All The Places and People We Call "Home"

  (At the apartment)

  I've got just about three weeks left in my apartment.

  I knew that moving home with my family for a short while would be a challenging transition, but reading the roap map ahead and actually walking the territory are two different things.  With only fourteen or so days left, there's not much ground to cover now. 

  It's such a contradiction half the time, nothing that's really new that I haven't talked about somewhat in the past little while.  You wake up, or you come home, and you think "I'm home!  This is my place!"  It's close to your friends, in a neighbourhood that resonates with your spirit.  A place where you can, if you feel like it, parade around in a bath towel (or less), leave as messy or as clean as you want, where you make your own rules.  A place where you can be free.  And you're filled with some bittersweetness that you're leaving this place soon. 

   You walk in and you've come home, but you won't be there for long. The situation demands that you savour all the moments, live in the now. You take special notice of the little details: the way the baseboards don't quite align in symmetry with the tile, which was new when you got it; the sound of the elevator rumbling through the wall of your bedroom. Someone upstairs dropping something on the ground and the sound of a car outside on the one road that leads inward. The way the trees and the houses across the street look from your picture window. The luxury of being able to take long showers because the water's included in the rent. That's usually the first hour.

From when I was moving in a year ago.

  But then, two hours later - hell, sometimes a few minutes later - you find yourself on the phone calling or texting people because you kinda miss people.  More than kinda.  You really feel like hanging out with someone, or even just knowing you've got someone in the other room that you could talk to if you so wanted.  In the second or third hour of being by oneself, you then think...."Meh." And you remember the reason why you're leaving: because a nice apartment completely on your own with no one to talk to, or even just to know is in the other room, is one of the loneliest experiences you can have.

   One of the great things about having a Fraternity house, we advise our undergrad brothers, is that there's always something happening in the common room: a PS3 competition, a movie, some discussion about some topic or other.  Something.  Come and go as you please, stay and talk as long as you want.  The common room is always there, and there's always something happening that gives you an opportunity to connect with people with whom you share kinship and shared interests.  Within two hours of coming back here, I miss that kind of experience, even though I myself never really had it anywhere else except with my family.

 This wasn't always the case: for the first six months after I moved here, I was pretty good on my own, enjoying the solitary time and the freedom of movement.  My own place.  Hell, my own blog entries back this up.  I can't pinpoint the exact moment that everything changed, but these last few weeks have felt like waking up from a dream....

 (At the house)

  I had started writing that earlier paragraph nearly four days ago now.  Since that time, I found new employment in Mississauga, not far from where I am in Brampton.  I made sure to learn from my previous experiences and feel out a place that looked like a fit, followed my gut instinct, and been smart about recognizing opportunity when it presents itself.  The speed at which everything seems to have led me to here has been incredible and almost a little scary.  I'm due to start Wednesday, so like it or not, I'll be spending more time in Brampton than Burlington for what little time remains in that apartment, which is, at this point, simply a storage depot for all my things.  There is no Internet.  There is no TV.  I had both disconnected a month early to save on money.  As such, when I'm there, there's very little to do.

   Staying there now is just downright depressing, but I have to stick around this weekend for two reasons: to pack up and throw out what remains to be packed up or thrown out; and because I have limited time there, and I want to savour the time.  Mind you, I knew that I'd probably get this way going into the experience.  Giving up the apartment was a sacrifice that my intended changes demanded. 

  I always get a little misty about leaving a place (well, except the last move, but that was only because bad stuff happened there), but this one's quite different. This was the first place I'd lived completely on my own as a grown-up.  In a way, it completes a cycle.  I started life away from home on my own, and I'm ending it that way.

  My first time moving out was to Bates Residence at McMaster for my second year of study in 2000-2001.  I hadn't gotten along with my roommates too well - three Engineers and one Humanities student do not a stable mixture make - and for much of the winter, I spent a lot of time avoiding the place whenever possible. It was a shitty second term, and after having failed a course in the first semester, I had to overload to make up the credits.  Plus, I was a Phikeia (a pledge) for Phi Delta Theta, a notorious contributor for the Silhouette, working at the distribution centre on weekends, and in a relationship with a girl who was still commuting in from Brampton each and every day. So I spent a lot of time away.

  Then, during exam time, and with less than a week to go, I came back to my room one day.  It was April, and we were experiencing warm weather for the first time in ages, so I had my window open.  The door opened, and I could smell that fresh, earthy smell of rain and grass and mud coming in through the window.  The kind that just wakes you up after five months of frozen earth and snow.  And I looked around my tiny little bedroom, and realized I was really leaving this place.  For good.  And I ended up spending most of the remaining six days in that little room, just noticing the things about it.

  A favourite memory was Friday morning.  My roommates and I were down the hall from the elevator, but it was one of the older OTIS models, and the noise the thing made as it came up to the fifth floor sounded like a construction drill when you had one side of your head still pressed against the pillow of your tiny single bed.  The rest of the week, that elevator was a pain in the ass, waking me up at ungodly hours when all I wanted to do was sleep until the last fifteen minutes before class. 

   On Friday mornings, though, it was sweet. The sound would wake me up, maybe around 7:45am or so, and I'd scootch over towards the back of the wall and stay in that delirious in-between stage between waking and sleep.  The light from the window for much of that year would be a pale grey-blue that spilled over everything - from my Gladiator poster on the wall that I bought at the last IMAGINUS sale to my desk and the Pentium desktop computer that now seems like Stone Age technology. 

   I'd hear that elevator - whirrr-r-r-r-r-rr-r-r-r-r-rr-r-r..br-o-o-o-mmmmmmmm! - come to a stop on our floor, and the doors open, and that's how I knew that I was only thirty seconds away from my ex coming through the door of the apartment-style dorm, then opening the door to my place.  She'd have been up since like five o'clock, and would have driven in from Brampton, parked her car in Zone Six, and taken the shuttle here.  She'd be tired, and she'd be ice cold, as girls tend to be in winter (and most seasons, I find). So she'd take off her coat and shoes and just hop into the space in the bed I just made for her, and I'd reflexively grab the comforter and envelope her in it and warm her up.  Then we'd lay there for at least a good half-hour before our morning seminars, and all was right with the world.  We were both 20 years old. 

Main hallway...hell, I should be a rental agent!

   I should probably clarify at this juncture, people might read that and think that I'm pining for her - especially with Singles Awareness Day around the corner - but this is not the case.  A couple of people I've met in the past month alone seem to think that when a relationship ends, you have to press "delete" on all those moments if you're to "move on".  As I've written about time and time again on this blog, that does a disservice to the time you spent, and I have "moved on", while retaining what was good about the experience.  And Friday mornings on the fifth floor of Bates Residence were almost all good. I'm looking forward to more such moments with the next girl who becomes special to me.  Never mourn because it ended; smile because it happened.

  In any case, that was a memorable time that, really, was truly mine, because that was my first home away from home.  Every place since was shared with with my ex, except for the apartment I'm leaving now.

  I don't regret the decision....well, not completely.  The only hangups I have right now involve the loss of "independence" and my own issue with the idea that living with your parents at 30 years old may not make you the most attractive person to the kind of women I'm interested in dating.  Mostly that last one (I have a car and will have a ton of gas money to go where I please over the next year, so I'm still "free"). 

