schism.ca

So, as has been stated, I’m trying to bike more this season, mostly as a solution to the daily commute. It’s something that I should have been doing for a long time, but gave up years ago, much thanks to having access to a car. There seems to be very few downsides so far, and I have even discovered a small glimmer of my love for cycling re-emerging. Last week, when I had to take my car to work on a good biking day because I’d need it after, I was actually feeling a little disappointed. That surprized me. But, I crossed the 200km mark today! Woot! While I never wanted to set a solid goal for this, the fact of riding at all being good enough, I would truly love to cross the 1000km threshold this season if I can. All pointers suggest this will be no problem.

I have, however, found a couple of crappy things about riding. These are the sorts of things that I’d normally hold out as reasons why I would not bike. Instead of quitting though, I’m trying to find solutions. The biggest one by far is that my body hates me. I won’t go into details about my ass… even I don’t care about my ass if I can help it, so I imagine the world at large could not care any less, but yeah… it’s not happy. And my shoulders have been giving me grief for about a month now. I don’t know how much of that grief is caused by biking, but I imagine at least some small portion is.

So, I started by giving up the messenger bag to haul my stuff in favour of a backpack. It seemed to be a little better, but certainly didn’t fix the issue. Last night, after a bunch of researching, I decided I’d try some pannier bags. It went against my current push to eliminate stuff from my life, and it also was a little more expensive than I’d hoped, but I figured it was not a frivolous buy. I installed the rack and used the bag for this morning’s commute. Huge difference. Night and day getting the weight off of me and onto the bike. I completely forgot I was carrying all my stuff on the way, and I arrived at work far less sweaty thanks to nothing on my back. If it continues to go as well as it did today, these bags will be one of the best things I’ve ever bought.

You know what? I never would have bought these things a few years ago, and you know why? Because I thought they weren’t cool. I thought they looked stupid, and took away from the streamlined look of the bike. In a lot of ways, I have been a idiot forever. I recently read an article that pointed out that in Europe, a bicycle is commonly seen as a utilitarian vehicle–something that is practical and serves a purpose to help humans out, whereas here in North America, we see our bicycles as strictly a sports and leisure tool. Like almost everything else, they need to have a ‘cool’ factor to appeal to people so they can stand as consumer items. Even from my extremely limited interaction with cycle shops in the area these last few weeks, I know there’s a contingent of zealots and fanatics in this town with plenty of super expensive gear for them to spend their cash on.

Seems it’s the same everywhere. There’s the equivalent of a Mac Fanboi for every area–cars, bikes, gadgets, role playing, photography, sports, food, you name it. And man, the idea of something totally rules, nevermind the reality. It’s way more important that something should look good than work right. I know this is true for me. I am in no way saying I’m high and mighty here. I am currently sopping up the drool each time I look at the new mac mini released just today, even though I know in my heart of hearts that it’s obscenely overpriced and will not, in all practical terms, make me any happier than any other system that can do what I need it to do. I still refuse to give that one up.

But for bikes, I can see it. And my body can tell me that it appreciates it. And so does the overall experience. At the risk of becoming some sort of bicycle evangelist, I like that I’m finally doing something that moves my ass, even if my ass is unhappy about it at the moment. I like that it’s good for the environment, and I like that it gets me outside and gives me space to think about something other than the LCD in front of my eyes. Seems like all I really want is for the experience to be as pleasant as it can be. It needs to accomplish what it must (get me places) in the best way (without pain). ‘Cool’ doesn’t enter into it anymore. If the bags help, bring ‘em on. If I get fenders to keep off the rain, awesome. If I get a whole new bike someday (although not this season, that’s for damned sure) that’s a hybrid and looks like something a Mennonite would ride to church on a Sunday then hook me up if it accomplishes what it must. Heck, I’ve been totally smoked my older guys on those things… it’s sort of embarrassing.

I think the lesson here is something I should have learned ages ago, that will take some time yet to adopt completely. It branches from many studies on happiness I’ve read lately that state that material wealth is not a good predictor for happiness in general, over and above those who live in poverty. The guy with the cooler bike is no happier than the guy with the geeky bike, essentially. Happy for me is probably better accomplished through having only what I need, and by keeping a very close eye on what I want. Wants should be royal and absolute and contain power. They should not be the basis of the day to day though. The focus is what I need. The rest can go, or at least be open to pretty extreme scrutiny.

I’m loving my geeky-assed bike more and more.

Much as I’m loathe to use my space on the net as a never ending array of bitching and seeking of pity, I guess sometimes, that’s what I’m inclined to do. In spite of the fact that I’m more blessed than probably 90% of my fellow human beings who do not even have the ability to complain, owing to lack of house, computer, internet access or health good enough, about the things that easily trump my teeny concerns, I still complain and somehow feel like I’m justified to do it. I don’t know what I think complaining will get done, except maybe the act of writing can ease the psychological pressure a little when I’m feeling overwhelmed.

