Last weekend, Craig and I went to see a gallery exhibition at the Lyth Arts Centre. It’s called “Infinitas Graçias“, and features small paintings from a Mexican church”””ex-votos” made to thank saints for interceding on their part. The art is primitive, childish, and often gory, with blood flying out of people’s mouths or limbs. And, from this cultural distance, it’s difficult not to smirk at some of the subject matter.

From the show’s description:

“This exhibition includes reproductions of over a hundred such works from a church in the mining community of Real de Catorce, where the tradition is particularly strong. They contain images of rural life with animals, vehicles, road accidents, hospitals, murders and family dramas. We see life in a country with no NHS, where religion offers the only hope for those in need.”

As I mentioned here yesterday, I’ve been feeling distinctly out of sorts since getting back from Canada””listless, depressed, hollow. For more than I week, I’d been waiting for the mood to pass, but it didn’t, which was starting to worry me.

It’s particularly difficult to suffer from poor mental health in an age where so much is framed in terms of “manifest destiny”””especially around Olympics-time, where hard work is given as the solution to everything. “Get famous! Be rich! Be number one!” Whatever field you’re in, you’re told that if you’re not winning, you’re just not trying hard enough. How do you “win” your way out of a depression?

I decided to just sit with it and wait it out. But last night, remembering the Mexican exhibit, I decided to throw out a desperate prayer. Not being Catholic, my choice of saints was severely limited, so I decided to make up my own: St Max, named for Maxwell Perkins, the editor who discovered and shaped the work of Lost Generation writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald. My prayer wasn’t especially articulate, more of a pre-verbal crie de coeur like “Get me out of this!”

It worked.

Hey, I know I made it up. But it worked, so I don’t care what the mechanics were here. This was an intractable funk that had me scared, and now it’s gone.

So here’s the retablo I made for Saint Max:

Hell, I don’t even know that much about Max Perkins. I haven’t read the famous biography. But I’ve come to recognise that I’ve got a cast of inner characters who might be Jungian archetypes or voices of conditioning or even little bits of crazy, and they dress up in different personas. I don’t think there’s any actual connection to their real-world cognates; they’re my own internal version of that person, representing something specific.

I think Hemingway was nudging Max’s elbow, too. Last night I sat in bed reading from a huge chunk of lumber containing all of Hemingway’s short stories, and I was moved by the deftness and care with which he attended to little, tiny details of life””the mixing of ice with booze (a favourite of his), the look of the fresh sheets and sparse furnishings in a holiday cabin, the feeling of being a passenger in a train berth at night watching the world go by through a portal. Anything and everything was worthy of attention. Somehow this brought the creative world down to an accessible level in my mind.

Yes, I know: Hemingway“”hardly an easy benchmark to compare oneself with, but this was about invitation, community, not competition. Besides which, Papa has his own weaknesses, like his female characters who all speak like poorly programmed pleasure robots with the nag chip inserted:

“Oh darling, we will have such a jolly time, won’t we? Please tell me we will. Even if it’s a lie, I want you to tell me we will be jolly.” (He lies to shut her up, then takes a drink as they drive in an open-top car and he thinks about the war.)

Today I woke up and immediately knew something was different, like the boiler-tank in my belly had been filled back up with water. I wasn’t scorching and empty, I was full of steam and couldn’t wait to get the day going. None of the specifics are any different, but it’s an entirely different world, an inviting one. The slick slate tiles of the old buildings outside and the grey sky above””it’s beautiful. The weak lick of the gas fire here in the pub, the old couple with the tousled white hair having coffees””I love them. The work before me today””an exciting puzzle I know I am the equal to.

Whatever the cause, thank you for this.

I’ve been back home for over a week now, but part of me still hasn’t landed.

Years ago, I went through a dangerous period of depression, but thankfully I received a lot of support from friends and family and managed to climb out of that valley. So many great things have happened in my life since then that I figured it wasn’t even possible for me to go back there.

Until now. Let’s take Sunday as an example: I had the afternoon free to do my creative work while Craig caught up with his pile of Post-It notes and other odds-and-ends. Hooray, right? I was finally back in my space and able to tuck into my novel.

