Not the same.
Thursday, April 28, 2005 , 10:18 PM
I went to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy this evening with my friends. As my brother said this evening when we talked on Skype, they were the first books I read that made me laugh out loud. I laughed until I cried at the bit where the whale falls to earth and blows up in a rain of meat. I’m sure that in some way inspired the exploding panda at the beginning of The Willies.
But it’s not the same now. When I tried to read the first book a few years ago, the sense of humour just didn’t gibe with me at all. Likewise, the movie seemed to be rushing to stick in parts of the book that it wanted to allude to (allusion, there you go — defined that word for my beloved nephew a few days back). But there was something hollow about it for me. I don’t think it was just a UK/US misunderstanding.
Strangely, though, the bits I skimmed over as a kid, or didn’t even notice — that developed the relationship between Arthur and Trillian — were the most interesting to me now. Back then, I loved all the science fictiony made-up bits, and as a magical realist, I’m still in love with imaginative writing. But what compelled me most about the movie was the relationship between those two, those feelings, those strings of hormones and neuropeptides and Symposium-esque Platonic otherhalfnesses. (I think I’m also in the dreaded grip of Spring Fever.)
Although…
There was one scene in which [SPOILER, like you haven’t read the book] Arthur is travelling over the new Earth with Slartibartfast (played by Bill Nighy, whom I love in everything I’ve seen him in), with great symphonic chords underneath, and I felt that sense of wonder I did back then. Walking home tonight, the song “Heaven and Hell”, the theme to the Carl Sagan 1980 PBS series “Cosmos”, played on my MP3 player. (Okay, which is my phone, but nevermind the details.) Its cheesy, Vangelis-y chords reminded me of the time I spent with my best friend Karl, watching that show, wondering at the universe we lived in. The world we pretended about with those ideas was infinite, bound in only by our imaginations.
Karl had Muscular Dystrophy. Because of this, we spent nearly every day together, drawing cartoons in his parents’ basement, reading books, or pretending about other worlds and other possibilities. Brainy, inventive stuff was the only option on the table. Karl always was the smarter of the two of us.
Undoubtedly, he died long ago. People with his form of MD rarely see the age of 20. I regret that his family never told me about it, and I’ve been unable to find any record of it on the web. Of course, it wouldn’t make any difference. He’s now part of that vastness that we wondered about — as I am, only I’m still in that illusory “world of opposites” part of it, where through my ego I can imagine myself as somehow separate from it, an individual within it.
When, in the movie, I heard that banjoey twang of theHitchhiker’s Guide theme, I was immediately rewound to those days, to that sense of how funny it all was then, and how inviting that limitless world of madeupness was. I’m very happy that my life’s work is still based on those principles.
Further to that, today I received a rejection letter from the publisher who’a been sitting on my book. As rejections go, it was as good as they come: He loves the book, but budgetary constraints mean they’re only doing non-fiction this year. So he recommended me to another, bigger publisher, who are expecting the manuscript. And if nothing happens with them, he’s invited me to go back to him with it. Wow.
I walked to the movie this evening, after getting this letter, with the sun shining in my eyes. I felt like the lord of my domain. Yes, I’ve been practicing this Zen notion of detachment, of not getting emotionally hooked by things. But this stirred the embers in me up to a flame. I don’t know where the balance is: On the one hand, I believe it’s good to know this detachment, to just be the doing of things, not crave them with the ego, or need them to fulfill anything that rightly I can only supply myself with. But on the other hand, I deeply believe that I’m here to learn how to manifest ideas, how to make the imagined real. This show of support from a professional in the publishing business was a reminder to be a little less humble, to get off my arse and put my work out there so I might know some success for it, so I can become a bigger creator.
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Ribbet, ribbet… BANG!
Wednesday, April 27, 2005 , 4:22 PM
My buddy Heipel just pointed this news item out to me, about frogs in Hamburg that are blowing up.
Okay, I had it as seagulls, but I can see how the great forces would have decided that frogs were more easily splodable.
~
I had a dream a few mornings ago that it was the last day of school before summer holiday, only I didn’t have to go back in the fall. That was it, I was finished. No more school ever.
Then I woke up, and found that I really didn’t have to go to school ever again. Life is one big, long summer break. Except, as Patrick pointed out to me, we have bank accounts.
P.S. I have an extra ticket for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for tomorrow at 5:20, if anyone wants to go.
What next… disco?
