For Ricky

On February 12th, 2015, Richard Enns went into the hospital for the last time. I saw him at my mother's house the day before. With painful steps, he hobbled from the bathroom to the kitchen and opened a container of apple sauce, mumbling. After he finished eating, he addressed a vacant chair in the living room.

"God, that was cold. When you get down to that hambone, you feel it. That sucker hurts."

"What was that, Ricky?" I asked.

His eyes focused on me, and with tiny steps, he staggered forward. The nonsense switch in his brain shut off, and with clarity and lucidity, he explained what the doctors were going to do to him the next day. The first shunt in his liver hadn't quite done the trick, he said. The tumour was pressing on a vein and fluid was still collecting in his body. A second shunt might divert the fluid so he could live comfortably for another few months.

He refused my arm to help him to bed. He told me he had to sleep, would take a few more steps, and turn to tell me something else. Rick loved talking, and that was obvious from the first moments I met him.

---

Suzi took me to Nipawin to meet her parents for the first time in the summer of 2006. Her dad had arranged a motorboat ride on Tobin Lake. It was the first time I had ever been in a real motorboat. My parents had always paddled canoes when I was growing up, and on the one occasion they rented a motorboat, it was old and doddered across the lake with a disappointing chug-chug-chug.

Rick's boat roared forward. I felt pine wind rush past, felt spray on my hands. The sunlight on the lake dazzled me. I tried to play it cool, but I could see Rick watching me. He saw my grin, and knew I was pleased. I had fallen into his trap: he loved arranging vehicular excursions into the woods north of Nipawin, and just watching his victims smile.

He landed on a beach and I stepped from the boat. I found a driftwood pole on the shore and claimed it. Both ends were gnawed by beaver teeth. It was a good pole, the kind that vibrated a musical note when dropped. I explained to Rick that I needed a new walking stick and wanted a souvenir to help me remember such a perfect day.

I eventually lost that walking stick. What stayed was an image: Rick beaming behind his tinted glasses, the tiller in one hand, and his crummy shi-tzu, Amos, cradled in the other arm. He seemed a perfect man in that moment, in cool control of his world, pleased to be sharing happiness with others.

---

I brought my 4-year old daughter with me to the hospital after his operation. He beamed, just like he had on the boat, when he saw her. He explained to the nurse who was changing his shirt, "This is my girlfriend, Zoey." The nurse raised an eyebrow at me.

"My name's Kara," corrected my daughter.

The nurse was done in a moment, and I sat near his bedside. "So, ya takin' off, Jerry?" he asked.

"No, I just got here. I'll hang out and keep you company for awhile,"

We held awkward conversation. Mostly, he watched Kara play in the window. She talked about icebergs forming on the roof of the hospital. "That little girl... sure is astute," he said, before drifting away to sleep. It was the last thing I ever heard him say.

"Is he always confused like this?" asked the nurse as I was leaving.

"Yeah, it's the encephalopathy," I replied. "It's been worse lately."

The nurse queried me about his medical history, because Rick had been unable to answer the questions himself before the operation. "Liver cancer of course," I said. "And hepatitis C and the encephalopathy. Type II diabetes. History of alcoholism."

---

In 2013 I went for a drive to Lost River and Teddington with Rick. I had expressed interest in his family history, and after loaning me a book on Mennonites in Canada, he invited me to view the land where he had spent his childhood.

The land southwest of Nipawin was deep green, and rain threatened to delay the new harvest. A muddy grid road blazed west through low hills, sheltered by patches of aspen, then curved south, away from the Saskatchewan river. Kara twittered to herself in the backseat of the car.

Only a church and cemetery remain standing in Teddington. But as we drove the grids, he pointed to a patch of poplars and said, "That's where the brown church was, the old one. We used to go there until they built the new one. It was kinda scary." He would talk about this or that farmhouse that used to stand, and the names of people who lived there. He talked about slaughtering day, when all the Mennonites from the countryside would converge on somebody's farm and slaughter their animals, then have a great feast.

In the cemetery, we came across the new grave of his stepmother. Somebody had half-buried a stuffed animal in the mounded earth. Kara's eyes lit, and she rushed to grab it, but I stopped her, for it looked like it had erupted from the grave, decaying, pink and soggy, then expired in the mud.
Rick's mother died of tuberculosis in 1948, when he was two years old. His father needed somebody to help raise his two boys, and he remarried quickly. Rick remembered his new mother chasing him and his brother with a butcher knife. She would beat them if they spoke German in the home. She instilled in him a sense of fear, sadness and anger that would last him the rest of his days.

As we walked through the Teddington cemetery and he groused about his stepmother, I saw his life anew. He started his life as a wounded little farmboy, and could have stayed a wounded little farmboy in this dying little community. But somehow he broke free and started thinking for himself, despite his pain. Yes, he used and abused substances, including alcohol, to dull that pain. Yes, he got into fights and got in trouble with the law. And he could not help inflicting some of that anger and pain onto his own children. But as we walked in the graveyard, I saw him in his new equilibrium, conscious of his own pain and his failings, but somehow having found a twisted little bit of contentedness. He had found a woman to love him. He had made peace with his children. He had seen rough times, but they were over, and now life was quiet and happy.