About two hours before I left work yesterday, I got this little headache, which by the time I left, became an astounding headache. By the time I got home, I was feeling godawful sick, and while I tried to eat something, I didn’t get all that far. It was all I could do to swallow a couple Tylenol and go to bed for an hour and a half. While I was lying there half comatose, I swear I heard Suzanne typing away in the next room–an entirely impossible feat, considering she was at a conference across town. I remember thinking that I should check who in the heck was in my house using the computer, but I couldn’t bring myself to get up. It was surreal.

When I finally came out of my stupor some 85 minutes later, I felt all fuzzy and strange, and that feeling is still with me. The headache is this shadow pain that’s just sorta lingering around, and I can’t seem to focus on any damned thing. I just don’t care today. It probably would have been better if I’d stayed in bed and done nothing but listen to the rain fall. Alas, I need to live life I guess.

In the time between waking and going back to bed last night, I wrote. I had yet to inform my journal about the selling of mom’s house and all the things that went with it. It’s a lot to write, and taking multiple days to get through. I hope I can find the time and space to finish tonight. But as I sat there in the light of two candles (which was about all I could handle–some days, I hate these LCDs) sipping my chamomile ginger blend tea, I found my centre again. I really love to sit in the dark and write. I love to listen to good music on the stereo and just put thoughts down on paper with ink. I have this feeling that if I really did have to lose everything, or most everything, that my exorbitant life currently offers, and if I had to pare down to the essentials… well, I think the essentials would be shelter and food (and good tea), journal and pen, books to read, and nice music to listen to. Somehow, I think if I had that, while I may jones to the point of pain for my computer and electronic wonderland, I would stay sane. I would live.

But then, the computer was waiting in the other room, sorta saying “you’ll be back” in its silent, smug, assured sort of way. And, it’s right. It is easy to feel like I lack for nothing and could give it all up when everything is around me just waiting on my decision to use it. One does not need to want what one has. Still some part of me is drawn to the romanticized idea of a simple room, with only the essentials that I need which would then receive all of my attention, because I’d have more attention to give. It wouldn’t be divided amongst all the endless possessions and things going on. In some world, some reality, I think I’d have made an excellent monk.

Alas, the world got me, and its hooks go deep. Beyond just my social and financial realities, they go into my psyche. It’s tough to work with that, so I get swept along.

I guess I should get sweeping again. Lunch is done. Perhaps I can be of some worth today as long as the pain stays at bay, and I can stay awake.

I’m going to write this down even though it’s pretty personal and thus won’t matter to anyone, and pretty hard to tack down and so likely won’t make any sense. It just feels like this particular emotional space is a little like the polkaroo, and you better engage it while it’s there, or damn, you’ll miss it again.

I started down this negative slope yesterday. I guess the reasons are known, but not really important. Let’s just say that I was in a very familiar place–the place where I’m just negative. The silly stressed, angry, confused, self-deprecating, vindictive, hopeless cocktail that I drink as though it were the sweetest nectar, because its taste seems to validate the ideas that I have about myself. I get that part. While I’ve never really understood how it came to be that my current resting state is so negative, that’s the thing that is most familiar to me. It feels like it’s the way to be, like it’s safe. As has been stated today in an article over at Dumb Little Man,  “if we ever feel that we have to choose between safe and happy, we’ll usually move towards what’s safe”. To that end, I suppose that I also want to feed and validate what is safe, so that I don’t move away from it. That’s likely why the cocktail tastes so sweet, even though it’s comprised of nothing but shit, and ultimately serves to make me quite unhappy.

That said, apparently I’m pretty self-aware about this sort of stuff. I have it on good faith that most people who are depressed do not see this little dance play out and cannot identify the reasons for it. They drink the cocktail without ever turning it into the semiotic analysis that I do. If that’s true, then I have a leg up. Indeed, I think I do have that leg up–I have the ability to counter all that stuff with thoughts that go more toward the outcome I want as opposed to the outcome that makes me feel safe. I can make the leap to self mastery in this regard. I can know, intellectually, exactly the way out of the woods. There’s lots of allegories to help out with this, the most recent of which, to lean on Dumb Little Man again, is the whole Cherokee wolf story. God only knows if it’s originally a Cherokee story or just some appropriated myth from somewhere, but the idea is sound regardless of the poetic imagery: the thing you focus on is the thing that’s important, and ergo gets the most energy and time, and ergo will ‘win’. It is the “one you feed”. If I focus on the negative, then that’s exactly how I’ll feel–exactly how I do feel. If I wanted to, I could be the Adytum builder and wrap this god I am in good stuff as opposed to the stuff I do wrap it in. I have absolutely no shortage of materials, quite the opposite. If I took the time to count my blessings and then to count all the great things in the world that I live, I’d have enough material to build an entire city of god in my little existence. So whay don’t I do it already?

And here comes the polkaroo.