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 , 9:54 AM
As I sent out e-mails yesterday, making plans with my friends, I had a strange sense of deja vu:
On Thursday we’re going to see the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie. (By the way, gang, I’ve picked up the tickets. We’re good to go.) Yesterday’s e-mails were about my reserving tickets for the final Star Wars movie. And Patrick was trying to sort out a time for me to catch up on the Doctor Who episodes I’d missed that he’d TiVO-ed.
What am I, eleven again?
Writing in restaurants.
Sunday, April 24, 2005 , 1:58 PM
Yesterday I spent several hours writing the article on Belarus. It was a toughie, because the subject is so big and sprawling, and I wasn’t clear what my angle on it was. Yes, I actually experienced writer’s block at work this week over it.
Of course, there’s no such thing as writer’s block; it’s always a matter of fixating on outcome, or not asking enough questions about the task at hand. With this piece, it was time to just dive in and get the thing written — to tell the story, give some information, and get an idea across.
So yesterday I begged out of an invitation to what sounded like a lovely picnic and spent my time in The Elephant House, then when that got too smoky, in Favorit, writing away. It’s my perfect Saturday, really, though I’m not used to doing work-work at the weekend. But there’s so little difference between work and play in this regard.
On the way home, I detoured into The Waverley Bar because I figured Liz was working. Indeed she was, so we chatted for a bit until the pub filled up a bit.
The challenge with epiphanies is that the newness wears off, and they get incorporated into daily life. Such is the case with my latest round of insights: it’s tough to get the exhilaration I had a few weeks ago. Happily, though, those ways of thinking have become habit. One way this is showing up is that I’m talking a lot more to people in public, cutting through the business of social roles and addressing them as another wandering soul hungry for love that I’m connected to in this life. In any given moment there’s an opportunity for us to make each other happy, or at least be decent to each other, so I’ve been trying to do more of that lately.
How this manifested last night was that I fell into conversation with two neat guys, Malcolm and History. Yeah, his nickname was History, which I loved. They were very bright, very funny guys. The fact that they bought me two pints of 80/- and a whisky just endeared them to me further.
And now it’s Sunday. I’ve got a completely free, nothing day, and I’m just relaxing.
To Belarusia with love.
Friday, April 22, 2005 , 10:52 AM
I’ve been looking for non-leather shoes. Most of what’s available on the net looks like it was woven from coconuts by monkeys.
~
Life advances, and is good. Nothing specific to report.
The most interesting thing I’ve been working on for The Coach is an article about a trip our marketing director took to Belarus recently. A client of ours set up an organisation that, to date, has brought over $20 million worth of medical supplies, food, and other goods to the country. My co-worker went to help out on one of the organisation’s aid missions.
I didn’t know anything about Belarus until starting to research this piece, but, man, they have it bad. First Chernobyl coughed evil on their country, contaminating about 20% of the land with radioactive isotopes that will take up to 24,400 years to become inactive. Most of the people live through subsistence farming, which means they’re regularly ingesting highly radioactive material. What do you do when the choice is between that and starving?
Then the country got a despot for president, who dragged the nation back into the Cold War. He keeps passing measures to extend his rule as leader, while making his opponents “disappear”. Condoleeza Rice called President Lukashenko “the last dictator in Europe” — and this, coming from her! Amnesty International aren’t very fond of him, either.
But this client of ours is persisting through the maze of red tape and bureaucracy to help these people. He thanks our company, saying that this is only possible because of the income and free time that he created in our program. It’s nice to see how many of these entrepreneurs reach a level of success where they’re not interested in the money anymore. They want to create something more, something lasting. And they turn to philanthropy. Being inventive and powerful people, they produce some impressive and moving results.
The article will appear in the next issue of Strategic eNews (the newsletter I write for The Strategic Coach).
The challenge in writing the piece is that I can’t get political. It’s not our style, and it wouldn’t help the mission, because the president is already highly suspicious of anything from the west. Even writing this, I’m afraid of it being linked back somehow to that good work.
Much of the charity’s work is with orphans, bringing them to Canada for medical treatment and for a respite from — well, from being constantly irradiated. Some isotopes can be eliminated through diet. Others, unfortunately, take firmer hold in the body. The incidence of cancer in the population there is beyond comprehension.
The orphans’ trips to Canada are a complex matter, as they can be interpreted as interference, an attempt to steal away a generation of Belarusians. Yet at home, they’re classed as non-persons. About 17% of them try to kill themselves on leaving school, because they see no future for themselves. This organisation tries to keep them in school and provide a university education for them when they get older. Perhaps this — a class of people who’ve been treated abominably but have gained a sense of self-esteem and a realisation of their own abilities — is the most frightening prospect of all to the current regime.