   Still, I'm not at home due to lack of ambition - hell, I only returned home to live once in the past ten years, and that was the summer of 2001 right after Bates - but out of sheer deliberation and choice to be closer to my family and clear up some debt.  As I've written, most single women in my age group won't recognize these qualities until their late thirties or early forties.  In quarter-life, too many of them want a guy who can give them money and toys, all flash and no substance, guys who satisfy those primal urges that women feel to want to feel protected and provided for.  The elusive "spark".  And because they tend to be just a bunch of grown-up boys at this point in life, these twentysomething guys burn them, so much so that some of these ladies create distant early warning systems to flag "issues" and "baggage" in potential mates, using any little violation - he has too many female friends, he lives at home, he watches South Park - to justify not pursuing someone who would otherwise be great for them. 

   Before I get too carried away, it'll take a while for me to get used to the idea that, for the right girl for me, it won't matter that I live at home at all, nor will any of my other perceived "weaknesses" that I think I have.  It'll work when it's supposed to.  We'll leave it at that.

A spring view from my balcony.

   "Home" really is something that we make up.  Anthropologists and psychologists may say it's a primal instinct to be connected to a place, but tell that to a nomadic people, who never stay in the same place for too long.  Tell that to a world traveler, backpacking for years around the globe, staying in hostels, hotels, campgrounds, even the street for little periods here and there before moving on.  Some say it's people, but tell that to drifters and hitchers, to those on spiritual pilgrimages, all on their own and who may meet people on the road, experience whatever they have with them, then let them fall behind them on the road as they press on.  In that way, I suppose one apartment that helped me rebuild and re-create myself in a very transformational year matters as much as my childhood home to which I'm now returning, and any other place I'll call "home" in the foreseeable future. 

   I'm due to return "home" today to continue the packing up of things, and to bring back a number of items before I start work tomorrow.  I'll probably limit the time I spend there, if only to make myself more motivated to be efficient at packing and what-not, but this is definitely one of those times when I'll look back and wonder at how critical this decision was to the other things I was to accomplish in life. 

  Just have to wait and see what happens, as I've been doing.

Splashdown

  Everyone belongs to a statistical club.

  Of course, the statistic is never the full measure of a person - I still consider most math and numbers part of the Axis of Evil - but if I were a statistician, I'd almost like to think a person's numbers is like a membership in one exclusive club or another.  Sorta like the Yacht Club. Or the Stonecutters.

  For instance, I'm part of the "Young Author" club, very exclusive, as only one in ten people will ever write a book in their lives, let alone two.  I'm part of the "Divorced by 30" club, a little more populous, as four in ten first marriages will end in divorce in Canada.  You can also throw me in for the Canadians of Trinidadian and Tobagonian ancestry, 50,000 people and counting, representing 0.15 of the Canadian population.  Of that, I'm one of only two authors in this group - Neil Bissoondath being the other - and may in fact be the next Ian Hanomansing if my acting and TV work progresses well. 

  And, within a few months, I'll be joining another growing club, one which includes 41% of the population aged 18 to 36 in its membership: the Boomerang Club. 

   Friends, Romans, Countrymen...I am moving home.

   (And yes, I'm aware I didn't provide accurate citation format for those numbers.  Citations are for Democrats.)
  
   This is a tough decision, but it's a necessary next step to accomplish some of my bigger life goals. 

   Normally, this is the point that I spend a ton of time and wordspace justifying my decision.  Strangely, I could give a crap what people think about this today.  My one year lease is up at the end of February, and while I could leave it alone and go "month to month" on my apartment, there is a window of opportunity to walk away.  And walking away is what I'm going to do.

   I've been living away from home for a decade now.  I moved out to live on residence in 2000, moving back home for the summer of 2001 only to head back out to my apartment with my ex for our third year at McMaster.  I've been away from home ever since. And, of course, for the past year, I've been living completely on my own. 

   It was all time well spent, and with a few tiny exceptions, I have no regrets about my independent living.  At this point in my personal development, it's hard to go back and say it was for nothing.  It all served a purpose, and just like other parts of life that have fulfilled what they were meant to fulfill, it's time to let it go....

  Okay, I can see this won't get much further than flowery New Age affirmations without some more concrete explanations.  And there are two: I need more spending cash now on things other than renting a place where I spend most of my time sleeping; and freeing up my apartment enables me to not feel like I'm held hostage by my current day job.  Now to explain the explanations.

   The advantages are clear: more money means debts paid, savings boosted, vacations - the type of travel I spent all my twenties fantasizing about but never actually got to do - and more of the material "stuff" that I've gone too long without. 

   Moving home with the 'rents and my sisters isn't a permanent thing. Frankly, our egos are all too big and our lifestyles too different for that to be sustainable for too long. It will also involve some commuting to work for a while. The disadvantages are clear. But whether I go home for four months and return to a cheaper rent, or whether I stay there a year, I'm still going to have to take this first step regardless. This simply happens to be the time that the opportunity has presented itself.

   Then there's the matter of my work anxiety.

 I suppose this is mostly my fault.  After all, I've been trying to find my niche in the economy for the past five years, ever since I got my first full time job.  Each time, I found something to complain about, and in two such cases, it was enough for me to leave the position altogether.  However, just as the Boy Who Cried Wolf learned to his regret, I'm now being serious when I tell you that this position is starting to undermine my self-confidence.  I simply am not a "fit" where I am, and everyone senses it. It really is only a matter of time before my bosses turn their full attention to replacing me.  The wolf is gonna get me sooner or later. Serious this time.

  Moving home provides immunity against my fear of losing everything in the event that they go for the "sooner" option. It gives me flexibility and a sense of freedom that I'm not risking everything by speaking up and speaking out. It will remove the feeling that I must stay put in a job, give me the feeling of freedom to pursue other opportunities.  There's nothing worse than feeling trapped.

   Moving home also lets me interact with more people in my day-to-day who aren't work colleagues.  Much of the time, the only people I interact with are the ones who are busting my butt.  I get chewed up, spat out, and made to feel like an idiot all day, and then I go home to an empty apartment, stressed out with no one to talk to.  Hanging out with friends helps, but it's not enough.

   My family, for our differences, is my tribe, my community.  I can at least go home and interact with a group of people who I know love me unconditionally, who believe in me, who appreciate my abilities, and who have much the same living conditions I do: very clean, no big parties, no drugs or alcohol floating around, no debauchery.  Some guys can feel at home in a party house: I'm not one of them. 

   And yes, moving home gives me the freedom to quit, if it comes to it, and still have a place to sleep. Some of my former in-laws and friends somehow managed to take the two instances in my otherwise uninterrupted 14 year work history where I quit jobs that were making me unhappy and declared me "unable to hold a job".  As such, I've had an axe to grind in putting up with the crap in my current workplace.  But it's making me miserable and the concerns of former in-laws and former friends are pretty low down on my priority list.  Moving home opens up the possibility of a rest period while I pursue other opportunities.

  Of course, my apartment is lovely.  It's in a great neighbourhood that I love, with good, friendly neighbours, and I do love where I currently live.  Most importantly, it is mine.  But I get the sense that this place has served its purpose in the greater scheme of my own life.

   Had I decided to move home a year ago, when my marriage ended, I would have felt all the more the failure.  I had another axe to grind: I had to show to myself that I could survive completely on my own.  Now that axe is pretty sharp, and I don't need to worry about proving my ability to live independently to others, or myself.  I can go home knowing that I'm able to come back out here again when I choose to.

  Had I not moved here, I doubt my book would have been finished, or turned out the way that it did. Burlington is a nexus of prosperity and a high quality of living, and the downtown around Brant and Lakeshore provided me with prime inspiration for my protagonist's own life, even if it's not by name.  An artist needs a vibe of prosperity, and that's what I got while I was here.