I realized this polkaroo this morning as I walked out to the garage to get on my motorcycle to come to work. Today was a lovely, beautiful, wonderful late summer day. I mean, this is the weather that you pray for on every day where the weather is anything but perfect. Sun, dew on green, crisp morning air. Birds singing, geese overhead. A veritable paradise. I saw all this. I was immersed in it. I completely love all of it. The pagan in me rejoices at everything this morning was caressing me, its special son, with. But I pushed it away… somehow.

I want this to make sense, because the key here is that it has nothing to do with my logical thinking self–the part of me that knows I should just focus on this stuff because it will turn around my mood. It’s something else–something that feels decidedly out of my control, and out of the realm of my logical thinking self. It feels like some primal superpower in me repelled all that blessing as though both it and I were north poles of two magnets. It was like I couldn’t choose to take it in, even if I wanted to. It was as though I was incompatible.

Aha.

I didn’t think that until just now when I wrote it. Maybe it goes to the notion that you can’t fill a full cup. If I’m already full of negative, no positive can enter. If I am a conduit only for negative, then only negative can enter… positives are incompatible. In that case, what I’d need to work on is becoming a sort of semiconductor that can accept good and bad.

Arg. But dammit, how do I do that? Again, it comes down to being unable to concentrate on the good if you’re fixated on the bad. Maybe this is the hard part of brain plasticity. Neurochemically, I know I’m wired for this negative thing, and so when I’m just engaged in the day to day, that’s the default conduit, and so it repels the good stuff, allowing me to remain the comfortable miserable bastard that I currently am. If I take out the time to meditate, however, that might aid in the rewiring. Damn, that’s hard though.

It is Herculian hard.

I guess perhaps it’s about taking it a step at a time, like any huge, difficult undertaking. All right then. I’m going to take this as the first step: I’m going to go outside, feel the sun and acknowledge it, breathe the air and acknowledge it, touch the grass and acknowledge it. I am going to go out there and know I’m blessed. That is the want, and furthermore it is the truth… it’s simply not the case that I am doomed to be forgotten, or that people don’t care, or that my life is any less special today than it was the last time I actually was compatible with the good that surrounds me.

May the cocktail taste repugnant, and fuck you, polkaroo.

How’s that for a catch phrase?

I took a trip this weekend to Toronto to see a few things that I wanted to see, given that they’re so rarely in my little geographic area.

Today I’ll write about what happened when I went to the AGO. If I’ve ever been there before, I don’t remember it. My parents never took me, and I don’t think we ever had a school outing to the place. Up to now, I haven’t had a huge interest in art. Well, maybe that’s not a fair statement. I do have an interest in it. I guess up to now, I haven’t had the kind of appreciation for it that I now have. I recall Suz once mentioning that seeing a picture of the art on the internet or in a magazine or a print is nothing like seeing the original work. I didn’t understand that before this weekend. Now, I understand it completely.

The thing that lured me into the AGO was a surrealist exhibit that they have on the go. More specifically, I was lured by the promise of seeing some works by Salvador Dali there. He’s been a fav of mine forever, just because his stuff is so profoundly strange–I seem to be drawn to that. I hadn’t ever before seen a real Dali though. Now I have, and all I can say is… wow.

I’ve discovered that for me, there’s two things about viewing artwork in the gallery as opposed to online or in a print store. The first is the feeling of a sort of nearness to the artist. I was standing exactly where Dali stood in relation to this work when he was painting it. That realization makes me feel unnaturally close to the artist for some reason. I have this feeling of nearness… of real-ness as it were. It hits home that this is the work. It’s harder to describe it any better than that, but it’s a big thing for me. The other thing is the richness of the work itself. There is so very much lost in any reproduction of a work it is completely silly. The work I saw is this one, “Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach”. Looking at it here on my screen right now I can almost say it isn’t even the same image. All of its life seems to be gone. It’s like looking at it through the fog on a windshield as opposed to seeing it right in front of you on a sunny day. The colours of the actual work just jumped out at me. The vibrancy and luminosity were just breathtaking. I couldn’t pull myself away from it, and I returned twice once I had. There’s a three dimensional quality to the work when you view it that just isn’t there unless you’re looking at the real deal. I think that’s true for all artwork. I’m so happy I got to see this work with my own eyes, and I’ll jump at the opportunity to see others if I ever get a chance.

But the truly weird thing that happened at the art display was seeing the image to the left. It’s called “The Anniversary”, painted by Rene Magritte. When I first saw it, it sorta stopped me right there in my tracks, and the reason is that it felt like the image was pulled out of my mind on some level. It’s a depiction of a boulder in a small room. It sorta just sits there, and takes up all the space, and it’s pretty scary in its weirdness, at least to me. Apparently, the use of incongruous geometry is a common device in surrealist painting (like a huge boulder in a room–or maybe a rock in a terribly small room, depending how you want to read it). I guess I need to give a little back story for those of you who don’t know this, so you’ll know why this painting hit me harder than all the others in the exhibit. I stood there for a long, long time looking at this and feeling very much like I was plugged into another dimension or something. I wish Rene was alive today and had an e-mail address so I could write him a WTF e-mail.