---

A day after the operation, Rick was kept in the hospital. An infection had developed in the fluid in his abdomen. In the following days, he drifted in and out of wakefulness, speaking less and less, mumbling and putting his hands to his face, battling internal demons.

The doctors soon ceased the antibiotics. His liver and kidneys had failed, his immune system was destroyed. All that could be done was watch him drift away.

---

A lifetime of intemperance had given Rick hepatitis C and diabetes, but by the time I got to know him, his greatest sin was liking hockey too much. He would often alarm me by quietly watching the game on his computer with a set of headphones, then bark "YEAH!" when his team scored.

He ate mounds of sweets, oil and salt, damn his internal organs. He managed his blood sugar with injected insulin, and the various other complaints of his body with a bag full of drugs and vitamins.

Rick mislabelled his uncommon problem-solving talent as “common-sense”. He clearly saw solutions and mentally worked his way backwards, not stopping until his vision was satisfied. Most stubborn people build a cocoon of ignorance around themselves, but Rick's curiosity would always coax him out.

His office was filled with old electronics that he had taken apart or upgraded. He bought game consoles to hijack them and get free games. All his computers had their protective cases open, exposing wires and components.

In 2013, he created a little still out of a pot and a large plastic bucket, brewing and drinking his own alcohol. He was so proud as he showed me the various flavour packets he added to make amaretto, rum or rye. When I visited, he offered me alcohol from his still, and for some reason, I refused him most of the time. I promised him that I would get drunk with him some day.

That day will never come now. As he drank from his little still, the alcohol assaulted his scarred liver, accelerating the growth of the tumour inside it. The tumour squeezed his hepatic arteries, causing him pain, depression, lack of energy, fluid retention, and eventually, starvation.

By Christmas of 2014, his skin hung loose on his crooked form. He cradled a bloated bellyful of fluid. It was obvious that he was dying. And then he smiled. In his mouth gleamed a new set of dentures. It was so absurd that I felt sick.

---

It was a years-long fading, crowned with disconcerting indignities. In his confusion, he accidentally crushed our canoe, backing into it with a trailer. He gave up on the “piss stain” he wanted to leave on the world, his straw-bale house. As he lost control of his life, he got overly worried about international terrorism and immigration. He began spending hours in the bathroom. He couldn't work anymore, forgetting what he as doing mid-chore. He spent more time in bed, then was bedridden. Reality abandoned him.

On February 18, 2015, he breathed his last breath in his hospital bed. By his order, he was not resuscitated. His last words were either, “Hey buddy,” or “Oh, fuck.” With his earthly remains chilling in the hospital morgue, all I had left of him were questions.

The night of his death, I tried to understand where he went. I tried to figure out why he was. I tried to distil some essence of him, some lesson to be learned from his life and death. I talked to my wife about it.

"I don't even fucking care about that," she chided, lost in greater grief. "What's the point? Why do you want to make it simple? It was his life!"

She's right, of course. I am a writer, and a dealer in stories. Stories comfort me, because they make the world simpler. By trying to make his life conform into a simple "life story", I was robbing it of some of its meaning. It is messy and contradictory. It needs an epic, not 1800 words.

He was by turns a clever thinker and a bigot. He was a loving father and a cruel father. He could be a stubborn asshole, but he never stopped learning. He got under my skin, he pushed me, he made me think. I pitied him and I admired him. I resent him for not preserving his life, yet I feel that his death was good, that a restless soul found peace.

I love him and I scorn him and I love him.

On Being a Writer, and other Silliness

It was eight years ago, around this time of year, that I put in my notice at SaskTel. I was going to be a professional screenwriter, and I couldn't have work interfering with my time anymore. I was going to do like Stephen King and many other writers told me was the only way to become a professional writer: I would devote myself to the craft, and write like it was a full-time job. In the meantime, my generous girlfriend, Suzi, had offered me a place to stay for free and buy me food.

Fast forward to last summer. I was not earning a living as a professional writer. My wife had been working to support me for years, and wanted the freedom to realize her dream of becoming a BodyTalk practitioner. So I took a job as a scheduler.

Photo Credit: Jennifer Sparrowhawk, http://kindredcities.tumblr.com/

It was good to be earning regular money again, but at night, my dark other would come and whisper things to me. So much for your great experiment, he said. You are not a professional writer, and therefore you are a failure. You wasted years of your life for nothing.

That voice in my head often tells me rotten things like that, so it's usually a terrible idea to listen to him. But it's hard not to notice, because the things he says are based in truth. I had set out on a quest to be a working writer, and I wasn't, so... mission failed, right? There are any number of intellectual arguments to counter this, but the voice that says, “You are a failure” is based in deep, unconscious emotion, and impervious to intellectual attack.

