The past is a grotesque animal.

Emotions are stupid, and should be hated, but I've been having some lately.

It's getting unpleasant, for more than just me.

This is more than just a leitmotif.

If you don't want to read this emotional vomit, I'll forgive you unconditionally and hold no grudges, but accept no apologies. Just let it pass unspoken and forgotten.

Regardless, it's not about you. It's my navel and I'll gaze at it all I like.

So choose.

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OK. It's your own fault from here on in. This is the last time in this post that I really mean you.

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I used to work in a funeral home, a long time ago.

Some things you can't un-see.

Sometimes the images of dead children come back, vividly, often because of a particular scent.

I generally don't like to give or receive flowers since then.

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If your white terrier gets anxious when you tie it up outside of stores while you buy whatever overpriced shit you don't need, barks constantly, strains and lunges desperately every moment you're apart, it's pretty fucking cruel to leave it out here.

You're either ignorant of its suffering, or you're something of a monster. Possibly both.

I can't even see you to identify you, but I want to slap you to the ground.

If I thought I could make you understand, I might give it a try.

But I just don't have that much faith in you.

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Your knock-off Vespa might get good mileage, but keep it off the fucking sidewalk. A red light means you stop too. The Mazda 3 behind you didn't mount the curb, blow by me at 30 kph just to pull a u-turn and get ahead of the rest of the traffic, probably because he's not a dick. Or maybe he just didn't have room.

If I had raised my elbow, I could have had your teeth.

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White minivan: You're halfway into the intersection, against the red, less than a foot from hitting me. Don't look at me like I'm the slack-jawed idiot who nearly killed someone in front of a police station. Pay better fucking attention. At least your inappropriate rage makes me smirk. I can't hear you with my headphones in, and even if I could, we're both better off this way.

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More generally, if you don't signal your turn, I don't know that you're turning off here. Hence my crossing the ramp at the designated spot for doing so. I even have right of way in this instance. Don't honk. Willy sees you. Willy don't care.

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I have this idea for getting metal traffic signs made up, black on yellow and official-looking, to post around the city. They'll say "Motorists Use Your Fucking Signals."

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My walk to work includes such lovely sights as: an industrial gravel field with its sad barbed-wire fence slowly bending to the will of plant life and oxidation. A power transfer station and its geometrically perfect spider's web of high tension wires. A decrepit long-closed movie theatre with a broken sign, two empty storefronts and a defunct-looking driving school.

Or, depending on my route, I can pass up to three pornography stores, only one of which makes an attempt at witty signage. Sure, it fails ("Screw Harper and Obama/check out our stimulus packages") but it tries. It's also got a bright yellow banner boasting that it has the best private viewing rooms in Ontario.

Two things sadden me about this: that in order to make a boast like that means that someone has to be cleaning those viewing rooms, otherwise everywhere else is just that much worse. And that somewhere out there, it's someone's job to visit and rate the private pornography viewing rooms of Ontario. Slightly less picturesque than the bridges of Madison County.

More tits, though.

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Samuel Johnson called his "the black dog." Winston Churchill popularized Johnson's phrase and used to paint to keep his in check. Tennessee Williams found stability in his love, Frank Merlo, to balance out his own peaks and valleys. Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis weren't able to manage theirs especially well, to the benefit and loss of us all.

This isn't a list of people I compare myself to. I'm not a great artist or musician. I don't think it likely that I'll have a career in politics. And I know well enough my skill as a writer meagre in comparison.

It's just the common theme that I'm slowly getting to.

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I don't want to say that I get sick of people, or society, or civilization as a whole, but fuck it, I really do.

It begins with intolerance for strangers; just regular folk going about their lives, same as me. There are days when they irritate the hell out of me, and that happens to everyone now and again, but when it's consistent and constant and everything outside my door sounds like a cacophony of dumbly jabbering birds, I know it's me.

That I'm on my way down.

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When it first came about, I didn't even fight it. I love dogs, and welcomed it into my heart. "I'm a dog person," I said. "Let's wallow about on the floor with it." And the black dog nearly got the better of me. I managed to get help and get it under control. It was a pretty dark ride, although not as dark as some I know.

And since then there's been more bright than dark, even the times when the edges have crept in, it's never been as bad as it was the first time around.

I know this black dog well, now.
I know what I'm doing, now.
I know myself, now.

But recently my black dog has been creeping back, barking loudly at inopportune times, and generally being a nuisance. In recent years I've been keeping him at bay mainly with exercise and a particular diet - an emphasis on fruit and veg without going vegetarian, which I tried but found my body wasn't fond of - and generally keeping something of a routine on that front. Back country camping trips in Northern Ontario also help a lot for my general well-being, both physically and mentally.

I've fallen out of that routine of late, almost fully, and even though I could claim extenuating circumstances, that's bullshit. There are things that I need to do in order to function fully, and I haven't been doing them, and I'm the only one with responsibility for doing them or not. So I need to start doing them again.

It's time for me to shoo the black dog away again, lest he bite someone.

Lest he bite you.