, right - I should be a drunk.

Give it a rest. See? Even I get bored of my cynicism sometimes.

It's almost completely dark out already here in the port city and it's damp. There is a hint of something happening up inside those dark clouds but the fleet is breaking up, each heading in their own direction and underneath - I can see bits and pieces of it already - there is a deep dark sky of blackness. The summer heat has burnt off a bit with the weather and on the breeze I can almost hear the town rejoicing. A ten minute walk down the Eastern Promenade to the Old Port, perhaps, but I swear I can hear the clink of pint glasses and the chortling delight of the tourists from where I sit on this front porch. Maybe it's in my head. I swear I can see the twinkling shop lights and the dim glow of the barrooms. I swear I can hear the CHUNK - CHUNK of the traffic lights changing in the dark and I can hear the tiny voices of a million cell phone conversations percolating on the wind. I bet there eating lobster down there. I bet somewhere, right now, underneath the dead seaweed and gasoline floating on the sea, somewhere beneath meters of ocean there is a lobster considering a trap. Somewhere out on some rocks near that ocean there is a snail slowly making it's way across a tiny tidalpool.

Meg Ryan stopped by my roommate's restuarant for the second time yesterday. They served her a drink and then left her alone. It's nice to know that, even as a celebrity, there are a few places you can go and just be left alone - treated like a normal human being.

I'm just wondering, now that I've got myself stuck in a lobster trap, where I can go to get that peace and quiet. See, from my angle, that tiny tidalpool isn't looking so bad anymore.