title | Arsène Hodali

I Was Never A Tourist

The difference between the tourist and the traveller is that the traveller allows themselves to be so shaped by where they are at the moment that they can rightfully say, “I’m not just in Toronto, I am Toronto. I’m not just in love, I am love. I’m not just in the abyss, I am the abyss.”

Unlike the tourist, the objective of the traveller is to not just be moved but to be remade.

And to then shun where and who they are completely so that they can move on to a new way of being, a new city, a new them. Because the traveller knows that you can’t ever truly be in a new city, in a new moment, in a new you, when an older has even a bit of your soul.

The objective of the traveller is to one day look back and say, “Not only did I see everything, I was everything. Not only was I alive, I was life. I was never a tourist.”

“For in my eternal search for something greater, I’ve left too many cities, too many lovers and friends, too many daily routines and ways of living that I was still madly in love with for me to have such a half-hearted title. I am a traveller. I pack my entire life with me when I move, my entire being, I leave nothing behind, not even love.”

The difference between being a tourist and being a traveller is exactly how much of your heart you carry with you.

The Hate U Get

Really tired of people saying that they only say the things they do because they want to get an honest reaction out of people, and only that. No, you’re just assholes dying for some attention. Shut up, please.

I’ve pretty much made a science of doing things just to see how people honestly react. Years back, I proudly told people I’d read and enjoyed books they demeaned like “Twilight” just to see how much they’d laugh at me. In the past couple of years I’ve realized that my dating habits are eccentric enough to warrant laughs of derision from a lot of people, and so now I openly speak about them as one of my main ways of testing people. I’ve had boyfriends track me down and try to fight me because of their girlfriends when I was hanging out with a couple of friends who’re gay just for me to turn around and lie through my teeth, “Oh, didn’t you know I’m gay too?” just to see the expected looks of disgust on their faces as they turn away and me and my friends laugh. I have countless shirts with images on them that test the beliefs of whoever’s reading them, like my favourite one with a man diving into a coffin arms wide open crucifix-style, just to see the expected looks of non-acceptance. I’ve been in situations where an entitled person says nigga or nigger over and over again with a crowd of onlookers just for me to continue talking to them casually while the crowd and they think me a coward of some sort. I’ve been in fights where I’ve suddenly stopped fighting halfway through just because I realized not fighting was both the more mature thing and also the more cowardly thing to do in others’ eyes. And my entire online presence has pretty much always been me just personally testing out how people or site algorithms react to something new I’m doing, and most times that’s negatively.

As I said, I’ve made a leisurely science of this. Stop making a joke of what I’ve worked hard to perfect in my spare time since I was a teenager. Are you keeping documented track of how people are reacting to you? No, you’re just assholes dying for some attention. Shut up, please.

If you truly want to test or get a reaction out of people to see who they truly are masks-off always make sure they feel superior to you and that you’re not demeaning anyone in their eyes but yourself. It’s not that hard really, you have so much detestation to choose from! The number of things and groups of peoples that the common person looks down upon just because are surprisingly infinite. The sheer volume of it all would be amazing if it wasn’t so saddening, but at least it’s honest.

#TheHateUGet
#SpeaksLouderThan
#TheHateUGive
#JustShutUpAndListen

The Revolution

“This revolution, this war, is different,” said a revolutionary. And then another. And then another.

Am I a revolutionary? Am I different? Yes. No. No… I don’t know. But being someone who’s well-read seems to be a symptom of being different. At least, of being different enough. And no, I’m not talking about the act of reading well, but the process by which someone becomes someone who’s well-read.

Looking back, I fell down the well and in love with reading when I was a kid in Texas after I picked up “The Yearling” by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, “Redwall” by Brian Jacques, and “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card. By the time I was half-way through high school in Toronto I started getting really bored with English literature, with the mindset behind it all. Luckily I stumbled upon this black-and-white Spanish graphic novel in a Toronto public library as I put down “Hellblazer” by Peter Milligan and “100 Bullets” by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. Captured by the very realistic and very graphic images it depicted of life in South American slums I spent a lot of time personally translating it. I didn’t play with a ball growing up so I had the time to waste. And man, did I waste it. I read that book so many times, like I loved it or something, because I guess I did, and then I ripped my favourite pages from it before returning it; I guess I knew I’d never see it again.

Even though I can’t remember its title anymore for the life of me, it’s still to this day one of my favourite graphic novels because it made me realize four things; one Continue Reading →

Chapter 1

Every time I cut off a child’s hands I like to count. Anything to distract myself from the fact that I’m cutting off a child’s hands.

Five minutes and the show begins.