 Had I not moved here, I never would have taken that walk through the vendors at Ribfest and gotten involved with Film/Comm Talent, starting this new journey.  Had I not moved here, I never would have dated that girl who lived around the corner, and had that kiss that really renewed my own feeling of worth as a good partner. 

  Make no mistake.  This place helped manifest the best case scenario in a transformative year.

  But now, I am here, and the things I want to accomplish require me to say goodbye to Burlington, with thanks.  This will be the first time I'm leaving a place that I'm still in love with, heart and soul.  As I said, one of the toughest decisions I've made in recent years, and those years have had their moments, that's for sure.

  Too often, we hold onto things that served us in the past when they're well beyond their expiration date.  That doesn't invalidate their previous benefits: just means you need to get a new carton of milk is all.  

  Ironically, by choosing to pack it in for a while and go home, I feel even more empowered than I thought I would be, because it's a clear choice that I am making for myself.  In so doing, I avoid joining other statistical clubs: the Society of Working Poor; the I've Never Seen Europe Support Group; not to mention the Ancient Mystic Society of Unhappy Office Workers. 

  This isn't a failure to launch.  This is a deliberate de-orbit, a time to come back to earth for a while for a refit, so that I can land among the stars the next time I head up there.  And reach them I will.

  Splashdown's in two months.  Time to get ready.

Please Note

  At 7:48pm, EST, on Sunday, December 12th, 2010, I finished my novel.  I was in my apartment in Burlington, Ontario. 

  Convergence is 311 pages (8 1/2 by 11), and the first draft is 127,511 words as of the end of writing.

  I've finished my novel. 

  Huh....isn't that something?

"The Healing of the Nations"

   As a public servant, this is my second year in which I've had Remembrance Day as a statutory holiday.  Last year, being bedridden due to the flu, I watched the service from Ottawa on TV.  This year, I was able to walk three blocks to Burlington City Hall for our service. Working for the Province makes this no more or less my civic duty, though it does make it easier to serve.

   Near the end of the ceremony, a Fransciscan friar took the podium. By this time, many in the crowd were footsore from standing for an hour or so, and after the laying of the wreaths at the cenotaph, a few were starting to leave.  Carrying my laptop on my shoulder for over an hour, I was tempted as well, but I chose to finish what I began and hear him out.  I'm glad I did.

   The friar told the story of his visit to Assisi, Italy.  A pilgrimage for his Order, the trip to Assisi revealed to him the beauty of the city, and the energy that resides there.  I've spoken with people who have made the trip, both Catholic and non-Catholic, who have reported that feeling of sacredness there, of the sensation of God and spirit that defies the often hate-filled dogmas of the fundamentalists that taint what should be a religion of peace and forgiveness. Spirit and light in Assisi....

   ...and yet, not far from the city, in the surrounding lowlands, the Assisi War Cemetery sits.  945 Allied soldiers from World War II lie buried there.  50 of them are Canadian. 

  The friar spoke slowly and deliberately of the contrast of the joy in the city atop the hill and the sombre mood below where the graves lie. Googling Assisi in World War II, after the ceremony, I learned that his Order had worked to save over 300 Jews from being sent to the extermination camps by dressing them as priests and nuns, at one point forging Nazi documents so well that they managed to convince the Nazi garrison that Assisi was an open city, thus saving it from destruction.

  Imagine: a single beacon of human spirit shining through a landscape darkened not merely by war, but by the dark shadow of mankind made manifest in the Third Reich.  The Nazis were a particular evil that saw entire peoples decimated in the name of racial and ideological superiority. 

   Growing up in an age of moral relativism, where there is no longer automatic consensus to tar and feather a wartime enemy as absolutely evil simply because the government says we should, there is no way anyone in my generation can not see the scourge of Nazism for what it was.

  Ditto for the Taliban, and al Quaeda, who remain an Islamic version of that kind of oppression, destruction, darkness, and suppression of the human spirit.  The shadow of humanity manifests itself time and again in many places, in many faiths, in many ideologies.  Every nation, every faith, every person, is susceptible to the shadow. 

  And half a century ago, an alliance of free nations - in all of their shortcomings, civic imperfections, and checkered histories - recognized the shadow for what it was and sent their best to liberate and protect places like Assisi from the darkness.

  The friar's admiration of our troops was clear enough, but what caught me was his concluding quote from the Book of Revelation.  I was struck by the following:

  "In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bore twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

  The reconciliation of humanity with its own shadow is no mere New Age metaphor, but a real experience, a physical battle that takes place throughout the world.  And sometimes we ourselves play the role of shadow, as all the controversies of the past fifty years of foreign policy bear out. 

  Elements of the darkness that our troops continue to battle also appear within our borders: in the political and fundamentalist demagoguery we see appearing on the news; in new political and religious movements that embody anger and intolerance poorly disguised as meaningful change.  The National Socialist German Worker's Party began as such a movement; the Taliban and al Quaeda emerged in houses of worship.  As both examples demonstrate, under the right conditions, the men who shout at the rain from their soapboxes today become those who manifest genocide in the world tomorrow.  Sometimes all too easily.

  But in those who embrace life, and love, and spirit, and compassion lies all of our hope.  Peace is possible by acknowledging our dark sides as individuals. "A world of individuals at peace with themselves is a world at peace", as Dr. Dyer says, but it all starts with you. What will you do to acknowledge your own darkness, and thus prevent it from taking over?

  Remembrance Day has grown far beyond its original historical purpose - to commemorate the British war dead of World War I - and is not the celebration of war, but the acknowledgement of a fundamental paradox of the human experience: that we must sometimes fight for peace. 

    That we should prevent horror by addressing human grievances before they take root and grow into something far more sinister and deadly.

   And most importantly, to remember and thank those who stood, and stand, between us and the darkness that grows too big and dangerous to mitigate by non-violent means.

   And as the Franciscan stated so eloquently, today does not belong only to us, but to all, that the leaves of the Tree of Life that lives in us all will heal us all, that all nations may live in peace.

  To those who stood and stand for that peace, and to those who fell in its name, with all of the gratitude that one soul can muster....thank you.

My Nervous Breakdown, Pt 2

(cue pre-intro theme from "Battlestar Galactica")

Previously, on Dispatches from the Alternate Universe:

"I sit up in bed in a state of pure awareness, not completely sure what I am hearing. Then my brain reconciles the sound. Heavy breathing. Two people. My neighbours are having sex at 5:43am on the other side of that wall.....This is the last straw."

"I had asked my boss to leave an hour early on Wednesday. Typical arrangement requires me to make up the time I take. Tuesday, I showed up an hour early...Boss... that this arrangement wasn't what I thought it was, and that I likely came in early for nothing."

"This was a thirtysomething Wednesday, my first, and it was boring and sad. The kind when you only think about lost baseball games and Fs on report cards and missed opportunities....was this all there was?"



"5:54am. They haven't stopped at all. And I'm angry. Determined....I get out of bed and start my day, determined to stop letting life kick my ass. Determined to make a change...."



***

Thursday

Thursday begins well. 

Spurred by the late night sexcapades of my nympho neighbour, I am set to get back in the vibe and be a productive individual. Today is the begininng of a special project that I am not allowed to talk about in detail, save that it's something that my boss has given me ownership of.  I am ready to kick ass.  And asses are kicked today.

I'm also excited for two other reasons. After work, I'm going shopping for clothes for a photo shoot I am doing on Saturday for my upcoming work in advertising and commercials.  I am getting professional head shots done and this could be the start of a whole unexpected chapter in my life. 