The mission isn't over. I'm still writing. I'll be headed to a week-long writing retreat at St. Peter's Abbey in Muenster in a couple weeks, in fact. I'm full of short stories and working on a novel. I still love what I do, so my dark other can take a hike. However, this is a good time for reflection on the closing of a chapter in my personal story.

What did I get from all that time without a regular job? Let me tell you, it was great to be freed from drudgery. I loved to wake when I pleased and go to bed when I wished. I was lucky that I got to taste that freedom in my prime, when most people have to wait until they retire. But there were also difficulties that I didn't expect. Believe it or not, having these obstacles actually made life as a freelance writer, and I hesitate to use this word, difficult!

It was Hard to find Motivation

Writing full time... in theory, it's an easy thing to do. There are any number of activities I used to fill my time. Aside from from actual writing, there are writing exercises which took me out my regular writing patterns and taught me to compose in different ways. Then there was reading, for learning the craft, for research, and for enjoyment. As a screenwriter, I could also just watch movies. I could blog. I could market myself.

So why is it that so many of my hours were sacrificed to dark goddess, Facebook? Why is it that so many quests were completed in Oblivion, Dragon Ages 1 and 2, Red Dead Redemption and Skyrim, while my own quest went unfulfilled? Why did I spend so many hours feeling bad about writing instead of actually writing?

Good question. It would appear that it is way easier to work when somebody is telling me what to do. I made lots of plans. I was my own boss. At one point I planned my days. I stuck to it for a week, but my habits slipped and I stopped. My dark other popped by and told me I was a failure for being unable to follow my own plan. I felt bad, and I wrote less.

How did I overcome this obstacle? I didn't, exactly. I slowly, slowly got better at working on my own, for longer periods of time. I also had to learn to stop beating myself up if I didn't hold my discipline, because some days, I couldn't. As hard as I tried, I couldn't wave a magic writer-wand and become disciplined. Over a period of years, I just kept trying, succeeding and failing.

In the end, I am not a model of self-discipline. I still love goofing off, ignoring my goals, and playing video games. But I also know how to write better, I know how to write more quickly, and I can spend an afternoon doing it without worrying if I'm doing it right.

I Hated not being Self-Sufficient

I was lucky during this period. My girlfriend, who would later become my wife, was my patron. She looked after my needs, so I never had to worry about my next meal like many of my starving-artist brethren.

But like them, I didn't make much money. Less than a year after I quit my job at SaskTel, I depleted the savings in my bank account. I had gone from being my own man to being a dependant. I was no longer a self-sufficient good citizen. I was a drain on the woman I loved. Quietly, I began to feel terrible about myself.

While I worried about my discipline and writing habits on a daily basis, my feelings of financial inferiority sneaked up and inflicted a more insidious wound. I was unmanned.

So how did I deal with this issue? Once again, I didn't really. I guess I got tired of it and got a job. And here I am. I'm still writing, but at least now I'm making some money. How long will I continue at this job? That depends on my own whims and the whims of fate. For now, I'm happy with the compromise.

I got Dopey

When spending so much time working with my right brain, and without the activity of a regular job to stimulate the left, I became imprecise. I spent so much time in my head that I stopped paying attention to the real world. And with these things, time became less important.

At SaskTel, I carried a calendar and cellphone with me everywhere I went. I always knew the date and time. As a writer, days began to melt together. I lost track of the date and the day of the week. Hours would drift past without me noticing. I forgot appointments and promises. I would forget what I was doing. Math got more difficult.

It seems funny to me that I should go from this state into being a scheduler, but life is odd. Time and the real-world have come back to me. And with my scheduling job limiting my life, time has become more important. My days seem packed with activity, even my days off. And somehow, I seem smarter.

Marketing was Harder than I Thought it Would Be

It will be fine, I told myself, I can do it. Marketing will come naturally. But when it actually came showing my creations to the world, for years I discovered that I couldn't actually manage it.

For a start, my self-esteem was in the sewer. How could I, an undisciplined, financially insolvent failure produce anything worth reading? I was inexperienced. Even if I had something worth showing, how was I supposed to interrupt the lives of total strangers and ask them to read my work? If my writing was bad, they would surely resent the time I wasted.

Coupled with this was the fear of rejection. When I first started writing, I thought I was good at taking criticism. But I wasn't. I would be devastated for days, weeks, months after I heard it. If I put my work into the world and heard criticism or even silence, I took it very personally.

This was a difficult one to overcome. But, unlike many of my problems, I think I've actually fixed this issue. The only way to break through this wall of fear was to actually do it. I did it cautiously at first, with short stories and screenplay competitions. I would submit my work one piece at a time and wait expectantly for the results. If my work did well, I felt great and did it again. If my work was rejected, I would be devastated and wouldn't submit again for months. But eventually I got used to the fear of rejection. It became easier to ask. I began to submit more frequently and it became easy. I've had two stories published in the last year, and I see no reason why there will not be more.