See, when I was a kid, and I had a fever, I’d get what I came to call fever dreams. They were these intense, disjointed and utterly terrifying nightmares. They weren’t terrifying in any other context though. There was no intrinsic reason for them to be terrifying, and they weren’t, except for when the dream was actually happening. I wrote a little about this already. See, in one of these fever dreams, I am a 7 year old, or thereabouts, I approach the upstairs washroom in my parent’s house, open the door, and there is big, shiny blob that occupies the entire space. There’s some sort of valve on it, not unlike a faucet or straw or something, and I put out my hand and the blob secretes this tiny droplet of water onto my pinky finger. I can’t get that droplet off no matter what I do. For reasons that I cannot explain even to myself, this whole scenario is completely terrifying.

This work by Magritte reminds me very much of the blob in the room. True, his is a boulder, but if this boulder was made of hardened lava, had smooth, organic curves and was polished until it looked wet, he’d have it. If this room were rotated 90 degrees clockwise so the window was behind the rock, it’d be nearly perfect. As I was looking at this work, I realized I was rubbing the tip of my left pinky finger vigorously. It’s so very weird that this painting exists. It’s so strange that Magritte painted this image in 1959, nearly two decades before I would have any such fever dream, and I would dream something so similar having never laid eyes on the work or even heard of Magritte. It makes me think there really is a case for Jung’s collective unconscious. Maybe we do all draw from the same source on some seldom perceived level of consciousness we can’t easily tap. Further proof of this is Sunday’s image by Sam over at Daily Dose Of Imagery. I did not see it until this morning. I mean seriously, WTF?

The only other thing is that I finally got to see a couple works by Alex Colville. I don’t recall the first time I saw a copy of his painting “Horse and Train”. It was probably on the front of Bruce Cockburn’s album. But I recall it had an impact. I hope someday I will be able to see the actual painting, as I know now having been to the AGO that its impact on me would be very strong indeed. Colville’s other work that I saw was equally as impressive. I stood there looking at it for quite some time, marveling at the near pointillist technique of the painting. It’s just… astounding what can be done with colour and technique. The subtlety of three dimensions… it just leaves me awestruck how these artists can do such things. I have to get myself some good art for my space someday.

If I lived in Toronto, I’d have a membership to the AGO for sure–it’s a total no-brainer. But, since I don’t, I guess I’ll have to settle for the occasional trip. One that will happen with greater regularity in the future, I hope.

Today I woke up with “It’s not Easy Being Green” running through my head. I shared it as my song of the day on Facebook. When I did the search though, something else came up, and it was a clip of the memorial service held for Jim Henson after his death.

I was not prepared.

I dunno what it is about Jim Henson and the Muppets. I know they embodied my childhood, and I grew up on them, and so I have a soft spot for them in general. I know that. But there’s something more. Jim Henson, that man… I wish so much that I could have known him better. This in spite of the fact that it’s probably much easier to know Jim Henson than most people. His work was always right out there. He spent his days, by all accounts, doing what he absolutely loved the most to do, and so it stands to reason that there’s a hefty infusion of the man himself in all of his work. Assuming that is a truth, this was a very special man indeed. He was someone who not only was able to see the magic contained in joy, but to pass it along. He was able to teach joy.

Seriously, who can do that? It’s a certifiable miracle.

I am a closed, aloof person by nature, and I have had cause recently to realize that I actually defend these personality traits at the same time I wish I could be rid of them. They are my sense of identity. I am by nature or nurture (which one depends upon which aspect of me you engage–the defeatist or the hopeful respectively) a consummate nonstop complainer who will go out of his way to find fault if fault isn’t readily available to find. I seem to have a need to believe that all in life is shit. If it’s not, the universe somehow doesn’t feel right to me. The idea that things are okay… that’s a problem for me. I haven’t yet been able to parse that out. It’s like, all I’d really need to do is smile, and I actively resist that. When I figure out what it is that causes this resistance, I will bottle the cure and eliminate depression, negativity and fatalism in one fell swoop.

Considering all of that though, Jim Henson and his work can do something to me that I just can’t resist. It’s like this proof that there is joy, and there is love, and there is positivity, and there is laughter and happiness and friendship and all of it is right here, and right now, and completely undeniable if I just stop bitching about pointless things already. I watch Jim Henson’s work, and it often makes me cry. I think the reason for that is just because it’s this undeniable proof that my belief that everything is all wrong all of the time is just a load. The thing is, the delivery is so very gentile. I just… can’t resist it.

Seriously, there’s much, much more here than puppets and a guy making his living creating children’s entertainment. Somewhere in here is a philosophy some part of me is absolutely starving for, and when I encounter it, I consume it with such voracious joy that it spills out of me from every direction.

Just look at this. Look at the way this man touched the lives of those closest to him. I am completely humbled. Sublime. All I can do is feel joy, even at a funeral:

Would that we could all live life in such a way that those closest to us would feel like this. I know if I died today, I’d be remembered as a bitchy, negative complainer. Is that really the stamp I want to leave on the world as payment for the miracle of my life? No. I really need to work to change that.