I'm also due to meet with my BFF - let's call him Dom to prevent undue and inadvertent libel, though I may have mentioned his real name here somewhere - for coffee afterwards.  He has been travelling through Europe for the past three weeks, and I want to hear about how his trip went.


 
As I do my shopping, I can sense a manic energy running through my system.  This isn't necesssarily a good thing, because I've felt this before, and it usually precedes a huge crash.  No matter, I'm getting new shoes, new pants, a new blazer....all things I've needed to complete my wardrobe.  They won't all get used, I know this, but at least it's done, and I'll be equipped for any type of event. Shopping can be a temporary salve during a state of life crisis. 

I come home, head into my bedroom and drop off the stuff in my closet.

And I hear them again!  It's 6:34pm.  This time, she's really raunchy, and sort of a turn-on.  My female BFF Alice suggests that I ask to join them, but that's not in the cards for me.  I barely have enough courage to talk to a girl one on one for just me: a three-way (and a devil's three-way, at that) is out of the question.

Still, it's like a determination refresher that motivates me to go to the gym and experience the mother of all workouts (which I do).

I return, shower, change, and head out to meet Dom. 

Dom's been there for me pretty much forever, but especially since the drama started with my breakup and divorce from my ex.  As single men, we formed part of an endangered demographic in our circle of married and long-term-partnered friends, and as "nice guys", both of us are accustomed to the pitfalls and vicissitudes of post-school dating while not being a douchebag.




I go to the cafe a little early, and find out that my other friend - again, let's call him Rick for anonymity's sake - is working that night down the street and will come over to meet us when he's done.  He's also recently left a relationship, but was starting something up with a girl at his job that was going somewhere.  Rick, too, has been a loyal ally in this dangerous world of singledom, and though at the time, I simply treat this as a casual coffee with buddies with no overarching symbolism, it occurs to me afterwards that these are my wingmen.

Dom shows up, and it's good to see him again.  His trip to Europe was kick-ass, and he's got an energy about him that's basically vintage Dom, except ramped up 15%. 

And I rapidly find out why.  He's now got a girlfriend that he met on the tour.

My face must have lit up like a Christmas tree! Awesome news!  I mean, Dom's probably the greatest guy ever, and if there's anyone who deserves excellent karma for years of being true to himself, putting in his best all the time with the people around him, and looking for a relationship where he can be authentic in all ways, it's him.  I am very excited for him, and wish him all the best!

Rick shows up, and we talk for a bit . Turns out, he too, is now off the market (well, at the time, sort of) and was deliberating on what to do next.  We shoot the shit for a while and I go home at midnight. 

Though it occurs to me at the meeting, it doesn't really hit me until I go to bed (now wary of ANY sound coming from the other room).

I am probably the only single man in my group of friends.



Still, as I drift off to sleep, I do fall back on my own New Age philosophical leanings.  Things that happen in your life also have symbolic meaning, as well as literal. 

 My apartment, for example, is either clean or cluttered depending purely on my mental state.  I'm quite direct in my symbolism - for others, a clean apartment is a sign they're avoiding dealing with other issues, whereas for me it's a sign that I am bringing my surroundings into alignment with my calm and organized mindset at the time - and so I realize something that, in my lingering mania, gives me hope.

  Sex is happening three feet away from me.  My best friends are now experiencing either the start of new love or are seeing opportunities for love right before them.  The universe is surrounding me with the very experiences I wish to have, have been looking to have again for many long months now.  It's only a matter of time before it's my turn.  Not much longer to wait.



  On that thought, I fall asleep.  And yet, outside, in the dark, my apartment is a complete mess.

  Friday

  If I'd known how the day was going to end, I would have probably slept in a little later.  For the first time in two days, no sex from the other side of the wall.  Good.

  I get to work, and today's the day that I am to finish up my project and get the arrangements made.  Part of this project involves collating a significantly large number of documents that, in turn, require organizing.  I figure I can get all of this done myself, impress my boss, and be a champion.

  I don't count on the involvement of the other middle manager in the office.  Let's call her MM.

   MM is hyper organized.  It's her thing.  And she's a nice lady, personally (aren't all the evil bosses nice people outside of work matters?).  But she is organized to a fault, way past the border of OCD.  And I'm about to feel her wrath.

   Leaving my project for lunch, I return to find that she has taken over my collating piles, reorganized them, and is now telling me what to do down to the last detail.  I can't go to my boss for advice because she isn't back until Monday.  Nor can I protest, partly because it's insubordination and I have two weeks left on my technical probation, and because she is offering me critical help.

    The workforce has this phenomenon that I can't quite name, in which there's no practical reason why you should be unhappy for some policy, someone's help, someone's directives, but where there's something wrong where you can't put your finger on what it is.  And for me, I realize that MM has taken away my bragging rights for getting the project done myself. 

   More than that, I also know that if there are any discrepancies, my boss will blame me for it. 

   Worse yet, MM is altering my original directives given to me by my boss, and I am working on complete faith that this is what my boss really wants. 

    MM issues one last reorganizing directive that, if I am to complete, requires me to stay late to ensure completion of the project, then leaves.  By this point, I am demotivated, stressed, and despairing, because my boss already has me on the hook for schedule issues.



   I am damned if I do, damned if I don't.  If I leave on time, the project will not be finished, and I will hear about it Monday.  If I stay late, I will hear about it on Monday.  I decide to stay late, sending Boss an email explaining the situation. 

   As I finish the set-up though, it dawns on me: nothing I ever do will impress my boss.  Her management style is the old school one in which the only feedback you receive is when you do something wrong.

   I am an intelligent human being doing peon work, and being treated accordingly.  I have no upward momentum, and nowhere else to go.  But I'm forced to stay because I need money.

   In the stressed out, demoralized atmosphere of my mind, the usual levvies that allow me to separate home issues from work start to crack. As I finish up my email and start for home, the leaks get bigger.  More chunks fall out from the levvies and the fluids begin to gush and mix together.

   I am single and divorced and alone and lonely.  Everyone is in a relationship but me.

  I am an intelligent, university-educated Arts major doing work that I am overqualified for and bored by, but that I need in order to pay my bills.

  I am trying to please a boss for whom nothing will be good enough.

  Everyone else is living what I want to have: love, and sex and babies and houses and success.

  And I am 30 years old and one week and nowhere near where I thought I would be in life.

  These elements swirl together, gathering momentum, and create a perfect storm in my mind that only breaks when I get home. 

  The manic energy spikes....then, ultimately....CRASH!

 I get into my apartment and just lose it.  When Jody has a nervous breakdown, it becomes rather epic.  Status updates abound.  Text messages fly.  I call everyone to vent.  I allow myself to cry, a behaviour which I've internalized as not being "manly", which I don't even do on my own half the time, but which is just too much to repress any longer.  I lose my typical cheer and optimism and become all about the cloud, not the lining.

For about two hours on Friday night, I alternate my time between venting out the strain, scaring the shit out of my friends and family who mistake the venting for my imminent demise, and just completely losing my shit.  Like most violent storms, though, it's over with quickly, but while it's falling, it's intense and dramatic and scary.

  But then, it's over.

 The comparison between the end of a nervous breakdown and a storm is apt.  The stillness and sheer awareness is the same, the feeling of energies dissipated, of a mess that's left behind now requiring clean-up.  Silence. 

  I get up from the couch, now in the dark.  I look around.  The place is a mess.  But I feel better, if not a little puffy and stuffed up.  I make a few phone calls, talk to a few people who have seen my updates and are worried about me.  The first glimmerings of gratitude and light appear: I am lucky to have the people that I do, people who care about me.  Who love me, even when I can't understand why they do.