Except I couldn’t write or draw or do anything. I couldn’t muster one iota of belief in my abilities, nor did I feel like I had anything to say. By the end of the afternoon, I’d given myself permission to just be a person with a job and not create anything else.

Thankfully, I recognise this as something chemical going on in my brain and body. How? Because it’s free-floating; there isn’t any cause, and it can attach itself to anything.

Here’s how stupid it gets: Yesterday morning I was making a new box for all the postcards Craig’s collected, and I found one featuring a little trollish character with a ginger beard and a kilt that touches the ground. The caption read: “Hamish in John O’Groats”, and I started crying. What? Why? The loose thread of reason running through the emotion had something to do with Craig being willing to have a “Hamish” thing in his collection, that he’s make me part of his life. I was grateful, yet didn’t feel worth it.

Last night, we met friends in Thurso and went to the art show taking place at the high school there. I loved how democratic the show was, featuring names and images we recognised from galleries and shops right alongside rank beginners, with everything in-between. Some of the pieces were horrible, childish muck, and others were arrestingly original, beautiful, or fun. (Prince Charles’s watercolours were actually quite good.) So it was a nice night out, and provided some inspiring input.

Best of all, though, was talking to an acquaintance there””a ‘transplanted American’ who writes a great column for the local paper. When I confessed to not being quite myself, she said she’s just come back from several weeks in the States and is feeling the same way. It was such a relief and a comfort that I just had to hug her.

Likewise, an old pal who travels a lot told me by e-mail that she’d got a virus from a woman who sneezed on her throughout a long flight (she jokingly suggested this should be illegal””and I think she has a point! Visibly sick people should at least be required to wear some sort of mask or sit in a dry-clearning bag or something). Now my friend is sick and has jetlag. She told me she lost a friend years ago to suicide, and his GP suggested the virus he’d caught (H1N1) “could have contributed to [his] feelings and inability to cope”. I get it: I was sick in Toronto this trip””my first cold in years, which in itself was a letdown””and I can tell that it hasn’t gone away completely.

I read a blog article this morning that called people out for only “life posting” about their successes and about how HAPPY! and GREAT! they are””and added that comparing ourselves to others is always a recipe for disaster. That does seem to be the stick I’m beating myself with, which the Internet makes readily available.

What’s the remedy? I don’t know yet. Compassion for where I’m at. Patience: I don’t think this is going to last long, and that was the mental tape that looped around when I went through my bad spell, thinking a low state was reality“”permanent, persistent, and pervasive.

Not making any big decisions for the moment. Just staying with what’s in front of me.

I’m fine, really; I just find myself without any inner resources at the moment, and that’s weird.

So instead of being ashamed, thinking “No, don’t show that! You won’t look good. It’ll seem like you’re asking for help and being sucky,” I’m just putting it out here in the interest of making mental health less of a taboo.

This is my last day in Toronto”¦ again.

Last night, I hung out with old friends, one of whom I see each trip here, and a few others whom I haven’t seen in years. We hung out in the gay ghetto. Unlike my walk through there with James there on Sunday, where I thought “Good riddance!” about the whole place, I felt a fondness and affection for all of it””the trysts, the dramas, and the times with friends who were never the object of the adventure, but are now clearly the treasure from those years.

But it was kind of a paternal, knowing sentiment I felt. I would never go back to that life. There is, however, a real comfort in stitching my past into this future I’m living. I bumped into an old flame on the street, very happy to see him and pick up the connection, but completely unconfused about how that will fit in. People each belong to different parts of my heart, but that one predominant patch of real estate””the home where Craig lives””is protected land.

And this is the thing about the past and the future: My habit is to leave the past behind, or to find something not-right about it as a way to propel me forward. Increasingly, though, I see that I can move forward and carry my past lovingly with me.

People do this with work all the time, finding some horrible flaw in their employer or work situation that motivates them to make a change. Why not just skip the drama and go, to build on that past without the demolition work?