Damn, I miss you Jim.

Here’s a strange little thing I’ve noticed in my writings. I think it started as a result of Facebook status updates, then migrated into my text messages and finally into my writing overall. It seems that I’ve been omitting myself when I speak. That is, instead of writing, “I’ll meet you at 8″, I’m writing “Meet you at 8″. I’ve also said “having difficulty with understanding this” or “appreciate the help” or “wondering if it’s okay to stay here for a while”. Things like that.

This is really weird, because it happened without my even noticing it before it was so well ingrained that now I’m having trouble breaking the habit. I wonder if there’s some sort of predilection toward eliminating myself from an equation, or if this is purely laziness on my part?

As ancillary to this, I find that I really dislike the use of text message short forms. I was able to accept the whole TTYL and LOL stuff, but writing “pls” and “I want 2 meet U l8r” is really annoying. On a practical level, I understand that text messaging is made easier and cheaper (assuming you’re charged by the character) by creating these short forms. I also recall reading somewhere in the past that people who use these short forms in their texting do not generally carry it over into their proper writing. I myself have a full keyboard Blackberry and an unlimited data plan, so I nearly never use short forms. I think it has this subtle disregard for language that demeans communication as a whole.

Meh. Maybe it’s just a pet peeve. For the moment though, if you should happen to notice that I’ve omitted a pronoun, come slap my hand with a ruler, okay?

So, I’m in the market for a new television. It isn’t that mine doesn’t work, it does. It’s just that I was on the bleeding edge of the LCD panel revolution a couple years back, and so situated, I wasn’t thinking ahead. The panel I have only handles 720p, and only refreshes at 60hz. It’s also smaller than I’d like, coming in at 32″. Considering that movie watching is a great joy for both Suz and I, a good TV set is worth it for us. Heh. We don’t even have cable. We’re pretty much exclusive movie watchers, with the exception of the TV series we buy on DVD to enjoy during dinner. So, when I bring home a Blu-Ray disc to watch, I want to have it look as good as it can. That pretty much means something that can handle 1080p. Also, I’d want 120hz just because it’ll handle all video formats without having to compensate for whatever stream might be coming in. Finally, I wanted to get something bigger than 32″ I’d want 47″ for sure, preferably 52″. That, for me, would be a pretty darned decent picture.

So, I started saving up again after I got my new job, hopeful I could get the thing in fairly short order. Of course, life got in the way, and we needed other more pressing things and I’ve put off getting it simply because I don’t want to have to put it on my credit card to pay off ’someday’.

I don’t know how, but the idea that carrying a balance on a credit card is a stupid thing to do was one of the the ideas that I truly took to heart before I even had a credit card. I recall, the first time my bank offered me a credit card, I was (ridiculously) on welfare. I remember laughing when I got the letter that said I’d actually been pre-approved. I sent off my acceptance thinking, “yeah… someone’s going to wake up in fairly short order”. To my utter shock, a couple weeks later my credit card arrived. I looked at the thing as though I was looking at something that couldn’t possibly exist. I was in my late teens, had no job to speak of, and was about to try go back to school to finish my high school diploma. And these people had given me something like a thousand dollars of ‘money’. Are they nuts?

I think I was paranoid. I dunno. The very first thing I bought using the card was a gift for Erik. It was the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy book. I gave it to him for his birthday. I think it was on sale at the time for 17 bucks. It was the only thing that I bought on the card that month, and when I went to the bank to pay the bill when it came, the teller (yes, I still used the teller–anything with financial heft requires a human presence for me and paying my first credit card bill qualified) told me that “it was hardly worth it to pay this off”.

Hmm. I think that was the first time I saw what credit does to people. What did she mean ‘worth it’? If I hadn’t paid it off, the next bill would have been something like 18 dollars, even if I hadn’t bought anything else at all. I was never all that good at figuring out the percentages, but a loan rate of 18.5% annually is pretty damned staggering to me. That’s 18 dollars for every 100 they lend you , if you don’t pay it off every month.

Those numbers scare the crap out of me. Say you have 6000 dollars floating on your credit card for a year. You now owe the bank more than 1000 dollars in addition to the 6000, for nothing more than time. Seriously, WTF?

So, I’ve always, always been super-diligent about paying off my cards every month. I bet I piss the bank off large because they make no money off of me.

Coming back to the TV set, as a result of this mindset of debt avoidance that I have, I don’t want to buy the thing until I have the money for it sitting right there. I want to take it home and say it belongs to me, not to the bank. People who buy stuff on credit and lease cars kinda don’t have the right to say “my TV” or “my car” because in the strictest sense, it isn’t theirs at all… the bank owns it. I don’t like to be like that.