  I sit for a while, idly browsing the web, start to put a few things away here and there, but otherwise, not doing much else.  The storm's passed.



  Flashforward: The Weekend

  I feel relieved to have these feelings out.  The weekend is here.

   Saturday, I pack up half my closet, clean myself up and head to Toronto for pictures.  There, I'll visit an actual celebrity photographer in a real artsy loft, the kind I've only seen on TV.  He is friendly and delightful and makes me feel right at home.  I'll chat with a make-up artist who's worked with the big stars all over the world as he gets me ready for my head shots.  He'll tell me that he's been doing work for over twelve years, and that he has confidence that I will get lots of work.  As I leave, he wishes me well and says, "See you on TV." 



  I drive home through Toronto's busy Distillery and then through the Entertainment District.  I feel the energy of a city I have always loved to visit, and may be seeing more of soon.

  Afterwards,  I'll have a belated birthday party afterwards with some of the people I care about most in the world willing to buy me drinks and laugh with me. 

   Sunday's sunny and warm: perfect hangover weather for walking and doing nothing, enjoying the sun and breeze.  That morning, Rick will have crashed at my place and I'll drive him to work at the bookstore where I've applied for seasonal work.  After browsing some books, I'll decide to take a ballroom dance class starting in January. The school is within walking distance of home, and they say partners are not necessary for the group lessons. 



   I'll spend much of the day giving my brain a rest, nursing a slight hangover, indulging in just sitting under a tree, walking through grass, looking at clouds that remind us of the infinite vastness of sky and the wind-chopped waters of an inland sea that leads to the ocean. 

  I'll meet with my baseball team for our last beer call together.  I don't know it on Friday, but I'll win Rookie of the Year from my coach Julius, another good friend I'm lucky to have.   Tuesday, I start floor hockey again.

  At that same gathering, I'll buy a stag and doe ticket for November, another opportunity to have fun and meet new people, possibly someone who'll be special.  Another whim decision, unexpected, and new, like my decision to work in talent.  A psychic told me this summer that the next special girl I meet would be at an unexpected party in the winter.  Could this be it?  We'll see. I tend not to believe most self-proclaimed psychics, so I'm not going to expect anything.  But I can hope.

  The day will end with this blog entry.  Tomorrow I return to work, and whatever trouble I may find myself getting in, if at all, despite my best efforts.  But I'm not going to spin my wheels anymore for no reward.  I will do what's required, focus with all my best, and then walk at the bell.  Become what we all expect of a typical government worker.

  I'll be living with my 30s for the next ten years, so I'll have to get used to it.  It'll take time, but what else can you do?  30's typically a difficult year for most people in those unexpected ways. This is just my time to deal with it.

   And as my friend Rick has been telling me for a while, I just have to be patient that I'll find someone, and find something to do to enjoy my time in the meantime. If I'm in the flow of experiences I enjoy, I won't need to worry about the interpersonal dynamics of approaching girls or not approaching them: we'll meet each other halfway.  And it won't feel like work.



 Nervous breakdowns happen to everyone, even me. Not often, but this one was a long time coming, and now that it's passed, I still feel that calm that follows.  It won't last, of course - nothing lasts - but at least for now, I can just sleep the sleep of the tired and the lucky.

   It's unrealistic to feel grateful and joyous all the time, but at least I can be conscious of the stormy days, be aware of things as they happen, and try to get through them with a minimum of damage to self, surroundings, and reputation.  The contrast of pleasure and pain makes life.

  This breakdown cleared the air.  Eventually, I'll be grateful for it, but in the meantime, I'm happy with just not being ashamed of it.

   9:40pm as I write this sentence.

  I now go to bed and sleep, turning out the lights on an apartment that's clean once again.

  Let's see what the neighbour chick's got in store tonight.

My Nervous Breakdown, Pt 1

(Preface: this is very closely related to Allie Brosh's the Sneaky Hate Spiral.  Click here to read before continuing if you haven't already.  If not, I bid you continue)

5:43am.

That's what the BlackBerry screen says.  5:43am.  My alarm's not set to go off for another hour or so.  I was dreaming deeply, of markets and sunsets in faraway places. 

So why am I up? 

Then I hear it.  Muffled, intermittent, human.  Heavy, from behind the concrete wall that my bed backs onto. 

I sit up in bed in a state of pure awareness, not completely sure what I am hearing.  Then my brain reconciles the sound.  Heavy breathing.  Two people.

My neighbours are having sex at 5:43am on the other side of that wall. 

Three feet of concrete separates me from their hot and heavy, yet somehow I can hear it. 

This is the last straw.

Flashback to Tuesday

The first work day back from the Thanksgiving weekend began poorly.

The preceding week, I had asked my boss to leave an hour early on Wednesday, before my two day vacation, then Thanksgiving weekend..  Typical arrangement requires me to make up the time I take.  I had offered to make up the time before Wednesday, but my boss advised me that she prefers I "do it afterwards".  I interpreted this to mean that my very next shift I am to show up early.  This has been the process at other workplaces I've been at.  Of course, this thinking made an ass out of you and me (mostly me)....

Tuesday, I showed up an hour early, only to find that my government building was still closed, business hours having not begun.  Fortunately, I found an unlocked door and made my way in.  However, the elevators are also locked until 8:00am, meaning that unless I have a special base pass, I can't actually access my floor.  Again, fortunately, some kind souls working extra - like me! - showed up and took me to a floor three stories above mine. 

That's okay, I thought, I'll just take the stairs down to my floor.  And I made it to the stairwell.  And I descended to my floor.  Only to find that the door to my floor was, in fact, locked.  I tried other doors on other floors, only to discover a rather unfortunate truth: I was stuck in the stairwell. 

I checked the time.  7:36am.  Not bad, boss isn't usually in for a while yet.  I suddenly remembered the phone number for security, called the guard, identified myself, and asked him to come up and unlock the door.  He did so, and I gained access to my office.

Boss was not in, so to give her some proof that I did my best to be in an hour early, I sent her an email (those are time-stamped, right?).  45 minutes made up, will make up the other 15 somehow later.

Boss never came in.  In meetings out of the office all week.  But she was checking her email.  Two hours later, I got a reply.  Essentially said that this arrangement wasn't what I thought it was, and that I likely came in early for nothing.  I sighed heavily, rubbed my eyes, went on with my day, mostly conscious.

Nine hours later, I headed home.  Around the afternoon, I developed a headache.  Intense, like little lightning storms striking my skull.  It developed for no reason whatsoever, as the rest of the day had gone well, but then it was followed by stomach queasiness and a general feeling of "what the fuck" flowing through my veins and nerve endings.

I'd had plans to go play floor hockey that night, but instead I came home and lay down, napped for a good two hours.  Though I would eventually get up and get the wherewithall to go to the gym and do mild cardio, my evening, for all intents and purposes, was shot.  The headache and stomach sick vanished just as quickly as it appeared.  I had no idea why.

Wednesday

Wednesday dawned, and the day was slow, so I blogged. Coming home, I decided to go to the Second Cup and write for a few hours.

Outside, an autumn rain, the equal and opposite of spring rain, fell in torrents, cold and bone chilling and dreary.  It was the dreariness that got to me, the type of weather that not only soaks your clothes but gets into your heart and pools, weighing it down.  My friends a city away from me, most of them, no girlfriend or wife to go home to, I felt sad.  True to my bilingual status, all I could think was "le sigh". 