That said, my Toronto-clock has run out. It’s been lovely, and I’m glad to know I’ll be back, but my energy for this place has run down and it’s time to go back to Scotland. I want to see the big, open, green fields of Caithness, to stand at a sea-cliff made of jagged, up-pointed layers of rock, hearing the sea crash against it, to watch and hear those birds whose names and cries I’ve learned: fulmars, kittywakes, razorbills, guillemots, shags, oyster-catchers.

I need to be in the home I’ve made with the person I love, and to get back to my other creative work””feeling rejuvenated and refocused after my Canadian vacation and the time spent here in this dynamic workplace.

Toronto has some new subway trains without the doors between the cars; now you can see all the way down the straw-like train as it curves and judders its way through the subterrain of the city. There are so many people sitting on the indestructible red faux-velvet seats or hanging on to the jungle-gym of brushed metal poles””all tottering back and forth as the train bumps along.

I look at these folk and wonder what we’re all doing. This is the big question of my life, which I’m quite convinced is insoluble: “What’s the right thing to be doing right now?” As one course I did put it: There’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. This is it.

“Surely there’s something to do with it!” says a voice in my head. Yeah, and that’s art. Or goals. But I can’t make myself believe that it matters, ultimately, except as a game of understanding, and for finding the pleasure of present-moment awareness.

I had a nigh-perfect day today. It started with making pancakes with my hosts Lisa and Alvaro, who gave me strict guidance about how to cook my coconut ones, which, sure enough, turned out perfect-looking”¦ but not perfect-tasting. Why? Because I asked for measuring cups but then didn’t want to ask Lisa for measuring spoons, so I got the baking soda a bit wrong.

This led to a great conversation with Lisa about how trying to be too much of a polite guest can actually wind up being the thing that becomes weird and awkward, while the host would never care about the things we worry about — like asking for measuring spoons, or doing my laundry, since she offered the use of their machines this morning, which spared me having to ask (while secretly not wearing underwear because I didn’t have any more).

I continued chatting with Alvaro and Lisa while they got the kids ready for their day. I was put in charge of dressing their two-year-old, Kai, in his T-shirt and little green dungarees — which he picked out, but immediately hated once they were on, and tried to pull off as if they were a potato-sack.

They all went off to swimming lessons, and I went into town to meet my old pal James (being subject to yet another stupid Toronto Transit Commission delay that involved taking a packed replacement service bus in the heat). James and I went for a very good and reasonably priced breakfast (thank God, because my money’s all dribbling away from such a long trip, even though I’m not shopping, just buying meals and groceries — oh, and weekly Metropasses for the subway). We had a great, big talk about life and everything.

It was time to move on, but we weren’t finished chatting, so he asked if there was anywhere I wanted to go. I said, “I want to see some forgotten, lost corner of Toronto I’ve never seen before.” He said a tentative “Okay” and we headed off, wandering down the all-too-familiar gay ghetto of Church Street, where both of us thanked the stars that, both permanently taken, we don’t have to frequent anymore. Then James showed me the former hockey rink, Maple Leaf Gardens, which is now a big grocery store. From there we entered the twisting caverns of the PATH underground pedestrian system, and I received a call from my old friend and work-mate, Margaux, whom I’d planned to meet later. We agreed on the Sheraton Hotel lobby, across from City Hall, but she wouldn’t be there for half an hour.

James and I went to the hotel and spent the time wandering around (taking with us a cup of their complimentary flavoured water, me lemon, him raspberry). Up the escalators, we saw trees through the windows there, then found an open door that led out to the courtyard where they were growing.

It wasn’t a courtyard, per se, but more of a space, a garden with little waterfalls, lakes, trees, and park benches surrounded by the tall, poured concrete walls of the hotel. It was a multi-levelled, hidden little oasis in the middle of the city. I’d certainly never seen it before.