The thing is, I am impatient. I want to have this thing yesterday. And although I still have this fail safe that makes me wait, I squirm and mope all the way to the goal because I can’t get that instant gratification. And then the kicker is, I’m surrounded by people who don’t subscribe to this way of thinking. So, anything they want, they can just run out, slap down the plastic and there they are with the new stuff, and here I am still waiting months after I made the decision to buy.

The kicker, the thing I don’t get, is they seem happy about it. I keep chasing happiness, as should be evident from this blog. And it seems that people who are in debt, at least the ones I know, are happier. Someone once told me that after you’re in the hole for multiple thousands, it stops mattering so much. It’s just numbers. C’est what? While that’s among the stupidest ones I’ve heard, the reasons people give to justify purchases they can’t afford are just endless. I don’t get it.

Suz tells me that we should be very grateful that this is something I don’t get, and that while my tastes are pretty damned luxurious and expensive on the whole, I don’t ever dig myself a hole getting them. The issue I have is in sitting on cash for the bigger goals, but that’s another story. I know a lot of people smarter than I who have done studies all but proving that poverty is totally in cahoots with not only depression, but health and overall quality of life.

But that thinking, though pretty much a no-brainer, flies entirely in the face of the people in my life who I know are in the hole and seem to be happier than I am. I just don’t get it. But I guess I’m not willing to go into the hole to find out if I’d be happier.

My supposition is that I wouldn’t be. All the possessions in the world just never seem to be enough. In the words of Tyler Durden, “You don’t own the things-the things own you.” All the wisdom I can google says I’m doing it right, and yet the world at large, for all the fact that it’s doing it wrong, seems to be happier.

Is this stuff ever going to make sense to me? What in the heck am I missing?

It’s a well-known thing that when I find myself alone, as I currently am with Suz away for the week, that one of the first things that happens is nostalgia creeps in. I start to think of the past. I’m happy to report that these days I do so with the sort of happy reminiscing that I think these remeberings deserve, rather than the painful longing that I used to attribute to them years ago. That’s a big, good thing for me. Used to be that all I’d ever do is sit around and think of the past and wish for it again. Now I’m just grateful for it, and happy that I have such good memories. I also like to look at them and see if they can still teach me anything. Quite often, they can.

Last night I was thinking of old love letters, partially because I still had Cyrano’s letters to Roxanne in my head from the weekend, but also having listened entirely at random to “Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen”. For those of you not in the know, the piece contains the words, “Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.” That sort of advice has been circulating forever. Although I’m not entirely sure why one should keep one’s old love letters, (lord knows one of my fav sites once rubbed me the wrong way by suggesting the exact opposite) doing so seems like the right thing to do for me.

What I was thinking of this time around though wasn’t the content of the letters, but the overall being of them. I’m wondering if the art of the love letter is officially a lost art. I don’t know many people currently in high school, and of those that I know, none of them seem to fit into the “writing love letters” stage. That said, I get the impression that most correspondence among teens these days is through text messaging or e-mail or other electronic means. I think that’s sort of a loss.

The picture above is a scan from my mom’s Tagebuch (loosely translated “Book of Days”). The book is a small, hard cover book with unlined pages in it where her friends wrote her messages when they were at school. I guess it’s kind of the answer to the modern yearbook (if they even still do those, I don’t know). It’s sort of cool the way kids did stuff then. Bear in mind, that little piece of history was created some 68 years ago. But someone took the time to cut out a heart shaped piece of paper that they could then lay on the page in the book and scribble around to create a heart halo effect within which is written “remember me”. I dunno, maybe it’s me turning into an old fart, but this act that someone did somewhere in a dusty playground in Europe as a hope of remembrance seems to be so much more meaningful than tapping out “remember me” in multi-tap on a cell phone and sending it off. I guess the emotion behind the act is a human one, and therefore has to be roughly the same today as it was then. But I find myself in utter agreement with Marshall McLuhan in the idea that the medium comprises at least a part of the message. Somehow, it’s much more personal, present, somatic. Seriously, I dare you to find ANY text message sent today in 6 months, never mind 68 years. The fact that today’s medium of communication is so temporary also speaks at least in part to the sentiment.

Back in my day as a high schooler, the notes were sorta cool too. While there were no memory books of the sort my mom had, aside from the yearbooks that people wrote in on the last day of school, and letters of remembrance had broken free into single sheets of paper, they were still a ‘hard’ medium, and still endure in the same ways. That, and they were an ‘any time’ sort of thing, much like text messages are today. When I was dating someone, we usually wrote a letter a day to one another, the contents of which I’m sure are as inane as such letters have always been, but somehow they’re still way cool. But I think I misspoke with the ‘any time’ remark.

Text messages truly are an ‘any time’ thing. If I get onto my Blackberry right now and type out a note to Suzanne, she’ll have it in seconds regardless of where on the globe she is. That’s something that is so taken for granted today, but it really is miraculous. As little as 100 years ago, if global correspondence was even possible, it was sketchy and took a long, long time. If want to write a love letter though, even if she’s in the same city or the same building, it’ll take time to write, get there, and read, and the time it takes is its own, which may add value too.