This was a thirtysomething Wednesday, my first, and it was boring and sad.  The kind when you only think about lost baseball games and Fs on report cards and missed opportunities.  Where you dwell on wrong turns taken in the road that led you here.

Was this all there was?  We go through childhood and school dreaming about what we would be when we grew up, and I was none of the things I had dreamed about.  Not an astronaut, not a fighter pilot, not a police detective, not a cartoonist, nor a professor. An author, sure, but not successful in the financial and commercial sense, not yet.  A career in limbo then, working at a low level minion job where I am viewed as a peon - essential to operations, but not someone to be appreciated or thanked - to pay the bills until that success happens. 

The mood didn't get much better as I talked to Mom on the phone, laying out all the reasons for why my life wasn't going the way I wanted to.  "I like what you wrote in your blog," she said, "but I also know what you say to me when we talk about the same things.  You're trying to convince yourself as much as you are others when you do your motivational entries."

Mom's where I derive much of my crazy, I think, my different way of thinking about things.  And she hit the nail on the head, though I answered that even if I am doing this to convince myself of what I should be thinking, if it helps someone else deal with their shit, it benefits both of us.

But that night, I just felt generally stuck.  Making enough money at my job for food and shelter, but not enough for plane tickets, night school classes, or dance lessons: places and experiences where I could potentially meet Miss Right and thus restore my life to the normal function it had for over a decade.  I am no good single.  No one appreciates me at work, and I have no one at home to give validation that I matter as a human being, that I matter to someone else.

I'm also far more intelligent than the work I do, having passed up management jobs here and there throughout my twenties because, well, I've never seen any industry, any economic activity that I could devote 100% of my passion to.  Nothing about the management lifestyle lights me up except for the cash, which I'd gladly accept if I didn't have any responsibility.  I hadn't, however, factored in the hit that my self esteem would take by doing minion work when I'm way more evolved than most minions. 

And, of course, the 30 thing, which I realized was wishful thinking on my part to regard it as just another day. 

This was the mindset I was in on Wednesday night.  I went to the gym, came back, washed up, and went to bed, alone...again. 

As I tried to sleep through the mania that was keeping me up, I wondered why it was so hard to meet women my age. 

Myth#1 of all frustrated single "nice" guys like me is that there aren't women around.  Not true, I see them everywhere.  The thing is just approaching them.

Do women really like being approached by guys?  I can't get a satisfactory, absolute answer to this question.  I've always thought it was borderline creepy to just walk up to a random girl and say "Hi".  But apparently, that's the way to go.  I meditated on the paradoxes of dating: that girls will claim to want "nice guys" but will be turned on by assholes who will hurt them later; that if you go up to a girl with a plan, she'll deride your "agenda", but if you just flat out tell her you're interested with no games, she'll find you boring.

More excerpts from a book I've quoted here before by Lori Gottlieb called Marry Him in which all the fortysomething singles increasingly pine for the "nice guys" they weren't attracted to in their quarter life years, guys who are now married to the women who were saavy enough to lock them down when the getting was good.  Meditated on where those women were at this moment.

More contemplation: why is it so easy for almost every other guy I know to just approach a girl?  Why is it I can give speeches to crowds of dozens, raise the roof, flirt with cashiers and baristas, make friends with strangers, but I freeze when I see a girl at a bar I'm interested in seeing romantically?  This comes naturally to almost 90% of men out there.  I'm having to learn it from books. 

I contemplate entering the priesthood to simply remove the dating option from Jody's palette of options.  Not Roman Catholic.  Maybe Shaolin. I'll know kung fu.

Oh, and the fact that I've been an Aberdonian version of what Barney Stinson calls "The Sexless Innkeeper" for nearly a year, after having lived a decade of my prime years where access to sex wasn't in question. That was about the last thought I had before finally drifting off.

Around 1:45am or so, I finally fell asleep. 

Thursday

I'd only seen the girl next door once. 

Blonde, twenty five or twenty six, decent shape, somewhat nice, but like all other quarter-lifers, not terribly sociable, no small talk kind of thing.  Small talk and walking up to people to say hi is the domain of the older generation.  We said awkward hellos, took the elevator down to the parking garage, said goodbye, and that's it.  No other communication.

Until I hear her having loud sex on the other side of my bedroom wall with a boyfriend she had acquired.  And that communication is not only one-way, but unintentional.

5:54am.  They haven't stopped at all.  And I'm angry.  Determined. 

This is the closest I have physically been to that kind of energy in a long time.  It seems that the good things in life that I'm looking for are happening all around me, but not to me directly.  The universe is determined to screw with my life with its pernacious sense of humour.

Sexless Inkeeper my ass.

Time to stop feeling pathetic and alone.  Time to man up and head out there, stop being sad,and be awesome instead.  If life isn't going to give me what I want, then it's time to go out and take it!

I get out of bed and start my day, determined to stop letting life kick my ass.  Determined to make a change....

(To Be Continued....)

Freedom in the Falling Leaves

    This summer has taught me momentary living.

    What does it mean, anyway, that standard New Agey cliche: "live in the moment"?  Depends on who's doing the living.
 
     My hunch to take a break for the past month was a good one, because writing about these things as they were happening would have deprived me of proper marination time. 

     August transformed me in ways I could never have expected in my wildest daydreams of quantum leaps.  I feel liberated, energized, and renewed.  What makes this time different from all of those temporary moments of good vibrations that come and go with the day is that something is solid here, something permanent.  I've passed a point of no return, as if a wall magically appeared behind me to keep me from falling back into some fundamental old patterns of behaviour and thought.

     Before this month, I did a lot of talking about momentary living, and not enough living momentarily.  My whole life, I've planned.  I've calculated.  I've weighed costs and benefits.  Most of all, I've hesitated to choose.  August taught me decisiveness.

    What were these events?  At least one of them isn't something I'm comfortable blogging about in public due to employment issues: I'm almost certainly aware my boss is aware of this blog, and though I doubt she reads it much, I am very much interested in staying employed until writing can sustain me.  It's self-censorship, to be sure, but at this point, financial survival is paramount.

   Nor can I just open up a new anonymous blog for my writing, for two very big reasons.

    First, I was shortlisted for this year's Arts Hamilton 2010 Creative Keyboards Short Story Contest.  As such, I am starting to gain some publicity, and need this to remain public and in my name as a homepage. 

    Next, I am nearing completion on my novel, which I've tentatively titled Convergence. Again, this will require open and public awareness that Jody Aberdeen has a web presence. 

    I will say this much: I have had 31 days of high highs, one very low low, and ever since, a synthesis, a reconciliation that I feel has been penultimate.  There is no going back now to what and who I was before.
 
   So what is momentary living?  It's the simple division of your overall plan into smaller segments.  Each day has 1,440 minutes of 60 seconds each.  Too often, we get stressed out by the overall plan when it's measured in bigger chunks: weeks, months, years, decades.  We think that we have "wasted years", we should have been "further along" than we are now; we procrastinate on larger goals with long-count timelines because we think "lots of time between now and then" and thus create our self-fulfilling prophecies of doom.  By getting addicted to a long-count plan, we often compromise ourselves and doom ourselves to failure, because everyone knows that the big plans almost never turn out the way you thought. 

   But 1,440 minutes, of which you spend an average of 420 asleep, that's more manageable, because they are easy to fill, far easier than a decade.  Unlike those longer term goals, you don't have to wait with the moments to feel how you want to feel: you can feel it now, within 60 seconds of your decision to feel it. 

   How did I come to this conclusion?  A simple, beautiful experience, one that I have no qualms talking about.