I’m falling in love with buildings from the Sixties and Seventies with a ‘grand project,’ Canadiana feel. Some old concrete buildings are blank, pointless, soul-sucking wastes of space that should be pulled down at the first opportunity, but I have such an affection for these other ones, with their odd character and their attempt at a futuristic kind of humanity which, ultimately, didn’t really work. So when you find one of these spaces (like many in the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown) it feels like you’ve found something from a discarded retro-future no one else wants — an architectural “Island of Lost Toys” — so it’s all yours. This was definitely one of those, and I’ll never forget it.

Margaux arrived, and just as we left the building the sky opened up, dropping lots of huge, wet drops, and fast. We ducked into a doorway near the twin curves of City Hall, where we watched lightning above the skyline, and the water collected so quickly that soon our feet were getting splashed. I ended up with two ‘soakers’, since I was wearing my red canvas trainers; I got to squish around in those for the rest of the day.

Then we went to a fancy tea-bar place, where I had an iced root beer float latté (we don’t get those back home!), which I gather must have been a sarsaparilla tea. The three of us chatted, and it soon turned into yet another great conversation, like all the others I’ve been having on this trip — with Craig’s (now my) relatives out West, all of whom I really took to; then my old friends Lisa and Alvaro; my amazing, dynamic teammates at work; my old pal Bruce; and Dan and Babs, the owners of the company I write for, and a couple I now count as good friends.

As much as I’m an introvert — I’ll need to hide for a week when I get home — I do love a good meeting of the minds. What great minds I know here!

When James took his leave to go to his next appointment, Margaux and I went to a movie: Woody Allen’s latest (Something Something Rome or something, which was funny and charming; I’m liking his films since his great Midnight in Paris).

Just before the film, we were talking about art, and Margaux mentioned reading a book on photography that stressed the importance of practising. That idea really struck me: I don’t have a writing practice. Yes, I write copy all week, but I don’t have a practice for fiction. How strange that I should expect to jump straight into a book again after years when I should be warming up, writing for fun, writing any and every old idea, rather than expecting to run a marathon after sitting at a desk for years!

So that was my nigh-perfect Sunday. Only one element was missing: my darling, who’s at home waiting for me. A whole ‘nother week until I see him — oh no!

Q: Why do we find movies about aliens compelling? (Even bad ones.)

1. Because reality, which for most people means sitting at a desk all day, can be pretty boring. (In space, no one can hear you type.)
2. Because alien movies are an exercise in imagination, and in an age where everything is shrunken to fit a prevailing science of materialism, we long to spend time in the vast space of imagination.
3. Because these movies give us the cathartic release of seeing our social structures destroyed or transcended, when so much of our time day to day is consumed by the careful maintenance of our existing structures.

I’m at the pub, having escaped the house, where I was quickly getting mired again in over-working a web solution for a very nice web design client I really shouldn’t have taken on: Every moment I spend on someone else’s project is time I’m not spending on my own work.

I know this, but it’s so hard to say ‘no’ when people ask for help with things that I know how to do. I often see the potential in people’s projects, and I feel compelled to give my help where it can make a difference. (Though I know it’s not my fault that I’ve bothered to learn these things that other people haven’t.) Even when they pay me to help them, every task always, always winds up taking at least five times longer than I expected (more like twelve times longer). It’s just not worth it, financially or in terms of advancing my own commitments.

It’s also really easy to use those sideline tasks as a distraction, a way of avoiding the more involved, more personally demanding activities of my personal projects and work for my main client.

So I got totally lost yesterday, but today I’m taking a different tack than usual: I’m not bad and wrong for having got lost. I’m learning.

Each of these experiences gets me a little closer to the experience I’d prefer — if I’m mindful about what happened, if I pay attention to the lessons I’m getting, versus being unconscious and claiming frustration when I’m actually getting wilfully lost, because I know there’s a better alternative, and I know how to get there. Lately I’ve been able to actively get myself back on track, even when it’s scary, by taking a step back and looking honestly at what’s really going on.

(I’m still working on my little “box of focus” internet-antidote project, which I’ll show you when”¦ well, it exists.)

Meanwhile, I’m at the pub, and I’ve been doodling — an activity from childhood I still love. When I take the time to draw, I feel like I’m doing something I should be doing, something that belongs to me, just like when I’m deep in good writing.

