Commentary on commentators.
, 8:40 AM
I think that I will never read another book review. I was just reading one from Slate about a new novel. (I guess that’s redundant.) I grew more interested as I learned the book was a magic realist story. Then the commentators took a swipe at the writer, just a mild one, but I was left thinking, “Who are these people to be talking abouthim?“
Taking a step backwards, I now look at the whole ofSlate, and I wonder what it’s for. It’s a bunch of gas-bags venting about current events and cultural inventions, sounding clever, but adding nothing.
If there’s an information equivalent to toxic shock, I’m there. Last night I sat and read a hundred pages of a book, and my brain was itching like a junky to get back to the computer.
Ahead of me, through the library windows, I see a herd of triangular, slate-covered roofs. Some have terracotta chimney-pots coming up out of them, and one has a television aerial.
Right now, there’s nothing wrong. This state of mind is a lasting bit of the awareness practice reading I did. I was walking in town today, passing by the great gorge between the Regent Road and the Old Town, which contains the train station and other odds and ends, and I looked at the sky. It had — and still has — a colour like newsprint. I checked my feelings, which were flat.Something’s wrong, my brain thought habitually. But just as quickly, it occurred to me that something was only wrong if I was obliged to feel one particular way. The mind is hungry for consistency like that: “Always happy! Always happy! Sameness! Survival!” I took what I was feeling and was satisfied with it. The sky was not “grim”; it was blank, yet to be printed on.
It’s been cool again lately, and not so spring-like. I don’t resent the season I’m in anymore, or hope for the next one. As an aging, mortal creature with much to lose, I’m not in any hurry for time to pass.
Nice weekend.
Monday, March 28, 2005 , 5:02 PM
Friday: Chat at Liz‘s and drinks at Pivo.
Saturday: Talked with the family on Skype for ages, then went out to Patrick’s, where we watched the launch of the new Doctor Who, which was gladdeningly charming. It was fun to be here for the start (or re-start) of something so quintessentially British.
Sunday: Liz had an Easter egg hunt for a bunch of us in her flat, which reduced us to six-year-olds. More conversation ensued, people went off their separate ways, then Liz and I went to see The Machinist, a very stylish film that veered uncomfortably close to Fight Club, without being anywhere as important. Ultimately, it seemed to be an exercise in displaying how Method-ically skinny Christian Bale could make himself. Icky.
It’s grey, rainy, and kinda cold again.
Are you not thinking yet?
Friday, March 25, 2005 , 1:12 PM
Relax, I’m not referring to dismantling the universe or anything like that… This time.
My editor asked me to read a book on web usability, because we’re writing copy for the next iteration of the company’s website. (Which, thanks to the team, especially my beloved Margaux, is going to be very pretty.)
The book is called Don’t Make Me Think!. Ironically, it immediately got me thinking about my own website. I haven’t changed it in several years, mainly ’cause I’m not doing the web design thing anymore, so I don’t need it as a showcase. I also couldn’t think of anything better. But it always did kinda bug me that the navigation was a bit weird and non-intuitive; it required you to click something here, then notice something over there. That’s a level of thinking, exactly the sort of thing this author Steve Krug says should be eliminated to help your readers/users. Add to this the fact that I never used two of the four categories.
The book is a quick and practical read, and as I went through it I immediately saw what else I could do instead, which is either a testament to him, or to my having gained some distance from the old design.
Anyway, here it is. I’ve still got some decorating to do, but it’s built and the walls are painted.
As a seasoned web designer, I know that the first thing everyone says on the launch of a new website is “Why didn’t you–?”, “Couldn’t it–?”, “I don’t like how–“, or “This is broken.” If you’re reading this, know that I love you, but, er… don’t. My intention (in starting yesterday afternoon and working until 4:30 in the morning) was to build a simple, easy-to-modify website, and this works for me.
Where in the noosphere is Hamish?
Wednesday, March 23, 2005 , 8:44 PM
Busy. I’ve been juggling a few things, and finishing off my head-sorting, life-sorting work. Or so I thought: Having worked through the Zen-ish book, I’m left in an open field, looking up at clouds and stars. It’s a big, happy blank. There’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. I’m not separate from anything. So now comes the tricky balance between moving toward things I want in life and not missing each moment of existence.
Onto more practical, understandable matters: Any e-mail sent to my in-box on Thursday went into the aether, never to be seen again. I was in-between web hosts. Apologies if your message was one of them.
Saturday, March 19, 2005 , 3:15 PM
Last night I went out to Patrick’s with Philip and Murray, where we found Patrick, Liz, Geoff, Keith, and Anita making supper. I’d hyperlink their names to all their various blogs, but I can’t be arsed: I’m sitting in Princes Street Gardens.