Let me unpack that one a bit. Text messages are nearly effortless. If you and your recipient have a device no bigger than your average deck of cards you can write and receive one anywhere at all. And, they are delivered in seconds regardless of what the recipient is doing. So, if I’m in the car stopped at a red and I rip off a “thinking of you” message to Suz who then gets it while she’s doing tea with someone else in some other city and she reads it quickly and puts it away.. well, that’s sorta lacking in meaning. If, on the other hand, I find pen and paper, sit down and write a note saying “thinking of you” and it gets delivered, then Suz will collect it when she’s in a space to do so, and read it when she’s ready to absorb it. It seems like there’s a time for letters, but text messages sort of exist in little slivers of interruption with whatever’s happening at that point. It removes the meaning for me, just because the sentiment doesn’t receive the respect that it truly deserves.

I still believe that a hand written letter demands more respect than a type written form letter, e-mail or text message ever could, thank god. I think that’s a human thing. If you had a handful of papers in front of you and all but one were black, uniform serif font on white 96-bright paper, and the hold out was a hand written page on fine traditional bond paper, which one will you more likely read first?

When I was in high school, we wrote our notes on standard Hilroy lined paper, but we often didn’t follow the lines, and we used only one side of the sheet, so that we could employ these way cool folding techniques that turned the note itself into the envelope it was delivered in. There were all sorts of cool ways to fold notes–I wonder if I’d still remember how to do them. The notes were then small enough to fit into lockers or secure enough to give to a trusted friend to deliver, and the recipent would recieve them when there was time to do so. I recall I’d look forward to the end of English class so I could go to my locker and get the note that I knew would be waiting for me from my girlfriend. It was fun, and great, and much more meaningful than I imagine receiving a text message would be.

I’m happy I still have these letters. Not for the content… as I said, it’s mostly inane teenage scribblings about things we were doing or emotions we couldn’t possibly understand. But I love the fact of them. They are real, tangible, and can tell a story just in how they came into existence, were delivered and still exist in my little space.

If teens these days really don’t write anymore like this, then I think its a shame. I can’t imagine how the whole body of teen angst could possibly be contained electronically. Maybe that speaks to the temporary nature of love in the generations following my parents in general, although I admit that’s a bit of a leap. I’m very glad technology didn’t find me until later. It’s funny actually… it seems that technology in general is a meaning-killer. But perhaps I’ll leave that musing for another time.

One of the high points of this past long weekend was a very last-minute trip out to Stratford to take in Cyrano de Bergerac. Suz and I had been talking about how we’d love to see Colm Feore in the role since we read he was going to be at the festival. I’m very happy to say that we enjoyed it a great deal. Feore is at the top of his game, and he gave a wonderful performance.

I’m so pleased that I managed to go. I have been to Stratford a few times now, and I enjoy it more each time. I have to admit that theatre is one of those things that I truly enjoy–I think that it’s something I’d go to all alone if no one would come with me. For the longest time, anxiety kept me from doing such things, but this is one of those that’s crept up as a joy for me in the absence of phobia. I find myself smiling uncontrollably at the events unfolding in front of me, and invariably, at the end, when the actors come out and take their bows, I get all teary-eyed for reasons I can’t accurately explain, but have something to do with that feeling that this was, and is, real. Not like a movie, theatre is a very different beast for me. It seems to demand more of me, you know?

But the play aside, I love just the going to the play. I love that there’s all these people there who also like theatre, and I feel oddly at home among the live music, wine, sculptures and gardens of the Festival Theatre in Stratford. I love the artwork, and the quill pens and parchment. I love the river side and swans and well-groomed people (although sadly, it’s gone far more casual of late–the first time Suz and I went she wore an evening gown and was not entirely out of place and now people just show up in jeans and hoodies). Whatever the case, it feels like Stratford is this strange, rare, precious little place that actually validates the arts. I feel like I could say “I’m a writer” there and not have to follow it up with “for a software company” so that people wouldn’t look at me piteously as I starve in the gutter.

This attraction to what some may say are “the finer things” is a weird thing to find in me, or at least I think it is. If you wanted to trace the roots of a gentleman, it’s usually a lineage thing. That is, I’d have to come from the rich to fit in there (which is an odd little fart in the whole of this story–I guess at the end of the day the art is there for those who can afford it, but we’ll just move along here). I most certainly do not come from the rich. I come from the resilient. My father was a welder and labouror with a grade 8 education. My mom was a hausfrau and retail worker, also with a grade 8 education. I do not exactly come from wealthy stock. That said, my god the things my parents managed to accomplish! One of the minor miracles they managed was putting not only myself, but both of my brothers through higher education. All of us have degrees. I have not the words of gratitude.