So today I drew the “bochle” who frequents the pub where I work:

Back home in Charlottetown, we would have said “townie” for “bochle” — you know: one of those characters you see around town who’s a little bit scruffy, a little bit crazy.

This particular fellow is someone who’s been in the public eye a lot, complaining about, well, everything. He’s never worked and is a big advocate of “self-medication”. The real challenge for me about this guy is that, other than the drugs thing, I’ve agreed with every opinion of his I’ve read. He ran for local election, and joins all kinds of committees, then complains about hierarchical power structures, then drops out. But at least he’s trying, which is more than I can say for myself: I’m too frustrated about politics to go anywhere near them.

Here’s the other doodle I did:

Bunting zig-zagging down the High Street in Wick! For the Queen’s Jubilee? No, for our annual Harbourfest!

Okay, it’s time to do the work I’m paid for. But this is where my head’s been at this morning.

“The mainstream hasn’t been paying attention to all the changes in our culture during the last fifty years. The major ideas of our time””developments in medicine, the importance of space exploration to advance our species””have been neglected. The critics are generally wrong, or they’re fifteen, twenty years late. It’s a great shame. They miss out on a lot. Why the fiction of ideas should be so neglected is beyond me. I can’t explain it, except in terms of intellectual snobbery.”

-Ray Bradbury in The Paris Review

I half-agree with Bradbury here. I love that term, “fiction of ideas”. I’d like to think that’s what I write.

And he’s right about intellectual snobbery — in many cases, that’s all it is. There are, however, lots of SF books that are all about the ideas at the expense of characters who might help us care about what’s being discussed.

The other danger is falling in love with technology, which is inherently empty, a cipher that reveals our true commitments. I recently had to write some copy about a book by an entrepreneur who claims that in the future technology will make everything in our society better. What he misses, though, is that we could already solve all of the problems he mentions””if we weren’t so damned smitten with money and business instead of people.

1. Coffee frapputhingy in front of me: check. (One teaspoon instant, coffee, five ice cubes, one banana, two drops of French vanilla stevia liquid, equal parts soy milk and water.)
2. Bowl of granola with yoghurt: check.
3. New batches of soy milk and yoghurt in their respective makers: check.

My hippie 2.0, DIY, work-from-home routine is restarted.

Yesterday I sent my copywriting in at a ridiculously early time and caught the bus to Inverness. l’d seen a “digital publishing” workshop listed in the local paper and figured I really should go to it. I wasn’t sure why, because I kind of already know how to do all that. I saw it was being put on by two guys from Blasted Heath Press, a digital-only imprint, and hoped it wouldn’t be a “selling from the stage” session about their services. Plus I just didn’t get the value in introducing that intermediating layer of traditional publishing back into an era when you don’t need anyone’s permission or assistance to get your work out in front of an audience.

The bus ride took a few hours, during which l read some of Philip K Dick’s Ubik on my e-reader (struck — and honoured — by some thematic similarities to my own book, Idea in Stone). As the guy who used to buy e-books then print and bind them to read offline, I am now thoroughly sold on the value and convenience of this new form, which has easily trebled the amount I’m reading — and by that I mean reading, not ‘screening’ or skimming or whatever we call that activity that’s not really reading which we do when we’re rapaciously consuming data from the web.

The other participants were a neat group of people who came to the event from a wide range of backgrounds and for different reasons. I suppose you could call it “networking”, but it was really about community. These were all switched-on people with their own wealth of experiences, and I genuinely hoped I might be useful to them by sharing what I’ve learned — though I was quite conscious of not wanting to be the know-it-all jerk at the back of the room constantly piping in with, “Actually, I think you’ll find that”¦”

And that wasn’t really necessary here, because it quickly became apparent that Kyle and Allen, the two leaders of this event, really knew every facet of this as-yet-unpaved frontier, and their most winning quality was the honesty with which they readily admitted everything they hadn’t figured out yet — most of which no one has figured out, either.