I just finished the last session in the preparation course for Powerful Partnerships, the “citizen’s advocacy” group I’ve got involved with. Last night was a blast: I had a really good time with my mates, got home at a reasonable hour, and yet I had a terrible sleep. My main thought this morning was just to survive this final day in the course so I could go home and have a nap.
It helps to have a theme when approaching a day, but “I’m sleepy” seemed a sure-fire way to have a lousy time, learn nothing, and make no valuable contribution. Plus they gave us biscuits and sandwiches. I also bought a big bottle of water — hydration helps with tiredness. Though every damned liquid product in this country has f*ing sugar in it, as this lime-water proved to, too. Why?!
So the session was valuable and dropped in the last missing pieces, addressing my concerns about being an advocate. The group also had a fun dynamic, which has raised my confidence throughout about this being a good experience.
So now it’s all over, and what’s next is for me to start meeting real people, one of whom I’ll actually end up being an advocate for. The preparation is over.
And this day! There’s no way I want to take a nap now and miss this beautiful warmth, the daffodils bursting from the ground, the warm sun kick-starting my pineal gland into making me feel springtime happy. So now I’m sat in the gardens with pairs and groups of people walking past or sitting on the lawns, every other one of them with an ice cream cone in their hand.
Unfortunately, I haven’t got much mental energy to do much else than just sit here. But this is enough, isn’t it? All the effort, all the striving, is about enjoying a great quality of life, and this is definitely a good moment, not to be missed.
A throng of people just went past making a ruckus. They’re rehearsing the passion play that’s to happen here next week. (Like Beltane, only instead of the resurrected Green Man, it’s a guy in a bathrobe. Same myth, different spiritual costume designer.) I found out about the passion play today from a young medical student who showed up to the session late. He’s going to be taking part in it. Meanwhile, as the Practice Christ is dragged past, Rufus Wainwright sings “Instant Pleasure” into my ears through my headphones: “I don’t want somebody to love me/Just give me sex whenever I want it.” Hee.
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Out of touch.
Friday, March 18, 2005 , 12:53 AM
Sorry for not responding properly to e-mails for the past few days. I’ve not had proper access to my mailservers.Aaargh! After spending fifty quid to move to a new web-host, along with talking endlessly to various technical support people, it turns out that the issue was just my router. How did I solve the problem? Unplugging it and plugging it back in.
Lord.
For every bit of capability these machines add, they make an equal demand in time and money.
~
I wanted to share my favourite poems that were read the other night. Happily, they all seem to be in the public domain, or at least posted elsewhere on the Internet (in varying degrees of eye-boiling web design):
“Song of Myself”, Section 6
Walk Whitman
“The Last Words of My English Grandmother”
William Carlos Williams
“A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island”
Frank O’Hara
“The Housedog’s Grave”
Robinson Jeffers
“The Fish”
Elizabeth Bishop
“The Steeple-Jack”
Marianne Moore
“Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge”
Hart Crane
(NB: It’s a bit buried on the page. Best do a search for “Hart Crane”)
Wednesday, March 16, 2005 , 1:34 PM
Last night, I went to The Scottish Poetry Library for an event in a series called “Selected Works.” Philip told me about it, and was going to meet me there, except when he was stopped at the corner of St Mary and Holyrood, a prostitute jumped in his car just as the light changed. He didn’t make it on time — not because he accepted her very forward offer, but because he had to drive around the block to put her back where he found her. We met afterward in the Regent Pub, and I told him that I didn’t mind, ’cause that’s the best excuse anyone’s ever given me for being late.
The poems were selected and most of them read by an American named Mark Doty. I’d not heard of him before, but that means nothing, as I’ve not heard of most poets. I was happy that he wasn’t a Gay Poet, which is more or less how Phil set up the event for me, but instead was just a person. The topic wasn’t hidden, but it didn’t come to the fore because it wasn’t at issue in the conversation.
Instead, the evening was about savouring the voices of Doty’s favourite poets. I have the list of readings in my jacket pocket, and want to search them all out again, because they were beautiful, aurally delicious. Whitman, Dickenson, Jeffers, Crane, Williams and a few others — their thoughts came from the past through the magic of inscription and rereading, and unfolded again in the air, fresh, new, and moving for us. It helped that Doty is a very good reader. But those words! Prose is like water — nourishing, essential — but poetry, something I don’t usually partake in, poetry is intoxicating liquor. Some of it’s rough booze, but what we heard last night was like a swig of good, open, unpretentious wine. I was drunk as I heard those words, and felt challenged to wake up, wake up, wake up! to everything, the sublime and the frightening, that which affirms and that which destroys.