When I Wrote More, I Failed More

Part of practising writing is to become better. And this happened. I can say that I am a better writer than I was eight years ago. However, what surprised me is that by increasing my writing volume, I also increased my output of failures.

After abandoning a screenplay project because I could see it was going nowhere, in 2009 I started laying the groundwork of my Necromantic States of America project. I spent a year worldbuilding. Then I started writing my fourth screenplay. The process was painful. I put everything I had into it, and I told myself that THIS WAS THE ONE. I would sell this one. I would break out with this one. It took me two years to complete.

I submitted it to screenplay competitions and waited. The results slowly trickled in, and I began to see what I had long suspected: my inner critic had been correct. I had written something which, at the very best, nobody understood, at the worst, was bad.

I was heartbroken. My previous screenplays had finished well in the competitions. How could I have written something bad, something into which I had poured so much love? My dark other told me that I had wasted my life. “I'm thirty-six!” I told my wife through tears one night. “I can't afford another fucking three-year learning experience!” In the months that followed, I couldn't write at all. I considered going back to school for a career, and abandoning writing.

I didn't abandon writing, obviously. It was just as it was, a fucking three-year learning experience. And one of the things I learned is something I should have already known: they can't all be winners. Continuing to write increases my chances of success, but inevitably, I will write stinkers. And that's okay. That screenplay is still written, and one day, maybe I'll come back to it and improve it. Or not!

Being a Writer is Bullshit

As I mentioned before, I had ideas about what exactly it means to be a writer. A quote I heard in Throw Momma from the Train stuck with me, “A writer writes. Always.” I took that literally. I heard many writers, including Stephen King, say that you should write like it's a full-time job. Ray Bradbury told me to sell lots of short stories and make it big that way. Katherine Atwell Herbert told me, in her soul-crushing book, The Perfect Screenplay, to move to Los Angeles; it is the only way to be successful as a screenwriter. Writers worked in coffee shops. They drank tea and listened to CBC, and wore sweaters. All you had to do is try really hard, and you could be one.

I couldn't and didn't do these things. Yet my dark other used them as an excuse to skewer me. “You're not a writer,” it said. “You're a fraud. Look at all the time you've been given and you squander it. You'll never be a writer at this rate.” My preconceptions about being a writer became a way for my subconscious to torture me.

Sometime last spring, I came to a shocking conclusion: being a writer is bullshit. I found that I could just BE. If that being included writing, I was happy. Once freed from the preconceptions of being a writer, I could do other things like hanging out with my kid, like playing video games, like housework, or like getting a paying job, all without guilt. Why does it matter if I'm A Writer if I enjoy my life? I still write.

---

This post was difficult. I had to revisit a lot of old shame and fear. But I think it was necessary to mark that time in my life and see its good and evils. Thank you for reading this far. Be sure that I'm doing okay, I'm feeling good, and that just because I'm getting a paycheque doesn't mean I've given up my dream.   

Robin Williams, Sadness, and the Lie of Success

After a day of musical rehearsing which should have been enjoyable, I got home last night feeling like I wanted to be somebody else.  I laid in bed and wondered to myself why everything has to be such an effort.  I wanted life to be easy.  Then, my wife, who was browsing Facebook, told me that Robin Williams committed suicide and I cried.

Robin Williams was not my favourite comedian, nor celebrity.  Rik Mayall died recently, for instance, whose comic work I hold in higher esteem.  While upset, I was not moved to tears.  Normally, a dead celebrity produces a shoulder shrug and a "meh".  In fact, I've spent much of my life chortling at Robin Williams' roles in sappy dramas like Patch Adams, What Dreams May Come, and that concentration camp movie, the name of which I care not to remember.  Yet I cried when he died.  Here's why.  

The first reason is obvious.  He spent so much of his life trying to cheer people with his comedy, to improve lives, and make life on earth better.  Those dramatic roles he chose were often inspirational people who taught us the importance of joy, laughter, and life.  To suicide himself seems to render his work fraudulent, like he was lying to us the whole time and in the end, sadness wins.  

It is not as simple as that.  His death should not be the entire meaning of his life.  

He battled depression.  I know what that's like.  I know what it's like to obsess over joy and sadness.  The depressed always do.  We wonder why we're not as happy as we should be, we wonder when we'll stop being sad, and we worry about the happiness ending.  An evil self-critic is constantly nattering at us.  Yet when that voice is silenced, the joy we taste is overwhelming.  Its memory sustains us through the brutal times.  I suspect, though I'll never know for sure: the non-depressed do not, and cannot, appreciate joy the way our fellowship of the sad experiences it.  

