Whee! That was fun, and the gang turned a bunch of complexity into a good, straightforward plan. I’ve decided to take the game to Toronto with me and use it to explain to the team there how the plan works.
My friends are brilliant.

No, not “Thermonuclear War” (though this might cover that).
I’ve been asked to re-write Strategic Coach’s emergency procedures, but when I started working on the job I realised that… they don’t make sense. The logistics are fine on paper, but it’s easy to see how they just wouldn’t work in reality. But I can’t get my head around what would work instead. (And I have a personal rule that I won’t go back to my client with an objection unless I have an alternative to present.)
So what I’ve done is turned it into a board-game, and I’m inviting you, if you’re in the area, to come over to my place on Friday evening for some nibbles and to play the “Emergency!” game with me, to try to figure out how to get everyone out of the building while also achieving certain objectives.
Want to play? If you do, drop me an e-mail!

The city of Edinburgh’s recycling program has grown and improved dramatically in the past two years. Suddenly we have kerbside recycling and lots of large wheelie-bins close-by. It’s got to the point that the Weasel and I only throw out one carrier bag of rubbish a week between us. (In fact, he points out that while the rest of the UK is scoring really badly in terms of landfill, Scotland is beating all its recycling targets. Wahey! Oh, but we’re still only recycling 28% of the waste we produce, where other countries are reaching rates of 70% or more.)

So we’ve got a ways to go yet. For instance, I’d like to recycle an old piece of electronics equipment. I live where it says “Old Town” on the map. Let’s see where I’d have to go… Ah. Yeah. To one of those numbered points out on the edges of the map. So this means using a car… to do recycling.

Anyone want a scanner that only works on its side?

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So I went to this gig tonight… and halfway through someone from The Skinny asked me if I would write a review of it. Ack!

But this is what I do: I write. Two hundred words — pah! I cough and it’s 500 words. So I’m doing that before bed.

It’s been quiet all year, nothing but me, alone, head-down in my novel, now… a deluge! In conversation after the event, a month-long programme of reading events for February got dreamed up around me, and I’m one of the organisers. Huh? Okay!

I keep bumping into arts-people I know here lately, a conspicuous number of them all within days, and there’s something tangible in the space between us, like we could make manifest anything we wanted to. Teaching people how to write or make books, finding opportunities to perform, and just connecting with other creative minds — this is the fun stuff. I’ve been planting seeds here for a long time, and even though it’s winter, it feels like spring.

This duo, Contrabajo, played tonight. They were funky beyond measure, and obviously having a lot of fun:
http://www.myspace.com/contrabajoband

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I was just cleaning up last night’s dishes and glasses; the Friday Gang were over here last night.

The testament to people’s character is found in the smallest things: there was a tube of Pringles left over, and it had two crisps in the bottom. My friends are too nice to finish the last two crisps, in case anyone else wanted them.

I’m usually not good for this. I’m a food-whore. I’m the guy who says “Are you finished with that?” It must be great to date women: you get your dinner, then some of theirs.

My mum said something to me once about all this several years ago: “You’ll find that grown-ups are generous — because they can be. Young people are cheap because they don’t have any money of their own.” And that has been my experience.

The people in my gang of friends invariably end up being the sort who will divide up the tab equally, or put in more than their fair share. We don’t have any of those creeps who pick all the bills up off the table, pay the exact amount with their bank card, and keep the tip. (Of course, this is Scotland, so there usually isn’t a tip to take.)

Sharing is for children. Sure it’s important to learn, it’s character-building, and blah blah, but… hell, I’ll just buy two. You have yours, I have mine. So it’s kind of generous, kind of selfish.

It’s great being an adult! Stay up until whenever time you like, buy whatever you want, make a living doing something you love, and learn anything in the world because you’re curious about it, rather than studying compulsory topics that are foisted on you. And there’s nobody to say what I’m supposed to do (just the benefits or repercussions of doing things that do or don’t fit with the social compact).

Yay!

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…and 5% suck.

(But I’m not getting into that last bit.)

I bumped into my (amazing, great, beautiful) poet friend Elspeth Murray this afternoon, who spontaneously invited me to be a special guest at a writing workshop she was presenting this evening for one of the ginormous financial firms in the area.

So at 5PM I entered, for the first time, one of those hallmark modern Edinburgh financial buildings near my house — the ones that look like snare drums made of beige sandstone — and met four people from the writing group she’s been leading there. It was an honour to meet those interesting people, talk with them about writing, and leave them with some of the things I’ve figured out.

Writing is such a gift: imagining how to describe the things you see and think is like getting to live twice at once.

So having mentioned that tonight I was going to start chapter eleven of Finitude, I had to be my word and do it. I’d made an outline though not nailed down specific scenes, but I went to a pub, bought a pint, and, just as I told the others this evening, when I made a space for the story and just watched the “skull cinema” in my head (as monologist Spalding Gray called it), it was there, playing out for me:

“They must have a map or something in here,” said Jeremy. “We can find her when we get there. All that matters is that we get there first.”

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Tonight I gave away some things to people, thanks to Freecycle. (Both of whom were very nice; one of them, a man who works with stained glass — to whom I gave a scanner — suggested I should offer my bookbinding course through the Council, which is a nice idea.) I have this principle that when one thing comes in, one thing should go out. Freecycle is good for that.

But could I give everything away?