Philip’s ex’s uncle (it took me a bit to get it, too) joined us at The Regent. He’d not been carjacked by prostitutes, so he made it to the event. He’s been a fan of Doty’s for years, so this evening was a special event for him. It turns out that he works with Ottakar’s, the bookseller, and has in his head exactly everything I don’t know about Scottish publishing. I need to follow up with him.
I’ve had no time in the last day and won’t have time today to pick up my “investigation”, which leaves me a bit unsettled. Tonight is another training session with the crisis advocacy group, then Saturday is an all-day session, the final bit of training. I’m not sure where this is all going, or how it will fit in. Meanwhile, RyanAir has just announced a cheap hostel service, and I’m sorely tempted to run away. I haven’t got the spare cash, and my debts are at zero, so I don’t want to mess with that.
Ah, but here’s something you can help me with, if you’re so inclined: (Since it’s been pointed out that I rarely ask for help, and thus don’t give people in my life a chance to contribute to me.) I’m hearing nothing back from the publisher regarding Idea in Stone. This doesn’t mean anything, and isn’t necessarily bad. My inclination is to leave it, because being forceful with editors goes over as well as declaring “I love you” to a date: they run away. But FFS, it’s coming on a year since I finished the book. I want to do something with it. Whaddya think? Should I…
- Leave it alone. After all, they said they’d get in touch when they knew anything. And they’ve said good things about the novel. Best not to foul things up when you’ve found someone who ‘gets’ the book.
- Gently inquire, asking how it’s going.
- Gently inquire, asking if they’ve made a decision.
- Write and ask if there’s a timeframe for making the decision.
- Write and ask if they’ve made a decision, because (EEK!) I would like to try other presses if they’re not going ahead with the project.
- Something else I haven’t thought of.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or insights you might have.
Monday, March 14, 2005 , 5:41 PM
Crap. A nice lady just brought her little pink bundle of joy with a green Pizza Hut balloon tied to it into the coffeeshop where I’m working, and sat it in front of me. Actually, the little girl is very well-behaved, so I should shut up. I generally resent children in public. I don’t know where else they’re supposed to go.
Lord, I’m way deep into this Zen process of “dismantling” myself. So now I’m stuck looking at “What is it about how children are allowed to be that I resent?” The answers to this stuff invariably have a greebly, ugly component to them.
It’s all The World of Opposites, the continnua on which we find ourselves. Babies represent complete lack of self-control, and I work very hard at self-control. I resent their freedom. I resent their messiness and the disturbance they bring, because I work very hard at being “good” and polite and not bothering others in public. What am I afraid I would become if I were not “in control”?
I am the baby.
“Awareness practice” is like an X-ray that disintegrates everything it’s pointed at. Decidedly uncomfortable, but I’ve a feeling this process is going to prove very valuable in the end. The worst is realising just now that I’m not going to “get” this one, to work everything out and then be finished once and for all.
The good news is that I’m finding the little girl cute, and can’t help smiling.
P.S. From that coffeeshop, I moved on to the Forest Cafe to use their WiFi to send some files to work. Not only did I have problems connecting to my e-mail servers (for some inexplicable reason, and I can defend my technological reasons to be stymied), apparently I moved onto the next level in the me-with-kids videogame: there was a little boy there who climbed around me, made noise, and kept wanting to “Can I try?” with my equipment. Then there were the neoHippies around me, each of whom had their own annoying thing, like action figures designed to piss me off in specific ways.
Now I’m back home in my space, my sanctuary, about to cook my supper and get back into my work (not my work-work, but this other work that I’ve been talking about here).
I just read through a “magazine” I picked up at the health food store where I buy my popcorn. It had about three actual articles in it, and everything else was a veiled or not-veiled-at-all advertisement for bits of pseudoscientific magical jiggery-pokery that promised to make everything alright. Tempting, but I’m not falling for it. My salvation does not lie in a silver amulet the size of a sand-dollar, a cream to affect my magnetic field (I kid you not), or a spinal cord stimulator. (Sorry spinal cord. I know you wanted it.)
Zender-bender
, 12:57 PM
It’s all kinda funny: I’ve been watching the DVD of I [Heart] Huckabees lately, with all the commentary tracks and such. I really enjoyed the movie back when Geoffand I first saw it, because it reminded me of the workshop work I did back in the Nineties. Watching it when I got the DVD was amusing at first, then as I listened to the director talking about its themes, it got a bit unsettling.