In short, he was more than just a sad clown.  Yes, that was really Robin Williams rolling on the ground, weeping and pouring gasoline on himself in Death to Smoochy.  He drew on his personal despair to make the role of "Rainbow" Randolph real, so real that many viewers were disturbed.  But that was also him in Dead Poet's Society, drawing on his energy as a nurturer, trying to help us live and see through all the bullshit that makes us unhappy.  

However, this is not what made me cry.  

What made me cry is this: Robin Williams had a huge house and tons of money.  He had talent.  He had fame.  He had children.  He had work whenever he wanted it.  He had professional respect.  His acting roles inspired and moved millions of people.  In short, he had success.  Yet he still hated himself.  

His death exposes a great lie: Success = Happiness.  I was taught that if I strove to improve myself and my lot in life, my reward would be happiness.  But it's just not true.  Wealth, fame and power did not save Robin Williams, and it cannot save me or you or anybody else.  

This is either the saddest thing ever, or the most freeing.  It's sad because I will constantly be duelling my personal demons.  But it's freeing as well, because I now see how little Success actually matters, and how little Failure matters conversely.  I can stop worrying about it.  A life of happiness can be lived without them.  This leaves me with more time to pursue actual happiness instead of stuff that doesn't matter.  

As I lay in bed last night, talking about Robin Williams with my life, I could see how easily I could die like him.  Someday, I could hate myself so much, be so full of despair and regret, that I asphyxiate myself.  If that day comes, it won't matter how famous or rich I am.  But just thinking about it has made that future seem more dim and distant.  I can be happy this instant, regardless of the success of my career.  Right now, the trees are green, the cat is fuzzy, my kid wipes the table by herself, and I love them all just a little bit more.  

When Robin Williams killed himself, he was not thinking about me or my happiness.  Yet his life and death have touched me and instructed me in a profound way that none of his movie roles ever could.  Thank you and farewell, O Captain, my Captain.  

Life is but a Dream

They say that vulnerability is the new strength.  I'll share, then.

In winter of last year, I succumbed to depression.  It was really a shame, because things were going swell.  I was exercising daily, writing well, and fulfilling my promises as father, husband and home-maker.  Yet, I began to feel a tiny tug of anxiety, like a discordant note on a piccolo that shrieked in my mind every few minutes.  It was the first tone in a pathetic symphony that I play every year when the sun departs.  I didn't want to believe it was happening again, and tried as long as I could to hold my life together.  I had big plans for the winter, after all.  Then, a couple weeks before Christmas, it all collapsed.  No more writing, no more exercise.  Only the barest minimum of parenting duties pulled me from my bedsheet hideaway.  While functioning, I was exhausted, forgetful and dopey.  Life was a boring fever dream, full of disinterest and worry.

I clawed my way out of that depression.  I enrolled in an online depression therapy program offered by the University of Regina, learned techniques to cope like deep-breathing, thought challenging and graded exposure.  My personal trainer introduced me to yoga and helped me stay active.  As spring dawned, the bout subsided.  I borrowed a light therapy box from a friend.  I have an arsenal of new skills to deal with my depression when it returns.  

It's over.  And yet, as I try to understand this annoying-as-shit condition that I battle, I must make a painful admission.  It's getting worse.  Winter has always been a trigger for me, but the last few years, it has seemed darker and more hopeless.  Last year, I managed to delay symptoms until December, but when they hit, they were merciless.  Some days I felt like my every limb was tethered to a talking 100-pound weight that periodically said, "You're not good enough."  

So, why?  Seriously, what the fuck?  Why should it be getting worse when in the last few years, I have become a landowner, I have seized my destiny as a freelance writer, I witnessed the birth of one who can only be described as the perfect daughter, my band is doing great, and my every comfort is assured?

There are many reasons, but the last I discovered only recently, and it was the most devastating.  I was watching an episode of reimagining of Battlestar Galactica with my wife.  This, as many of you know, is a good show.  When I watched the first season of this show in 2005, I was enthralled by it.  Yet as I rewatched it, I was bored.  What had changed?  Not the show: it can't change.  I had changed.  And I wasn't enjoying it because I was waiting for it to be over.

And what was I waiting for?  Nothing.  I had no plans for the next hour.  Eventually, I would put my kid to bed.  Yet in that stark moment of realization, I knew I would be mentally absent through her bedtime routine, waiting for my own bedtime.  Then, as I put myself to bed, I would be waiting for sleep.  Then, in the morning I would read Facebook, waiting to be less groggy.  I would shower, waiting to eat.  I would play with my daughter, waiting for her nap so I could get some work done.  Each hour was a preamble for the next, each day a trial to be endured before the next.  And so rolled the weeks, months and years, waiting for some indistinct moment in the future when I will be happy.