    I met someone online, nearly a month ago.  We chatted online, dated for a time, and on the third date, headed out to the Burlington Beach on the last night of the month.  At sunset, wading in the warm clear water under a cloudless blue sky, she and I kissed.  That was a beautiful moment for me, one that seemed to last far longer than the sixty or so seconds of the actual duration of the embrace. Whitley Strieber summed it up best: "all kisses are forever".

    Two days later, we stopped seeing each other, and though I was initially sad, I felt, and still feel, energized and electrified from that kiss, which was a moment truly lived. I am ready for more.

    And many of those I spoke to initially viewed the experience as one part of a larger "failure", despite their best efforts to hide it with placations.  After all, the lovely young lady in question and I are no longer dating; it didn't work out in the long run, which is the stated goal of all romantic dating.

    None of that matters, because I was able to create a moment, and that moment lasts forever.  Living the moment means not living for specific results: it means experiencing what is at the time it's happening. And though it didn't work out, the experience gifted me with something else:  I now truly *get*, from experience, that old Eastern adage that every piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit only leads you closer to the piece that does.  I am grateful for what I've learned, and will put it to practice with the next romantic experience I have. 

    August was full of such experiential moments, not just romantic, and really, all of life is like that, if you choose to see it that way.  The choice is essential.  This doesn't negate the need to have a goal: as I said, you're just using a smaller measure of time.  And I have a goal and a plan, a new one that's really helped to move me forward, like a fresh breeze pushing canvas sails.  I'll talk about that later.

    I won't comment on September as a whole, not until it's passed.  I'll say this much: I look forward to enjoying this new sense of freedom in the falling leaves and chilly breezes and the earlier sunsets.  Fall has always been special for those types of moments for me anyway.  Lonely or satisfied, joyful or anxious, I look forward to them all.

   This is the start of something new.  I can't want to see where it leads.

Unnameable Randoms - July 7th, 2010

I have three alarm Writer's Block.

No movement on the novel.  No movement on "From the Battery to the Heights".  Not even on this blog.  Must be the humidity...

Gah!

Time for Declaration Salad. 

Declaration Salad

This is a new game that is precisely twenty seconds old as of the original draft of this sentence.  In it, I make single paragraph declarations about anything that comes to mind, accompanied by pictures.  Game on!

G20:  This is one of those things I've been trying to blog about, but can't, only because there's too much to write about.  So, here's my main beef: police who knowingly mislead the public.  My conservative buddies, naturally, side with the cops, saying that misleading or omitting the fact that the so-called "five metre arrest rule" around the perimeter of the fence didn't actually exist was a means to an end.  To what end? Giving the police greater perimeter control over the violent protesters.  Protecting property.  Protecting "the people". 

Sadly, the police, indeed all democratic institutions in the First World, cannot be a "means to an end" type of entity. The "means" portion very much matters, because the "means", in this case, is a little thing we call "due process".  This ain't Mexico, and it's very much a valid slippery slope argument to ask, once you start skirting the law to enforce the law, finding loopholes or just flat out ignoring existing statutes, what's to stop you from doing so in other situations? And if it came as a directive from Queen's Park, then I see no logical difference between this and the investigation of former Premier Mike Harris and his connection to the OPP killing of protestor Dudley George at Ipperwash.  You'd think any conservative worth the blue in his blood would get behind investigating a Liberal premier on this matter, instead of automatically retreating, sheep-like, to the default ideological position of police worship.

Ironically, for conservatives to reflexively side with the police force and the government in this matter is to compromise another fundamental tenet of their own ideology, a basic belief goes beyond this ideology, that has gone out the window in the Harper era, and that hasn't been a practiced part of the lunatic Republican scene States-side for two decades: government accountability.  I look forward to seeing the independent civilian inquest of Toronto Police Services in this matter. 

(And because this is such a dicey topic, prone to distraction and sleight of hand by the Limbaughs and Becks and Parentes of the blogosphere - yes, Julius, I'm calling you out, buddy - I will repeat: I am not criticizing individual police officers or government officials.  When I say "police", I am referring to the institution, not those who serve them, and by extension, us.  I'll leave it to the inquiries to find out which individual officers conducted themselves illegally during this event.)

(And yes, I realize I just broke the single rule of Declaration Salad: one paragraph only.  Call me hypocrite if you wish, but at least I'm not in command of people with guns and batons and jails.  I trust my point is clear.  Moving on.)

Personal Boundaries and Rules:  They suck.  They serve you at times when you're not comfortable, but when you're looking to grow as a person, they just hold you back. They become habits that prevent us from growing, and when we do try to look for new experiences in life, we run up against them and we have no idea why we're feeling unhappy, or not having those new experiences  Paulo Coelho writes in The Valkyries that many people are like trained circus elephants: we're given shackles when we're younger, then chained to a massive tree that we can't escape with all of our strength.  Eventually, we give up, and we grow up chained, except when our trainers say it's okay to wander, or when they need us to perform. And even when we're clearly strong enough to get away, our trainers can shackle us to a twig and we'll still sit there, just because we got used to it. This is what's been happening to me lately.  I've got boundaries and rules for everything: love, sex, jobs, exercise, diets, politics, attraction...and they're no longer serving me.  Almost none of them.  Revelation the other day: the only reason I keep them around is because I worry about what someone would think of me if I broke them. 2nd Revelation: these rules and boundaries in question come from a time when I was a different person looking for different things.  Like the GST, they no longer apply, so I've junked them.  I can't write about the changes happening inside Jody's life - I've tried - because they're ongoing, and they're new.  I don't know what to make of them yet, but I'm watching the flow.  Stay tuned.

(And yes, I realize that I just adhered to the single rule of Declaration Salad. Call me a hypocrite if you'd like, but at least I'm breaking a rule that I made up. It just didn't serve me anymore. I trust my point is clear. Moving on.)

Planning: My former mother-in-law who reads this blog - hey, Pat - used to say that "people don't plan to fail, they fail to plan."  Tellingly, though, I think some people do plan to fail - a few health and safety officials at BP can testify have testified to that - but really, success or failure is entirely contextual.  In plain English, if all intended to do was run a marathon, then as long as I kept running from start to finish, I succeeded.  If I intended to win said marathon, though, anything less than coming in first would be a failure.  Would the latter force me to do more, be more, push myself more?  Sure, but that's the point: it's not all about what you want to accomplish, but who you want to become in the process of accomplishment.  That means, on occasion, abandoning the plans you had if you're not happy with who you are in relation to them.  That's not to say you can't have goals: they're two different things.  One is the thing you're after, the other is the way you accomplish it.  And really, the goal is to feel joy and happy, no matter what specific thing we feel we have to do to get it.  I'd love to be a bestselling author in my thirties, that's plain to read, and that plan is simple: write the damned book, start networking and speculating for an agent. Beyond that, I have no clue.  According to the original life plan, I'm failing.  No house, no more spouse, no six figure income, no kids. Like the boundaries, though, the plan doesn't apply.  It's getting junked, too, along with, interestingly enough, my romantic plan.  Yes, indeed, it's a Jodyist Revolution around these parts....

Momentary Living: Because I've been having a lot of different conversations about living in the moment.  It's such a platitude, it's beyond a cliche.  What the hell does it really mean?  Logically, it seems to set up a dichotomy with planning, conjuring up images of idle loafers who never figure themselves out, but who indulge every second in something deeply pleasurable versus noble denizens of Squaresville who never have much fun, but who brush their teeth precisely thirty-three times per session and run their lives with the efficiency of a Pratt and Whitney turbojet.  It's clearly a false dichotomy: no one is a precise "type" of person.  The solution is to just have a single goal and then release it to the universe, and then....live your life, day to day, moment by moment. Quit overthinking things and just do epic shit if it feels right in the moment and it won't hurt anyone else or yourself.  Kiss that girl - or just ask her out - even if she isn't your stated type: don't give a shit what you said or what your friends will say.  Take wrong directions on purpose, play hooky for no reason except for a day off to do whatever. Apply for that Hail Mary job, take up karate even though you're 300 pounds overweight.