We’re both facing the stage curtains. Slum Brown, I entitled their colour years ago. They used to be a ‘Royal Red,’ an official colour, but The Madam’s self-stylings as a queen couldn’t cover up what this place was for too long, a mud-brick restaurant in the slums. At least this one’s large, and floored. The floors being the same colour as everything else here, a bleak mix of gray and brown – Slum Brown. The smell of piss is everywhere. As usual for the slums, it’s like the air itself is moist with it.

The Madam had hired a stone mage of the second rank while standing here, and he’d half-finished setting the foundation before he’d figured out he wasn’t getting paid and quit. Hence its hushed nickname, The Leaning Turd.

Can’t understand why she stays, to lord over a land of children? Is her pride that small? She’s a fire mage! Shaking my head at the thought I Continue Reading →

quietus spiritus (warning: drink just a little,)

Rumi’s Remarks On The Lovely And Dark And Deep Woods

In the tavern are many wines [writes poet Coleman Barks in ‘The Essential Rumi’], the wine of delight in colour and form and taste, the wine of the intellect’s agility, the fine port of stories, and the cabernet of soul singing. Being human means entering this place where entrancing varieties of desire are served. The grapeskin of ego breaks and a pouring begins. Fermentation is one of the oldest symbols of human transformation. When grapes combine their juice and are closed up together for a time in a dark place, the results are spectacular. This is what lets two drunks meet so that they don’t know who is who. Pronouns no longer apply in the tavern’s mud-world of excited confusion and half-articulated wantings.

But after some time in the tavern, a point comes, a memory of elsewhere, a longing Continue Reading →

tourists

The strangers in the woods must mimic squirrels and crackle with the undergrowth. They must not flinch at the cruelty of breaking golden leaves with their feet, or of interring stones. // Rigoberto Gonzáles, The Strangers Who Find Me in the Woods

we follow Moirai down as she points
at the homes of the unturned stones

there
and there
and once there

we are as graceless as sinking pigs
but a sight less cruel somehow
breaking leaves
spouse and spouse
child and child
(there and there
and once there)

archeologists will discover a paradise
in the place no touch died of neglect

What It’s Like Having Schizoid Personality Disorder

The only protection against death was to love solitude. // Brenda Hillman, Saguaro

As Ronald David Laing puts forth in The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness instead of [(self/body) <> other], it’s [self <> (body-other)]. Schizoidness is like an enduring apathy, a perennial tepidness.

I’m probably what you’d call a somewhat, self-limited, or high functioning schizoid. As in though I’m still eccentric, I’ve had it all my life so I know how to somewhat work around and with my condition to the extent that I’m normal (whatever that means) if you don’t inspect too closely. Salman Akhtar’s phenomenological profile outlines me so well that I have a very hard time differentiating myself from my supposed disorder; where do I begin, where does it end, I don’t know.

The main factors for me are that (1) though I’m an emotional hyper-reflective being my emotions can either be labelled as diluted or too in-check, that (2) I derive no overwhelming special feeling from praise or condemnation or from being part of anything- be it family, group, social class, that (3) I work and feel better alone, that (4) I almost always have a different perspective on things, and that (5) as Laing put it though I am fully aware I am myself, relating myself to myself happens as a secondary process. Continue Reading →

My First Memory Of Art, My Most Recent

Now I write and such, but honestly, since elementary school everything’s felt like it was downhill.

See one day, back in said elementary school, my art teacher rose from his desk and approached the front of the classroom, like he usually did, and majestically held up this plastic-cased gem-encrusted Disney’s Peter Pan pen like it was Excalibur, like he didn’t. I somehow paid attention long enough to hear him tell us how it was, along with top marks, to be top prize in a mandatory art contest he’d enlisted every single one of us little soldiers in.

Little ironic eight year-old me figured if I was going to be forced to do this thing, it would be great if I did something, ironic. So finding only pencils, safety-scissors, glue, and books of blank variously coloured papers around me, I decided to ironically trace/trap scissors on papers, to then cut out scissors using scissors, and to finally overlay and glue all the variously coloured cut-out scissors in a small collage. Needing a title I labelled the collage ‘The Crowd / People,’ figuring if the cut out safety-scissors were metaphorically people then I’d just cut people with safety-scissors.

Long story short, I went home with a Disney pen. And later found myself, in an appropriately small tux, with my mom, at a crowded kids’ art gala where my so-called artwork was being featured. And while in that crowded place with my mom, while a woman gushed to her about how deep cutting my art piece was, how I’d captured how we’re all by our nature dangerous but mostly harmless, I couldn’t help but think, master irony level unlocked.

… I peaked at eight.