It was terrifying to realize that almost all my moments on earth were spent waiting.  For, in the process of waiting, I was never present.  I was not living.  In moments when I should have been happy, I was anticipating the next moment when I would be sad.  Joy vanished.  I became intolerant of times when society expects me to wait, such as traffic or a boardgame with friends.  Existence was a foggy limbo, lingering for an unfulfilled promise.  Every aspect of my life became polluted with waiting: I just have to wait for tomorrow and I'll be less tired, I just have to wait for Kara to be of school-age and then I'll have more time for work, I just have to wait for my writing talent to be discovered and then I'll have money, I just have to wait for winter to end and then I'll be happy.  But really, humanity's only true promise is delivered by the Grim Reaper, and he does not deal in happiness.

This waiting bullshit stops now.  So many times, I have heard people say that you must grasp your happiness in each moment.  I think I finally understand that now.  Each time I realize that I'm waiting, I challenge that thought and try to engage my senses, somehow, to remind myself that I'm alive and each moment is mine.  Even in a supermarket checkout, where I am expected to wait, I can still talk to people, still admire some pretty woman on a magazine cover, still whistle a tune.

Old thought patterns die hard, and breaking those habits is difficult.  But I can already feel joy creeping back.  It is so wonderful to resume enjoying things again, after so long being numb.  Sometimes I get so filled with happiness that I cry.  I wept over a song that Pinkie Pie sang on My Little Pony last week.

I'm back, bitches.

ps. If life seems like an unfulfilled promise, don't wait.  Therapy is good.  Seek it, and remember how to live again.  Here's the service I used: https://www.onlinetherapyuser.ca/

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Book Review of "The Crying of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon

I consider myself a conspiracy theory connoisseur.  On one hand I mock them because they're so silly.  But I'm also fascinated by them because I love trying to understand why somebody could believe them.  And I'm drawn to them because, at various times in my life, it has been convenient to think of myself as a victim.  When the world seems full of conspirators controlling my life, it is easier to weather my failures.  If I can blame my lethargy on water fluoridation and my lack of writing success on corporate cabals, I don't have to work to change myself. 

The last decade has seen an explosion in conspiracy theories.  I'm very interested to see some oldies-but-goodies return to popular consciousness, such as the Bavarian Illuminati.  I'm also fascinated by some newcomers, such as the Reptoids.  Others have returned in new forms: the communist water fluoridators of yesteryear have been re-imagined as corporate masterminds.  Conspiracy literature has exploded as well, notably the novels of Dan Brown.  

Of greatest interest to me, however, is a small movement of public consciousness which derives ironic pleasure from the contemplation of conspiracy theories.  The theories are cast in a silly light, with many, any and all conspiracies being true at the same time.  It is given game-form in Steve Jackson Games' Illuminati.  In literature, it's The Illuminatus Trilogy.  This intellectual tree has borne hilarious fruit since the 80's, but the seed of the tree was planted in the 60's.  The name of that seed is The Crying of Lot 49, a novella by Thomas Pynchon.

Oedipa Maas learns that her ex-boyfriend Pierce has died and named her executor of his estate.  She travels to San Narciso, California, to settle his affairs.  As she does so, she begins linking clues, partly left by Pierce, others by happenstance.  Soon, she becomes convinced of the existence of a secret mail-delivery system called W.A.S.T.E.  An elaborate alternate history of Europe and the United States is spun, featuring armed conflict between the Thurn und Taxis delivery company and the U.S. Postal System versus a group of evil postmen called the Tristero.  As she learns more, the people she knows and loves are gradually eliminated or isolated.

Pynchon's writing style is cerebral.  It takes some work to decipher many of his sentences, not only because they can be structurally strange, but because some of them last for more than a page.  Yet these sentences are not ponderous like those of previous authors who attempted ultra-long sentences.  Rather, they're free-flowing and goofy.

The point of this book is its journey, not its end.  For the alternate history is funny and elaborately researched.  There are a lot of silly moments that left me laughing.  However, the ending is just not there.  Without giving away anything, the story ends right before where a climax would have been in a normal book.  After so much time spent fleshing the history of the Tristero, the book ends just before Oedipa has direct contact with it.  This is, no doubt, intentional and some readers may gain a lot of postmodern pleasure from it.  However, I love a good ending, so for me, I have to say that I saw what Pynchon was going for there, but I wanted more. 

What truly struck me about this book is that it seems like its from the wrong decade.  The style is similar to the confused, acid-soaked writing that came from the 70's, yet it is ten years early.  Truly, The Crying of Lot 49 was a work ahead of its time.  It might still be ahead of its time.  I say all these nice things about it, yet I recognize that I didn't enjoy it that much.
3 muted post-horns out of 5

Book Review of "A Clash of Kings" by George R. R. Martin

A Game of Thrones, the first book in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, is about as perfect as fantasy fiction gets.  I had high expectations when I picked up the second book, A Clash of Kings.  Would it have the same beautiful characters?  The same expectation-defying plot?  The same attention to medieval life and battle?  The same breathless page turns to see what happens next? 

The answer, sadly, is "no".  But that doesn't mean that Clash isn't great.  I'm still enamoured of Martin's universe and I've already picked up the next book in the series. 