The current generation is only now reaching the age when they can have children of their own. No one knows how severe the effects of the radiation will be on their ability to reproduce. Some speculate that their future as a people is in doubt, unless some of these children have a chance to get well.
You can find out more about this aid mission here:Canadian Aid for Chernobyl.
It’s raining stories.
Sunday, April 17, 2005 , 7:17 PM
I wrote seven short stories this afternoon. Really little ones, but I did it just for fun, and it was fun. Here I’d been putting off writing one, but when I approached a different way, it became easy to write a bunch of them.
Last week I finished everything I was supposed to do early one night, and was chatting to Cosgrove online. I told him I had nothing to do (not that I was bored — I think boredom is noncommittal suicide). So he challenged me to write him a one-page story. But what? For days I was wondering what to write about, but then yesterday it hit me: Write something just for him, not for any other purpose — because planning outcomes before creating the thing is the surest way to blow the creative ether out the window. Okay, I thought, but what sort of story would he like? I didn’t know, so I started flipping through genres in my head, and came up with ideas for every genre I could think of. And today I wrote them, just silly things to keep me in shape between projects, covering, respectively: suspense, horror, romance, nostalgia, science fiction, and fantasy. I sent them to him first, but I also posted them here.
~
Friday night, a bunch of us went to The Stand to see some comedy. I’m really not big on comedy, for the reason I’ve mentioned here a few times, that as an ex-performer, it’s not fun for me to watch people try so hard, and sometimes fail. I feel responsible for them, because that’s how I was trained to be as an actor.
This night was no different from any other comedy nights I’ve been to: Some funny people, often having to handle arseholes heckling from the audience, and some not-funny people, either being heckled cruelly when we all already know what’s happening, or everyone sitting in silence waiting for the pain to stop.
Three of the four acts were very good, and the one not-good one was nice. Really nice, so not laughing was tough. And the compere (or MC in North American English) was an utter, utter arsehole of a self-loathing, bitchy gay man. Unfortunately, the crowd, not being accustomed to this breed of person, mistook him for funny. “Oh! He said a dirty word for genitals and sex acts!” (Or a succession of dirty words for genitals and sex acts.) And then there was his bizarre projection onto male audience members, in which he accused them of being gay. And this was funny. Because (*titter*) gay is funny!
And I wish to fuck people would give that up.
Another log on the fire.
Thursday, April 14, 2005 , 12:17 PM
Here’s another short story. This one’s called “Finity“. Just a bit of fun. It’s about an insurance salesman at the end of the world: 
Londrunk.
Monday, April 11, 2005 , 10:29 AM
This weekend, I went down to London with Patrick. We had a great weekend, though a list of what we did wouldn’t take up much space. It was a time better measured in relationship distance: I met his friends Owen and Stéphanie, and instantly understood why he likes them both so much. We stayed at Owen’s and had a very ‘European’ evening with Steph, eating marzipan and drinking citron pressé then going to a French café to eat wine, olives, and bread. Admittedly, it was a chain, but it’s a chain that has bottled fin de siécle Paris perfectly. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Hemingway there in a corner, sharpening a little pencil with a knife into a saucer. With both of these people, I felt an instant rapport and immediately enjoyed the happy friction that is good conversation full of laughs — a kind of mental frottage, if you’ll excuse the expression.
We also went to Heaven, London’s Big Gay Club, but this happened, like everything else in the weekend, by accident. We made no plans, and everything flowed together, which is not only my recipe for a good weekend (since my weekly plans are usually tight), but for a great vacation. On this occasion, one of Owen’s friends, whom we met while sitting around in a pub called Retro, where Owen knew everyone who walked through the door, breezed us past a queue and some security, into a huge brick chamber under Charing Cross Station, much like The Arches in Glasgow. We were soon being handed glasses of champagne. I’m not a club person, but if I’m going to be there, this seemed a nice way to do it.
The main feature of the weekend for me was my friendship with Patrick. We’ve travelled some, but usually by car. Going by plane was going to be different, I figured, having to sort out the flights and trains. As I’d anticipated, his company was an utter pleasure. We’ve known each other for almost four years, and we’ve worked a lot on this friendship. As a result, we know how to handle each other really well, how to have the best time when it’s good, and how to take control in situations where the other is out of his element.