This weekend I started doing the work I’ve been putting off, the investigation into what’s going on in my life lately — or not going on, or what I need to decide, or where I’m going, all that stuff — and things started getting freaky. I chose a book by a woman named Cheri Huber to use as a structure for looking at this stuff, because a book she wrote about relationships continues to be one of the most profound and perplexing wake-up calls I’ve encountered on the topic.
I started honestly delving into the work in the book, which is based on Zen awareness practice, and I found myself laughing when the exact same themes and terms emerged as in Huckabees. Except Huckabees is supposed to be a comedy! Then again, as the Zen masters say “If you’re not laughing, you’re not getting it.”
This is really hard work because it tills up all the unconscious, unquestioned bits of living that come from our social conditioning. It demands that you slip around corners fast enough to see your conditioned self coming, it–
I’ve got to stop here. This is a realm where, as Barthes said about love, everything written says too much, yet not enough.
I’m “dismantling”. That’s what they call it, and that’s what it feels like. Sure, it’s self-absorbed, but I think this is the level of work that’s available and required in a society where the lower parts of the Maslovian pyramid are all taken care of. I could just go have a pint, and in doing so I could miss the key to my whole existence. Of course, the key isn’t real, it’ll just be something I make up — but that’s a hell of a lot more useful than having nothing.
I’ve got a lot of work to do, and I’m ready for it. It’s a bit scary that everything has to fall apart first, but there’s a point, as in Joseph Campbell’s “cosmogonic round”, where you can’t really refuse the call, ’cause your previous life doesn’t fit anymore. What’s funny is that things might end up looking exactly the same on the outside after all this. I don’t know yet.
My buddy Cosgrove mentioned on his blog that he feels left out when I go into my cave like this, but I honestly don’t know how to involve someone else in this work.
~
Stray thoughts I had over the weekend:
I’ve never seen a dog eat an apple.
Musketeers are famous for using swords, which is a bit odd, given their name. I guess “Rapierists” didn’t test well.
H.A.L.T.
, 10:21 AM
My friend Paul pointed this out to me this morning:
Mt. St. Helens erupts
So at least I’m well tuned in.
I had a good sleep last night. Funny what a difference that makes. A counsellor shared something brilliant with me several years ago: Our moods are aggravated by four factors, which can be summarised as H.A.L.T. — Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. I’ve still got the same questions to answer, but being rested sure adds to my coping skills.
And it’s sunny.
Perfect: the storm!
, 1:30 AM
I found out what the storm was in my dream this morning. It was a time-hiccup: This evening I saw Flight of the Phoenix with Liz, in which a plane-full of people huddled together against certain death in plane passing through a swirling, miles-high desert sandstorm.
What my mind was using it to represent, and why it stuck Toronto in there, I’m not sure.
Something wicked this way comes.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005 , 2:59 PM
This morning I had a dream that there was a giant black cloud full of debris advancing over Toronto. I watched as the CN Tower bent over sideways, lost integrity, and collapsed down on itself. I was in Toronto to see a small theatre group put on a play I’d written, and we wound up hiding in the basement of the venue, waiting to see what was going to happen, how big this storm was. We didn’t know if it was local or global in scale, but we had a pretty good idea we weren’t going to make it out alive.
Button it.
, 12:40 AM
Walking home tonight after dinner with my friends Geoffand Alison, I saw a button on the sidewalk. I walked past it, then had this crushing sensation that everything in the universe depended on my going back and picking it up.
So I stopped, went back, and got the button. As I continued home with a smile on my face, rubbing the button between my fingers, I mentally began to deconstruct what a button could mean, symbolically imposing itself on my evening like that. Fastening things together. Oh, but loss: bad luck to lose a button, and no good luck gained by finding one…
Of late, I have been experiencing ontological panic. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who I am. I don’t even know what beingmeans.
It’s likely a phase, and I’m confident that there’s something good on the other side of it. But I’m not there, and it’s uncomfortable.
Today I stood in the train station for a while, trying to feel where I was. I got glimpses, flashes.
Universe, I know you’re listening. Send me the next bit. I think you’re going to have to spell it out a bit more — not in buttons.
Passion, permission.
Thursday, March 03, 2005 , 3:15 PM
“Oh aye, but now Michael Flateley is a big, fat slob. He’s go’ a beer belly on ‘im. ‘E used tae be worth millions.”
I’m sitting in a little cafe in Corstorphine, waiting for my catch-up meeting with the “crisis advocacy group”. I figured I’d leave really early this time, so of course I’m here with scads of time to spare. Happily, I’ve got work with me to do, and I have a little gaggle of women sitting at the table next to me, chattering about what’s on the telly, their health problems, and other immediate concerns. The singsongy lilt of their voices is charming.