I mentioned in my review of Thrones that Martin occasionally slipped into cliche in his description and fretted that in later volumes, after experiencing success, he might be less vigilant about editing his prefab phrases.  This is, indeed, the case in Clash: the entire writing style seems less intensely accurate and more relaxed.  The book is longer than the first and I suspect that, had Martin's editor or internal editor been more vigilant, certain events and passages could be removed to make the action tighter. 

In fact, the entire book seems less intense.  This is evident in the first half.  Martin takes time to prepare his massive conflicts, and his protagonists, mainly the Stark family, spend a lot of time being depressed and fretting over characters that we either don't care about or haven't met.  I confess that I lost my copy of the book for half a year.  If Clash had the been the manic page turner that was its predecessor, I would have been desperate to find it.  But I wasn't. 

Well, I found Clash of Kings in the zippered top pocket of a suitcase I had laid in the basement.  Eventually, the sails of this becalmed book fill.  Once more I found myself swept into the battles, intrigues and surprises of the unhappy isle and its bloodsoaked throne. 

The book continues to follow the viewpoints of the same characters who survived the first book.  Two more characters are featured, Davos Seaworth, a low-born smuggler turned knighted sea captain serving the now-dead-king's brother, and Theon Greyjoy, a hostage returned to the Viking-esque, brooding, troublemaking Greyjoy family.  Unfortunately, I didn't like either of these characters much.  Davos is dull.  Theon chapters are hard to read because he's an infuriating dink.  However, their antics were far overshadowed as my favourite characters, Tyrion Lannister, the Stark girls, and Daenarys Targaryen continued to brighten the book. 

I won't get into the details of all the awesome stuff that happens.  If you loved the first book, you will find the second worthy.  It's just not quite as perfect. 
4 off-camera battles out of 5

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Epistemic Closure and Me

In his article, "Revenge of the Reality-Based Community", conservative Bruce Bartlett describes his fall from favour with America's Republican Party.  In it, he uses the term "epistemic closure".  In his context, he uses the term to describe a state of affairs where forms of cognitive dissonance can be comfortably ignored within a bubble of like-minded friends and Fox News.  Basically, he argues that conservatives have created a system where they can ignore not just contradictory viewpoints, but evidence, science and yea, reality itself.  This is not just an issue for Bruce Bartlett and conservatives.  It's everywhere. 

One of the things I try not to take for granted is the stunning rise, during the youth of my generation, of the internet.  As a shy high school student, I called the internet for the first time in a computer lab in my high school.  The computer went shhhhh boing eeeboing-boing.  It was all text-based.  Now the internet is an essential service.  It's the flagship invention of our Information Age.  As a writer I can research any topic without leaving my home.  As a consumer, I could watch movies on Netflix all day and never see them all.  And as a Man I can... do other stuff.

The Truth, as based on evidence and scientific findings, has never been more available.  Yet people seem more confused than ever.  For my lifetime has also seen the rise of something sinister: extremist politics.  Since that day in the early 90's when the school's computer went boing-boing, the world seems to have filled with evangelical Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, radical free-marketeers, paranoid left-wingers and conspiracy theorists.  These groups were around when I was a kid.  However, what makes them more powerful today is that they can pick up a keyboard and find hundreds of people to agree with them.  They can live their lives avoiding cognitive dissonance and differing viewpoints, digging themselves deeper in layer-upon-layer of justifications, gradually believing stranger and more incorrect things.  I know how easy it is to get caught in this world, because ten years ago I was One Of Them.

It all starts with not wanting to be wrong.  In 2001, the world's political landscape changed suddenly when The World Trade Center in New York was destroyed.  Sitting American President George W. Bush experienced a huge upswing in popularity.  I hated that.  His presidency was already infamous for its stupidity and dishonesty, so when he said that a cell of fanatic Muslims was responsible for the attacks, I doubted him.  I wondered if, because he benefited from the attacks, he might be responsible.  I turned to the internet to satisfy my doubt and found thousands of viewpoints that reinforced what I already wanted to believe: "I am not wrong in doubting".

This was my gateway into the world of epistemic closure that is far-left conspiracy theory.  Every conspiracy theory needs three things: an antagonist, followers who feel victimized, and a will to believe.  For small-c right-wingers, the antagonist is a vast organization that includes corrupt politicians, communists, media outlets and hordes of deluded thralls.  Small-c left-wingers blame different organizations.  Fanatic Christians and Muslims believe the Devil is at the centre of the conspiracy.  Others think it's freemasons, extra-terrestrial intelligences, or a race of reptile men.

I was in the small-c left wing camp.   I felt I was the victim of a group of shadowy rich men who continuously tread on my rights as a human, elect and bribe politicians, control dishonest media outlets and make a mockery of democracy.  As I write this, this theory doesn't sound so crazy.  That's how a conspiracy gets you: it starts somewhere real.  William Randolph Hearst was a rich man who influenced politics with money, owned yellow media outlets and drove America to war.  Rupert Murdoch, with his ownership of Fox News, is Hearst's modern counterpart.  The world is full of rich men who love to wield their power.  