Tonight I took myself to a movie, knowing I wasn’t going to get any work done. (I’d spent the day waiting for something in the post that didn’t arrive. That waiting is like a hand-grenade thrown into the middle of my day. I must avoid buying things online.) I went to see Into the Wild, the story of a young, wealthy American who gave away all his possessions and money, then walked off the margins of civilisation, ending up in an old bus in Alaska, where he died, likely of starvation.

My expectations were held in check because I’d seen a ‘making of’ piece online as well as the trailer, and it looked far too self-important and filled with empty Holden Caulfield angst. That’s ironic, isn’t it?, given my geneneral dislike of globalism and the excesses and cruelties of capitalism. But longing for love and justice is, I hope, distinctly separate from acting out against your parents or simply having no outlet for your youthful energy and thus becoming a vehement stand for “anything but this”.

The movie, like the book, however, gave quiet depth to its hero’s journey, mainly by making his life story resonate with that question mark that stands at the end of all our life sentences. What is this for? Who am I to be? What does it matter?

The story would not have endured, I believe, had Chris McCandless not died. That death, alone and sick with starvation, forces the question of “Okay, so where would you rather be instead when that time comes?” These things are only tragic when we hold on to the pretence that we all don’t die, like that or otherwise.

I understand his urge to vanish. When I’m with people for long periods of time, I am filled with the urge to get away, to be on my own. Yet that, to be away in the woods with no company ever, at all… I’m sure I would go mad and would let go of the will to live.

As a fiercely independent person, this came as a strange realisation to me this evening. But much as I love being a forester in the woods of my imagination and senses, I do begrudgingly accept that the greatest rewards in this life come from sharing it with others.

The things I struggle with the idea of giving away are all tools for enhancing, drawing out, and giving form to my creativity. And creative expression is, ultimately, all about making connections with others.

A few years ago, I helped out with a book about Strategic Coach’s idea of “Unique Ability™” — whatever specific, in-born personal talent we have that we’re passionate about using. During the writing of the book, I articulated my Unique Ability as “Describing the real and the imaginary so they come to life and create a moment of wonder.” When I got this phrase, it rung true: “Yes,” I thought, “that is what I’m all about, what everything I’ve done has been for.”

So what if there was no one to wonder with? What if the tree fell in a forest where there was no one to hear, so it didn’t matter whether it made a sound or not?

I would still wonder at life, for certain. But for how long, and why?

I’ve imagined many times going off to live in the tiny coastal Scottish village I once visited on a long car trip with my friend Philip. “But you mightn’t have anything in common with the few people there,” I think. I also wonder how I would get to my family; unlike the person in this story, I love mine and want to be closer to them even when my searching takes me further away. And in spite of myself, I always seem to stumble into having great friendships I cherish. How could I move away from those people? But I’ve done that before, and the friendships stayed strong. Then, I must admit, there’s also the question “And what about meeting someone? It would never happen there!”

It’s been ten years, and I’m single. I’m now pushing forty. It’s been a long time since that was an active part of my planning, but there’s a little end of wool there I haven’t let go of. I suppose there’s no deciding about these things, but perhaps it’s time to have that not be a factor.

The instinct behind this small-as-possible-village idea, though, harmonically resonates with the idea of walking off into the wild. It’s the urge to prearrange the credits sequence of one’s life. Visiting Findhorn had a touch of that, but it’s the one place I’ve been where I can still imagine the story continuing. Everything else seems motivated more by that instinct Freud called the “death wish”.

I know that’s become a piece of common parlance, but look at it again: Freud asserted that competing with our will to survive is an instinct to just give up. When I picture being off in a bus by myself in the Alaskan wilderness, I can’t conjure up much that isn’t given by that morbid urge.

As with the recent Hallam Foe, I find I no longer relate to rebellious young men coming of age. Their tantrums are like that benzene-ring serpent-eating-its-own-tail figure: the rebellion’s purpose is to exercise the muscles of rebellion. The substance isn’t there yet. As someone who has established his independence, I want to know what’s next. By dying, McCandless skirted the answer, but left behind the question for the rest of us.

I forgot, forgot the Fifth of November. Ah well, no fireworks.

I’m eating more and feeling sluggish. I’m having trouble staying focused. I guess it’s the change of season. I’ve taken up my exercise plan with extra vigour, because I know December in Canada will involve lots of eating. But I’ve resolved to stick with my vegetarianism through Christmas. I can’t defend any reason why I wouldn’t. So Mom, Dad, I’m going to make a pie instead of having turkey. At least you believe I can cook now (I barely believe it myself).

I haven’t much to write, because not much is going on. Work is great and chock-full of projects, as is the rest of life, but it’s all happening in my head, not out where it shows up as news to report.

My biggest frustration is that I’ve drifted away from the book. I got the last chapter out, which was a big one to write. I was excited about it and wanted to keep going, but then I got busy with other projects, and now I find myself facing… the distance.

As I’ve often said, there’s no such thing as Writer’s Block. That’s simply a by-product of losing your place in the creative process, thinking about product or effect when you should be focused on craft and imagination.

And yet, every time I step away from the work, that distance gets in there, and manifests as resistance to the work. I feel fear and uncertainty, and while I’ve been through this process enough times to recognise this for what it is (and to know that it never goes away), the experience of it is no less real.

The trick, of course, is just to take that first faith-filled step from the boat onto the waves. I know I’ll do it, but I haven’t yet. Of course, that thought is just another facet of the resistance.

Samhuinn was last night. I love it, because it’s fiery, lusty, real… and it’s ours.

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