My blissed-out state lasted the whole weekend, as a mad rush of incredibly varied people streamed past me everywhere, and I loved watching them all, being amongst them (though that intensity of human energy would be wearing if I lived in it; Edinburgh is much slower, even as a capital city). Also, there were a few hitches, but Patrick joined me in a gentle, responsive mindset. For instance, we missed our return flight yesterday, so we went away to talk about alternatives, then went back and put our credit cards on the desk. As the owner of the company I write for says, “If you’ve got enough money to solve the problem, you don’t have the problem.” We then set about chatting and people-watching for four hours.
When we got on the plane, we were surrounded by French students in their early teens, who bounced up and down in their seats like a game of Whack-a-Mole (with no mallet in sight), and talked excitedly to each other in a very gutteral accent. I sat thinking, “I could be annoyed at them, but I bet I could see this another way.” Then it occurred to me: they weren’t being annoying, they were being excited about travelling. It was still disruptive after that, but it wasn’t bothersome. This seems to be the key lately, getting how few things in the world lately are actually about me. We didn’t manage to catch up with Tim, and I didn’t even hear from him at all. I immediately went into an old reactive mode, thinking, “Well, fine then, if he can’t be bothered getting in touch with me…” Then I thought about his show, the number of band-gigs he’s doing, and the fact that he’s the father of two, one of whom is an infant. I had no idea what was up, but after that it was easy to imagine it wasn’t about me. Besides which, do I want to be pissed at an old friend and drift away from him, or do I want to know this neat guy? The answer was easy, and I dropped it.
So this is how the weekend went, constantly choosing to go with the fun option, not getting snagged on anything. Patrick is a smart, funny person to be around, but the fact that he shared this mindset made the whole time a great getaway.
P.S. We didn’t drink that much; Friday was the only wild time. But during it, that title popped into my head, and I had to use it.
Everythingness.
Thursday, April 07, 2005 , 7:32 PM
The experience I had the other night was not a fleeting thing. For a few days now, I’ve had this constant experience of it. It’s blissful.
I realised how antagonistic my approach to other people I encounter in public is. Instead, the past few days I’ve been dealing with others as — not even quite brothers or sisters, but as literally being me. We’re all part of the same stuff. In this mode of thought, antagonism isn’t just negative, it’s silly. How can you be aggressive toward a part of yourself?
Yesterday I wrote a letter to the editor who has my book. I sent it off this morning, and for a change didn’t feel nervous about it at all. There’s nothing “out there” to achieve because there is no “out there” out there. I am, and that as far as it goes. There are things I want to achieve in life, but these days I’m after them because they seem fun, not because I believe they’ll fix or change anything. They don’t have to, because there’s nothing wrong, nothing missing. It’s just games to play; no results will make me any more real or alive. All that is already here in this moment.
I’m sitting in a food court near the train station, having found a nice little natural foods store. All these people around me — the oldsters with their tea, the bored staff on their breaks, the laughing friends, the parents with their children (whom I find cute!), the bewildered-looking street-person gawking at the cabinet full of sweets, even the smokers! — I love them.
I’m waiting to take the train out to Patrick‘s, ’cause we’re off to London together tomorrow. I’m very happy to be going in this state of mind. I’m going to have a lot of fun. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with my friend Tim, who’s in a show there, but at any rate I’ll meet Patrick’s friend Owen, who’s just existed until now as one of those people on the Internet.
I’ve also caught up with another friend, Gareth, who I’d lost touch with — which is not right, ’cause he’s a bright guy I like. We went to The Filmhouse, where we saw Ma Mere, arguably the most depraved movie I’ve ever seen. It took us some time to decompress afterward: we didn’t hate it, but it explored a lot of uncomfortable boundaries without apology or hesitation. I knew it dealt with an incestuously close mother-son relationship, but I was very wrong to think that was the risky ace up its sleeve. Oh no. It just kept going and going, often for no seeming reason except to go. I had a terrible sleep last night because this movie was in my head, recasting relationships from the distant past in new, conflicted ways. But nothing it imagined was as warped or convoluted as the situations those characters put themselves into.
Work is good. I’ve lots to work on, including some a fun interview with one of our staff who went to visit one of our entrepreneur clients in Belarus, where he’s set up a medical relief organisation. We’re not just about making people rich. With most of the entrepreneurs, they reach a point where the money isn’t the point, and they ask themselves “What can I do with this that will matter?” And they do some pretty touching, pretty big things.
Yay! I just received an e-mail approving a sales fax I did the “fancy writing” on from a brief. The last one went through eight revisions, so getting it in one feels nice.
It’s funny that I read my writing guru Natalie Goldberg going on and on about this Zen awareness stuff for years, but never took an interest in it. Now I see how this is useful for a writer, to witness the world this way, and to respect all of it. I don’t know what more to say about it. Words don’t really touch it.
