In Toronto. My brother Jason and I got up early that morning to check out a 10 AM screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. The movie was Buffalo Soldiers starring Joaquin Phoenix, Anna Pacquin, and Scott Glenn. The movie’s not been sold to a distributor yet, and it’s certainly not the sort of movie that’s ever going to be shown when America’s at war. Set on a base in East Germany in 1989, Buffalo Soldiers paints a very black portrait of the American military. It’s hilarious and hysterical and alarming and even sexy — a wicked scene where Phoenix and Pacquin do ecstacy together at a club, while on the soundtrack New Order’s “Blue Monday” sounds better than ever. Everyone on the base is either a crack/heroin user or a supplier. Nightclubs are shown with unofficially military sanctioned prostitutes in the milieu (a reality of US military life that I’m sure no one mentions on American TV). After the movie, there was supposed to be a Q&A with the director — but it was announced that the director was stuck in traffic, and shortly it would be clear this was not the real reason for the director’s absence.
The streets of Toronto seemed emptier and quieter than usual. My bro and I wandered into a shopping mall to check messages. There was a mysterious message from our mom, saying that our other brother had called to check up, and she was letting us know that her and my dad were safe, and told us not to worry.
I first saw the news in the electronics department of the Eatons department store. It was impossible to comprehend. Just recently, I was telling someone that one of the best memories of my whole life was taking the ferry from Battery Park, Manhattan to Staten Island (only because I didn’t have enough money to go up the Empire State Building, and I had a metro pass, so the ferry ride was free). It was nighttime. The ferry passed by the Statue of Liberty. I was thinking about the Wu-Tang Clan, who came from Staten Island. A kid with a boombox was blasting Jay-Z’s “It’s A Hard Knock Life.” I went out on the deck of the ferry, and absolutely marveled at the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, the stars of the New York night scene. They were (and I can’t believe I’m using the past tense) so beautiful, such a marvel of human achievement. I hope they really did lay great bases for eternity.
The next few hours, my bro and I walked around. I looked into the faces of the people I met. It was as if you could see who’d heard the news and who hadn’t heard the news. It felt then, like the end of the world, like Armaggedon … and I thought, “it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Revelation, the last chapter of the Bible, doesn’t have to be true, but it certainly seems like it’s being encouraged. Prophecy’s better left unwritten. I hope people don’t forget that it’s an open book. Even as I’m hopeless, I hold onto hope. I have faith, but I don’t where to place it.
In conversations with people, it’s clear that the movies we’ve watched have become something like the lens through which we comprehend the world. Different movies come up. But one that keeps popping back into my mind is the Fight Club, in which the buildings of 15 major credit companies were blown up – and it was beautiful. And it was okay to think that it was beautiful, because the movie made it clear that nobody was in those buildings. The Fight Club was a fantasy, a projection of conscious and unconscious desires.
Today, on a televised radio talk show, I watched the mayor of New York Guiliani speak. Asked how people could help, Guiliani’s message was basically: shop, shop, and shop some more. And it’s clear that the economy’s in peril, and hence the livelihood and lifestyles of virtually everyone are in peril.
It’s certainly a surreal time to be banking.
This economy’s obviously not working. It’s a sick system. There’s enough furniture in warehouses somewhere. We don’t need more. There’s enough CDs. There’s enough duffel bags. There’s enough duvets. There’s enough desks. There’s enough books. There’s enough sweatpants. There’s enough t-shirts with company logos. We don’t need to produce more. We just need to redistribute. Believe me — there’s enough to go around.
But, whatever … I don’t want to be negative … and who am I to talk? I haven’t done much either way. And I don’t want to use this as my excuse — but isn’t there something paralyzing about this age we live in? It’s complex. Too many obtuse angles. Too much reflection and refraction. And concave mirrors. I almost have a nervous breakdown trying to buy stationary.

I bought this postcard in Korea of a painting of a young Buddha, sitting on the peak of a cliff above the sea, in the moment just after the sun goes down, and he catches a shooting star across the sky.
You know I once heard that at a certain moment of a perfect sunset, you can witness a green flash across the sky. This is one of these bits of wisdom that I might have heard in a dream.
Something fantastic and wonderful — a small motel near the sea on the East Coast of Korea. The ocean at night — the white crests still visible. A small road along the ocean — a tall, barbwire-capped fence running the length of it — the barbwired South Korean coast, which keeps the North out. Night is over. The brilliant sun glittering and scattering over the rough surface of the ocean.
I’ve been lonely. I saved up all the things I would say to the next one, and then the next one came, and I said all those things I was saving up, and then I wasn’t anymore. But now I’m juggling the promise of happiness with the threat to my freedom.
Some music doesn’t let itself be listened to. It takes the listener over. It spaces me out, and my mind drifts into places it hasn’t been, the cobwebs of the mind get cleared, it cleanses the brain, it washes over you.
These are just a few of the things that crossed my mind tonight, entranced by the concert of Sigur Ros, a quartet from Iceland, who played Massey Hall in Toronto.
The Sigur Ros singer tends to not sing in English or Icelandic. Just these warbled, angelic phrasings.
Earlier this year, I found a lot of pleasure in listening to Sigur Ros, while reading a book that I think was called Chaos & Light.
I love walking in the open air, when you feel a cool breeze, and you get that sensation of breathing through your eyelids. Tonight, the air conditioner came on in the auditorium, and I felt that cool, breathy feeling in my eye lids.
The lighting was brilliant. Conjured up all kinds of effects. The guitarist’s arms were all red, and this idea caught in my brain. I imagined music on another planet. Alien lifeforms forming a band. A giant blob on the stage with a dozen limbs that could break into smaller components, which could then scatter to the different instruments. One blob playing a symphony with a million limbs.
Sigur Ros make music for that meltdown that so rarely occurs. That moment of ecstacy … Something that bewilders the senses. It’s music that refuses to be remembered, pulls you to deeply into the moment.

I’m seeing the tangled embrace of lovers in the floral patterns of dormitory drapes.
Falling in love — trying to conceal your flaws long enough to make each other enough of a habit, so that it can’t be so easily broken.
Suddenly nothing else matters. I had no idea.
She walked right into my love.
Suddenly, I know fear — the fear that comes with having something to lose. The lover’s the fool who trades for freedom for fear.
Emotions so different from one another that the only thing they have in common is that they keep you from sleeping. Love is not so much love, just a willing or unwilling opening of the dam that keeps emotions in check.
Must I tell the whole world?
It’s too soon to know, but it feels like love.