I lived in this world for several years.  Every day I would log on to whatreallyhappened.com and check out the array of news sources which spanned mainstream outlets, to hazy sites like infowars.com and prisonplanet.com, to sketchy publications like Pravda and the official media outlet of Saddam Hussein's government, to the lowest level of left-wing newsmaking: angry bloggers sitting in their basements making stuff up.  I was angry, too.  Who wouldn't be angry in a world where 9-11 was an inside-job by the American government?  Or Al-qaeda is an invention of Israel's Mossad?  Or hundreds of American soldiers die daily in Iraq and are not reported? 

I wanted this world to be true.  It wasn't just about being right or not being wrong.  Believing in a story like this added meaning to my life: I felt like I was doing something important in opposing the conspiracy.  And believing in the conspiracy made me feel smarter than everybody else. 

Then, suddenly, I stopped.  I was tired of being angry and powerless.  I was reading something claiming that yet another group was responsible for 9-11.  At this point, I had heard that 9-11 had been engineered by Al-qaeda, the CIA, the NSA, NORAD, the Bush White House, the Mossad, the Israeli Army, Cubans or the Rothschilds.  "So which group is it?!" I exclaimed.  And I had no answer.  For you see, I didn't know.  I wasn't there and I didn't see.  I would never really know, it was beyond my power to know, and it was not my responsibility to know.

That was step one of my recovery and it felt great.  My anger dropped away so suddenly that I sighed.  I stepped out of my house into the sunlight, breathed warm autumn air and felt great. 

Step two of my recovery was a little more difficult.  At this stage I looked at my past beliefs and realized that not only did I not know what happened, but my past claims were most likely wrong.  It hurt to admit.  In trying to add significance and importance to my life, I engaged in insignificant and unimportant activity.  In trying to be smarter than everybody else, I became ignorant.  In trying so hard to be right, I was wrong.  

Step three was a little easier.  I realized that there are people in the world who knew what happened.  These are people who are trained to know.  There are intelligence experts all over the world who agreed Al-qaeda is responsible.  There was also Al-qaeda itself, that claimed responsibility for orchestrating the attacks and training the pilots.  The simplest explanation was that these people were right. 

It's easy to fall into the trap of epistemic closure.  I feel embarrassed about the things I thought and said, but I have to remind myself how easy it is to believe incorrect information in the age of the internet.  It's even easier now.  On Facebook, an article with a crazy title goes viral quickly and people will share it without checking sources. 

Let's take a look at this shitty internet situation.  I just Googled the word "reptoid".  Here are the first ten results.

Result 1: Wikipedia.  Anybody can edit Wikipedia.  Because of this, it has a reputation for inaccuracy.  Unfortunately, it's the only search result that is critical of the idea that reptoids control the world.

Results 2, 3, 5 and 6: Conspiracy websites Reptoid Research Center, the Reptoid Wiki and the Alien Research Wiki.  These sites will tell you that a conspiracy of anthropomorphic, maneating reptiles are masquerading as humans and ruling the world.

Results 7 and 8: YouTube videos of reptoids Johnny Depp and Alex Jones supposedly shapeshifting.  (The Alex Jones shapeshifting video is especially silly: yet another example of conspiracy theorists claiming other conspiracy theorists are part of the conspiracy)

Results 4 and 9: results unrelated to the reptoid conspiracy.  A guy nicknamed reptoid has weird photos and a Swedish magazine is named "Reptoid". 

Result 10: Urban Dictionary.  Absolutely useless for anything.  It's uninformative, not funny and fuck fuck fuck I hate Urban Dictionary. 

Here is the point I'm trying to illustrate.  If somebody tells you that Queen Elizabeth II is a shapeshifting flesh-eating reptile, it's difficult to find proof on Google that she's not.  The only sane site on the first page is the perpetually-scorned Wikipedia.  To search further, you will have to wade through scores of unsourced frightmongering conspiracy sites, irrelevant links, broken links, advertisements, mirror sites and porn to find something useful.

It's the Information Age, people.  Why is it so hard to find sourced evidence that reptoids don't exist?  It should be front-row, centre.  Instead, Google has provided me with a series of results that will support an unhealthy belief-system, hedged by random crap.  The Information Age was supposed to disseminate knowledge.  Instead we have a multimedia minefield where banner ads decorate the desperate squeals of mentally-ill persons trying to be correct. 

There has to be a better way.  How about this, Google?  How about letting media outlets, universities and research companies register as "scientific" or "sourced", and if you search with a specific Google setting, these results will come up first?  If Google can SafeSearch porn, it can help the world filter its bullshit, ads and inane yammering.  

In honour of this occasion, I am going back over my posts on this blog and deleting one that was poorly-sourced and spreading misinformation.  I won't tell you which one, though.  It's still hard to admit that I've been wrong.

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