Last night Geoff and I went to see The Woodsman. It stars Kevin Bacon as a man just released after serving a prison term for child-molestation. Talk about a challenging subject! The film took no Hollywood shortcuts; it brought us right up to the precipice of our discomfort, but it was very responsible to its characters and to the audience for our willingness to go to such a dangerous place. This movie could have been wrong in so many ways, which made its treatment of its subject all the more right. If it doesn’t win awards, it will only be because the general moviegoing audience and movie academy members are afraid to engage with or even acknowledge the subject matter. That would be a shame, because the story isn’t using it to shock or horrify, but to directly explore one of our least-explored societal fears, and manages to reach a resolution — gently and honestly, simultaneously satisfying the demands of story structure and of psychological reason.
One of my university professors challenged us fledgling young actors to figure out what was good and what was bad, and to be able to articulate why. He demanded that we develop a sense of taste. How this usually manifests now is that, after experiencing something good, bad, or mediocre, I babble about it, trying to figure out exactly what made it so.
In my mental run-off after the film, I wondered aloud to Geoff why I found the movie so disturbing. I shared a thought that flashed through my mind late in the film: “Paedophilia is not without comparison in social revulsion to homosexuality.”
“Dude! Get out of my head!” said Geoff. (As a grown man, he barely gets away with saying “Dude!”) He’d thought the same thing.
Watching this character try to integrate into a society that reviles his inhereing passions was uncomfortably familiar. For the most part my life consists of situations and relationships where my sexuality isn’t an issue, so I’m not claiming this as a current trouble, but rather something that I recognised in the story as the context in which my emotions developed. The movie character’s adult situation was much like mine as a child and a youth, feeling things for people that were unwanted and inappropriate, and not knowing how to be any other way, even though examples of “the other way” are everywhere, all around.
No wonder we’re obsessed with it as adults. I can’t remember who it was who said, “At one time it was the love that dare not speak its name, and now you can’t get it to shut up.” No wonder so many people go permanently to camp when they finally find permission to be what they already are.
~
I vastly overpaid my credit card recently because I’ve been getting money back in refunds, and from selling off the spare Pocket PCs I’ve accumulated in my leapfrogging between failing bits of equipment. The danger, of course, is of treating this as a great big gift certificate. I’ve bought a bunch of DVDs and books I’m excited about, but I’m not comfortable with having shopping as one of my activities.
One of the tasks I set for myself this week, more apposite because of this sudden influx of cash, is “When am I driven to shop and why?”
I came to my answer this morning: I shop when I’m lacking direction, when I’m setting up the stage for creative work (sometimes instead of actually doing that work), or when I want to interact with things because I don’t feel trusting of people. None of this is new, but in articulating it I have an opportunity to alter it. Whether I’m moving to Canada or not, I don’t want to accumulate more stuff. Buying a few movies and feeling sick, like I’d overeaten, is a bit funny, given that I don’t own a car, a house, a closet full of suits, furniture, a television, or most of the things people own. It’s a pretty minimalist existence I maintain, but I keep trying to find a way to throw even more ballast overboard. The biggest challenge, of course, is the technical gear, since it represents the biggest potential to me. Case in point: I’m able to write this in a cafe. I’m also saving 40% of my income, so it’s not like there’s a problem here.
I dunno, I’ve got this background noise lately, this confusion, a lack of direction. I want to find out what that’s about rather than hiding behind purchases and playing videogames.
Making things. I feel excited, thinking about the idea of making new things, even if for no obvious reason, even if I just give them away, rather than buying things for no obvious reason. This is good timing, ’cause I’ve got to do the design and layout for the ‘zine.
I just saw Ros, my contact at this organisation, cycling by. Lord, I’ve been blithering on here for half an hour.
And now, a word from our corporate pharmaceutical sponsor…
, 6:18 PM
Okay, I normally don’t do the meta-filter thing, as I’m supposed to be a writer and a creative being and all that, but this made me laugh:
“Progenitorivax.”
~
A little while ago, a yellow van drove through my neighbourhood blaring something from a loudspeaker. It went around the block a couple of times, so I went to the window to listen. As a city-dweller, my natural tendency is to ignore broadcast messages and other noises, because they’re usually irrelevant and intrusive. Turns out this one was actually important. Apparently there’s been a break in a water main, so they’re shutting off water in the Albion Road area.
<
p>I was kinda hoping it was an alien attack. Instead, it just made me get on with cooking my supper on time.