Funnily, ironically, or whateverily, my distinguishing feature throughout the day was that I make physical books. (I’m really glad I brought a few!) It was great to be able to evangelise, not for me, but for this as a possibility for independent authors — the one piece most writers think isn’t available to them without a traditional publisher or a complicated arrangement with a print-on-demand company. Getting to contribute that perspective restored my energy for doing that work.

Speaking of energy, that’s what ultimately sold me on the notion of presses like Blasted Heath: I have limited stores of energy when it comes to strategising and taking action on the “front stage” part of my writing career. Aside from what this press offers authors in terms of proper editing and cover design, they’re working to keep abreast of all the different requirements and terms and tactics for working with organizations like Amazon, and for creating a marketing approach for a new title. That’s the part I’m worst at, where there are major cracks in the pipes that would carry ‘steam’ to that
essential aspect of my business.

While readers need filters for discovering work they’d like in the vast sea of options, both traditional and independent, I can see this model working well for authors who don’t want to learn to do every single thing themselves, or who want a team of experts to help them deliver the best product and to do it effectively, upping their chances of success. I definitely recognize ways in which I scupper my chances by not doing what I ‘should’ or shying away from the parts that make me feel queasy.

Yet the event truly wasn’t an advert for what they do; they were very forthright in showing us every step of their process, and even doing a hands-on session about how to build an e-book and list it on Amazon.

The books I write are quite different from the titles they’re representing, which are mostly crime — a mainstay of Scottish literature — so I felt very comfortable talking to them throughout the event and over a pint afterward without worrying about schmoozing. I also met the person who put the
event together, as well as a couple of other authors whose compelling backgrounds I got to chat with them about.

It turned out that this publishing event was an addition to a well-established film and music development festival called GoNorth that’s been happening in Inverness for several years. I even got a “swag bag”, which I assumed would be full of of future recycling, but contained some CDs and a DVD of Scottish short films that I’m actually quite looking forward to checking out.

So rah for community! It was nice to get back amongst like-minded people who are up to the kinds of things I am. Perhaps that’s as, or almost as, important to an artist finding an audience.

P.S. I composed this on the typewriter. Gosh it’s nice to do one thing at a time.

I’m reading The Shallows “” or trying to, because the author seems to be making his point by making you read about every effing thing from the invention of the watch to the invention of type to”¦ everything in the universe that precedes his point. Me-smells an article that’s working hard to be parlayed into a book.

That said, I do want to cultivate mindfulness, deep thought, and sensory experience/first thoughts over skimming the world. But sometimes a lack of patience is warranted!

In-between bouts of copywriting, I’ve been working on my novel.

I know, I’ve been saying that for more than a year. That was research, and it was important; I couldn’t have got here without that.

This is different. This is working on a book, like I remember it.

Last night I completely rebuilt my e-books, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while now (especially now that I have an e-reader, and I wasn’t happy with how the old versions looked; I knew I could create a better, more “professional” product). In the process, scanning through all those chapters and scenes and seeing those old, beloved characters’ names again, I was reminded of what “writing a book” was like at its best–when it wasn’t about pressure or keeping up or proving myself or doing what I’m supposed to be doing, or any of that. It was about creating, discovering, having a conversation with my creative subconscious.

And now, this work has thrown me right back into the middle of that activity and that feeling–just as fresh as fun as it was in 1998, when I was writing my first book. Only now, and especially now that I’ve got over whatever was in the way and am into the work, I feel confident that I am more capable than ever.

I’ve worked out a lot of this story.

And just now, as an exercise to ease into the story, to give myself the freedom and permission to write just for myself, without consequence, I wrote a “missing scene” from the story. And you know what? It was easy. I mean, it was work, sorting out the beats of the scene, then writing it, but it was work I can just do.

Craig just got home from his Spanish class and insisted on taking me outside to see the sun–a giant ball of orange gelato sliding out of sight behind the neighbours’ slate roofs. Now he’s off to the shop for a minute and I’m finishing this. The sky out my window is still pinky-orange. Across the street, a gull sits nestled beside a chimney-pot. It’s a warm, kind day that feels like the start of summer, even though a theatrical fog is rising from the harbour.

All’’s right with the world.