I just couldn’t take it anymore. All the noise. I used to love living right downtown, right in the middle of everything. Not anymore.
Sure, I chose to live right beside a set of train tracks, but I thought I’d get used to it. I had gotten used to it and then I didn’t. There were more of them, the trains. Every seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Even with the door closed.
Read MoreGiven my chosen field of professionalism, you would have assumed that I had a visual imagination. This seems to work in overdrive for most of my waking life. Yet, I have no access to an active dream world. I rarely, if ever, dream. And if I do, I rarely, if ever, remember them.
Read MoreHanging out the door of a ratty plane, the plane held together by duct tape, my eyes staring at the earth 10,000 feet away through heavy clouds — from up here, yes, I could ascertain that the world was most definitely flat. And solid. What kind of damage occurs to the physical body when it hurtles hundreds of kilometres per hour and slams into this unyielding ball of mass? This was wholly unnatural and diametrically opposed to any instinctual notion of my usually highly sensitive idiosyncratic perception of self-preservation.
Unnatural.
Read MoreIn 1952, at the age of twelve, my father fell into a delirious state. Doctors came and went, so many that they became a blur to him. It was determined that he had a brain tumour, and preparations were made to consider surgery. He was rushed to the hospital, and at the last moment, another doctor suggested that they should perform a spinal tap.
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