For me, that puts me on a weird sort of fulcrum between nature and nurture, though. And man, it’s weird when I try to parse this one out in my family and in myself. For example, in spite of the fact that my brother is University educated and “wicked smart” in the words of one of his past friends who mistakenly thought I was him on facebook, my nephew barely squeaked through high school, and has all the flag markers of what might be considered a “lower class”. Not that he’s any less a person than any of us. In fact, if he got the ethic of his grandparents, he’ll likely fare much better than I. Thing is, I was everything like he is when I was in my teens. Somehow, I “grew out of it”, if it’s something that one can (or indeed needs to) grow out of. But seriously, if you read my journals from the 80’s, I’m a foul-mouthed, drug-addled know it all with no actual knowledge of debatably unimportant facts, and I think that is my genetic heritage. Not to be a boor, mind you, but just to be… I dunno, less ‘classy’. To use language poorly and dress carelessly. To not care about art or literature. To be unaware of or ignore higher standards of behaviour.

But then there’s that nurture thing. I don’t know how it got fostered given the circumstances of my upbringing, but I love to read, and I love to write. I love theatre and music. I’m moved by poetry, and the great human battles that we all engage in. I just adore swimming around in philosophical thoughts about religion, morality, the environment, psychology. I love just walking and thinking, and I love nature and when it speaks to me. And, while my nature side is currently winning on these fronts, I’d love to be able to carry myself better, to debate better, to appreciate a good wine and to upgrade my appearance. None of these things are common in my family. I have a feeling that if I try, I’d surely come across as a fake. Anyone can see, I’m still pretty blue around the collar if you look at me at all. Some things considered classy by the bourgeoisie in my immediate circle don’t interest me in the slightest.

I wouldn’t want to disown my family or anything like that. I just wonder how one actually becomes a polymath beyond what I’ve done so far with my schooling. And even if it boils down to “read a book, stupid”, how does one become more gentlemanly? It’s harder than you think. I wasn’t sent off to be fostered like some Dickensian Pirrip with the express purpose of making a gentleman out of me. I wasn’t prevented from pursuing whatever goals I wanted, but I wasn’t pushed in any direction either. My place growing up wasn’t an arts powerhouse, and I didn’t have any mentors, really. So, how do you do it yourself, and if you do, does it actually ‘count’? I guess it does.

Maybe my nature side prevents me from wanting it enough to go the full distance. Feh. I dunno. Maybe I should just be happy that I have found something in theatre and Stratford that’s actually ‘me’. Something I can point to and say, “I like that”. I’m so often at a loss to say what it is I like, or why I do things at all. Maybe that little thing is a magnetic point where my compass can swing just a little, so I know who the ‘real’ me is apart from nature or nurture, or maybe as a whole. It’s at least something.

This past weekend (and I know I’m late getting to it–everything was blown away by the whole Bimbo thing) was a pretty decent one. I just wanted to give you a little update and look into things to come.

Erik made arrangements to come on down for a visit before he heads off to more Portuguese pastures for the next little while. Usually, when Erik and I hang out, there’s a simple list of things that we like to do. It’s kinda too bad that each item on the list takes up pretty much an entire visit. With those visits getting ever more sparse, I feel a little like the machine isn’t running as well as it should. But I suppose such is life. And it tramps on and on. In any case, getting together usually boils down to one of the following:

• Working on One Note’s Wife music
• Having one of those Erik-Martin conversations. This can take place in any number of milieu–walks, just sitting around, etc.
• Hanging out with friends/family here in Waterloo.
• Anything else that happens to come along.

This weekend, we opted for the final option, mostly because I had this cockamamie idea that I wanted to film me on the motorbike. More on that whenever in the heck I get around to putting it all together.

Anyway, after that day of fun, I sandwiched in a pretty decent RGD show, largely honouring good old Michael Jackson. At this point, I think I’ve completely absorbed it all, And then Erik came back on Sunday, this time with his daughter Victoria, whom I’d never met before.

While children have always done strange things to my mental pathways, I’m now having to encounter children who come from people I knew when we were children. Time seems to have this way of compressing, and sometimes I feel like it really is going very fast.

The whole topic of children as they pertain to me and my feelings isn’t something I’m going to write about here… I think that’s better kept in my personal journals. But what I will say is that it’s surreal to be where I am. I tend to get this out of body feeling, and I become “Observation Man” for a time.

There was a moment where I was sitting in my living room, a place in my home town I never knew existed when Erik and I were hanging out in spite of the fact that we must have walked by the building many times on our way to his dad’s place, and I was just sorta watching. Suzanne was engaging Victoria, and Erik was giving her some attention too, as well as talking about the news of the day, which at this point, was talking about our parents, and how they are doing, and various maladies and neurological diseases, and it struck me that we’re the people our parents were when we were young. Such conversations wouldn’t ever occur to us 20 years ago.

And although the children of my friends aren’t yet old enough to have hit the same place where we were when all of the memories I have were forming, you can see where they’ll get there, and we will be on the other side of that mirror, knowing with a wisdom they don’t get what they will know.

Wow, that was convoluted. Anyway. I guess it just makes me feel all sorts of things when I think about how much of life is gone already. It’s no small thing.