I realise how kooky this probably sounds, but I don’t care. This offers me things I don’t want to miss. It gives me permission to go wherever I need to go creatively and honour that, not try to make it fit into a nice and presentable form. But the biggest payoff is that it turns off that constant background noise I’ve had for so many years, that longing, the worry, the incompleteness. The world of dualities is the beginning of suffering. Suffering’s no fun.
I can see my house from here.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005 , 12:54 PM
As the French would say: Super-cool! Nasa has released a piece of open-source (e.g. free) software that lets you browse the whole Earth in real time.
It’s called NASA World Wind. This should give us something to play with until Google Maps expands beyond the US.
~
Apologies if it seems like I’m not replying to your e-mails. Somehow my SMTP server has got on a blacklist, so my messages are being bounced back from Yahoo and some other mail hosts. I’m pursuing this with my host; hopefully we can clear this up quickly.
Recycled.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005 , 3:22 PM
Yay! I took my recycling to the depot today and discovered that there’s a new bin for cardboard, plastic bottles, and drink boxes. Hazzah! My rubbish output has just been halved. Congratulations, Edinburgh, on getting that together.
I’m sitting in the Central Library, where the blue sky blazes through the glass in the four walls around me. It’s still a bit chilly — in here, too. I’m going to move soon.
There’s a man two tables in front of me reading newspapers, wearing garden gloves. Does newspaper ink still smudge? I rarely read the things, since I get all my information on the web and through RSS feeds. I try not to read too much of the news. Feeding tubes, celebrities, murders, mergers, and popes get tired fast, and are irrelevant to my daily existence.
Last night I lay in bed, where sometimes I’m struck with heavy thoughts about the future — my own, my family’s. Admittedly, I was feeling a bit lonely, too, even though I don’t particularly want a relationship. The way I’m thinking lately, the drive to relationship is more of an addiction to the endorphins and other associated chemicals than it is an actual need. The other person is practically a variable. It’s also, I dunno, sometimes it seems a way to avoid being conscious or working on what’s important, hiding out in someone else.
I lay there, thinking about all this, wondering about what two different people said to me while I was chatting online: “Why are you not with someone? You’re so [this and that]…” I had no answer for them. I thought about my parents, being together these forty-odd years, and how strange that would seem to me.
Then something odd happened: I stopped feeling like a separate, distinct entity. Loneliness and separation clearly belonged to the same illusion: There wasn’t me and the universe, there was just the universe, with me as part of it. I felt it flowing through me (which I suppose it does, since I’ve none of the cells or atoms in me that I did just a few years ago). I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
No more capless pens.
Friday, April 01, 2005 , 10:03 AM
I just discovered the best thing: the Mailing Preference Service. It’s the postal equivalent of a “No-call” list. I have to walk a few blocks to the back of the B&Q hardware shop to put my recycling in big dumpsters. Every bit of junk mail means I have to go sooner. And I’m sorry, charities, sending me a biro in the mail does notmake me want to write you a cheque. It pains me that over 90% of the things that I throw out each week are recyclable in Toronto — and this is a small country!
~
I finished reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (in two sittings, as Liz suggested it would probably take). I enjoyed it, and find it funny how acutely aware it’s made me of my own idiosyncracies — except I can’t excuse them away with a syndrome. As I read the book, I found myself wishing I could, though. For instance, in the gay community in Toronto, people often took the liberty of greeting me and saying goodbye with a kiss on the lips. It was intended as a caring gesture, but for me it was always like having someone cop a feel. It would have been great to just scream, curl up in a ball on the floor, or bark at them like a dog. “Oh, it’s okay. He just does that because he’s got Hamefelter’s Syndrome.”
~
Tonight a few of the Friday Gang and I are having supper at Karen’s, then going to see a jazz band calledHejira. The tracks on the band’s website sound uber-cool, so I’m looking forward to it.
~
Last night I worked until 2AM. I’d juggled my schedule a bit during the day, and was surprised that what I took to be a simple job ended up taking a lot more effort. Patrickcame over in the evening for Writing Night (something new we’re doing), at which I did the remaining layout work for the Dunderheid ‘zine, then when he left I got down to work… And didn’t get up again until it was very late.
But I loved it. Things have been slow lately with work, and that’s when my mind grows cobwebs. But this, reworking the copy for the new company website, was like a mad hike through the jungle. It wasn’t work, it wasfun.
<
p>I’m grateful for the life I have.