Do a flyby on the tower, even if the pattern is full.

Whatever.  And just know that every action, legitimately savoured as it's happening, will lead you there.  Don't abandon a dream and a goal: just get rid of the addiction to the plan.  Abandon the model.

Buckminster Fuller said it best:  "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."  Be a little stoopid.  Nuff said.

XKCD: You ma-ma-ma-make m-me h-haaaaaa-py......

Aaaaand....blockage is still there.  Shit.  Must be the humidity after all....

***

G-20

(LS: 10-0   Mood: Oddly Detached)

So tempting to just say "gas the shit out of them", isn't it?  Or, if you're charging the ramparts, to cry "police state".  So so tempting to opt for the simple, time-honoured tradition of intellectualized and institutionalized name-calling for the sake of advancing one ideology over another.  Fortunately, I'm not so easily tempted.

The convolution of issues surrounding the G-20 in Toronto - or really, anywhere the leaders of the twenty most prosperous nations on Earth decide to meet - brings out all the emotions, but strangely, very little on the issues.

And those issues - the continued functioning of the global economy, sustaining the environment, distribution of resources to the world's needy, human rights - almost never make the front pages.  Instead, we get the violence.  Indeed, that's all we get.

I'm not sympathetic to violent actions.  The hypocrisy - and comedic irony - of those Starbuck-swilling lefties with their rasta-coloured knitted hats and beat poems donning balaclavas and smashing the windows of the very same Starbucks where they planned their marches is fair game for all to see.  The guerilla tactics of blending into peaceful crowds, rightfully exercising their democratic rights to protest, and then putting on masks and rampaging through the streets before blending back into the crowds, do a great disservice to the causes advocated by the majority of those taking to the streets.

And yet, I'm equally reluctant to lend my support to the elite - the business leaders and political officials who live at the top of the capitalist food chain at altitudes of wealth and prosperity and power that 95% of the world population will never reach, thanks in large part because those already at the top have rigged the system that way - because I will not be a useful idiot. 

Speaking of revolutionaries, that's the term, mistakenly attributed to Vladmir Illyich Lenin, that describes those in the intelligentsia and middle class who speak out against progressive change that would benefit the lower classes, despite themselves being blocked by the very powers they endorse.  It's the Uncle Tom approach to manufacturing the consent of the mainstream population: get a few of "the ordinary Joes" to be your tools, and the rest of the population - seeing someone just like them advocating in support of the bourgeois - will go along with it.

I'm a writer, an artist.  I'm very loathe to align myself with those already in power, for whenever we speak out in support of one side or another, we add our power to whoever is already there.  And those in the upper echelon already have so much... including the ability to take away my freedom, my expression, in the name of "public safety" or whatever self-serving pretext they want to invent.  A quote from V for Vendetta sums it up nicely: "People shouldn't be afraid of their governments.  Governments should be afraid of their people".  If they turn us into a police state, they were always going to turn us into a police state.  At least, if that ever happens, I will be able to say that I didn't contribute my words to helping manufacture my own shackles.

But before you declare that I'm on the side of the window smashers, V was, of course, talking about violent revolution against an actual dictatorship.  Though highly statist and institutionally conservative, Canada has no such regime in place.  For that, we are lucky.

Useful idiots exist for every ideology, and I will not be one of them.  It's just as easy for righties to call the violent protesters "terrorists" and condemn the violence as it is for lefties to assail the suspension of "democracy" in the live zone.  The battle lines are familiar, the banners the same, in this debate as all others that happen daily: the only difference now is that there are actual battles taking place.

  

They need to find another way to discuss these important issues, a method that's far less high profile and likely to attract violence than what we have.  Those who will smash windows have always had that predisposition to do so: the G20 is the best excuse available for them to align themselves with whatever "cause" and throw rocks.  The initial reason to have "summits" was purely for prestige reasons, I think.  It's a world class event, a chance for host nations to pull down their drawers and say "See?  My boner's bigger than 85% of the other countries in the world".  Prestige costs us, though, as evidenced in the destruction and injury happening in the streets of Toronto tonight.  Maybe it's time for a more flaccid approach to ruling the world.  Give them nothing to hit, and they won't show up to throw rocks.

Until then, where do I stand?  After all, we're in extremis to some extent, and in such situations, you're either with or against.  I'm biased, primarily because I know there's at least one police officer friend who's likely fending off bottle-throwing socialist crackheads as I sit in my comfortable apartment an hour away by the lake, but I don't buy that half these guys are serious about their "causes".  The real heroes - the guys and gals who truly love progress - aren't charging the barricades in Toronto tonight, but are actually down on the shores of Louisiana and Alabama;  in sub-Saharan Africa and the Congo; in Haiti and in Chile; in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, becoming the change they want to see in the world.

It's one thing to sit in a posh cafe in the city, sipping lattes and bitching about capitalism and Darfur, quite another to put your money where your mouth is and assuage your "white/straight/male/capitalist/middle class" guilt by going out into the world and making a real difference.  I'm not happy with the rioters, and I hope our police use only the appropriate level of force to ensure they are contained.  Of course, the level of propriety in the police response depends almost entirely on the conduct of the protesters.  After all, it's not like they didn't know what they were going up against beforehand, and the time may come when "gassing the shit out of them" is the best way to keep the peace.  In fact, I believe we've reached that time.

But when this is all done, we need to engage with the existing processes for political and social progress, because the lefties are right on one count: if enough of the middle class populations of the developed world knew the true extent to which corporations and governments have been exploiting them, every nation would have its own version of the destruction of the Bastille. 

We only find out about the whitewashing and denials, the decisions to choose profits over sustainability and safety, the scams designed to exploit the poor to the benefit of those already living in ridiculous wealth, after the fact.  The sub-prime mortgage scandal and the BP oil spill are two examples.  Imagine if we knew, right now, all of the profiteering schemes being cooked up by unelected, unaccountable corporations that control vast swathes of our lives, property, and natural resources.  The Toronto riots would seem trite in comparison to the global revolution that would transpire. 

We can avoid this, and potentially reduce the intensity of protesters at these summits and other gatherings, by doing one thing: listen to the arguments they are presenting.  This is difficult to do without somehow granting legitimacy to the violent tactics now in use, but part of the problem is that people who are ignored all the time will eventually get your attention, and sometimes in a way that you don't like.  As a collective society, we do ourselves a disservice by ignoring the voices on the fringes crying out for an end to poverty, to justice between men and women, for a cleaner world and an economy that doesn't exploit those who work at the bottom of the economic order. Ignore them long enough, eventually, they will make themselves heard. 

We don't have this problem with those behind the barricades with presidents and prime ministers: they already have the power to turn their opinions into policy.  But will we also allow them to manufacture our consent without question?  I'll let you figure that out for yourself.

Until then, let's hope and pray for the safety of our cops, the liberties and safety of those engaged in legitimate protest, the security of our city, the protection of our democratic freedoms as well as our democratic nation, the welfare of the downtrodden around the globe, and - as cheesy as it sounds - a better tomorrow for all six billion human beings and the world on which they live in this, the second decade of the 21st Century.