So, I just hit California a couple of days ago. While I was on the road I sent people emails to keep them up to date on where I was and whether or not I was dead. Below the cut there I’ve compiled everything into a readable narrative. It’s like autobiographical flash fiction. You can also read about someone else’s take on the trek here.
So, I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of an environmentalist. Close friends of mine have been known to rail against the environmentalism on philosophical, etc. bases. “What’s the environment done for me? I’m not part of it any more, I’m human.” (easily dispelled, but not worth fighting with a friend) “Climate change happens, extinction happens, any idiot can see that. We’re not doing anything to the planet that it doesn’t do to itself.” (That’s not a completely accurate quote, but the gist is maintained) These arguments are all missing an important point though.
Heinlein (You know me, gots to bring in the scifi refs, my peeps!) once said, “We need to have as many baskets for our eggs as possible. Even if we don’t manage to ruin this planet ourselves [bmp- pay attention to that one], natural disasters or changes–or even changes in our star–could make it impossible to live on this planet.” (I can’t find a non print ref for that, I’ll add it if I find it) Of course, you’ll read this and say, “Shut up and write! Heinlein’s not an expert on any of the things concerned here.” Fair enough, but I’ve been thinking about it. Stepping beyond what happens when the humpback whale is extinct (which would make me very very sad), or when the rainforest is gone, what happens when this ball of dirt, snot and spit is just plain old too toxic to support life? We die, is what.
Think about it. The 20th century saw some fantastic advances in disease control, nearly eliminating infectious disease as something that people in the developed world need to worry about. Nature’s bounced back, though. Excepting the curse of the mummy, were a lot of people worrying about mould forty years ago? What about magic diseases that made herds of cattle’s brains explode? Hell, we weren’t even worried about dead birds ten years ago, and now two things I might catch from them leap to mind, and I’m not an expert on this at all.
If anybody needs me I’ll be hiding under the bed, not answering the phone or the door, wearing a tinfoil hat until the impending apocalypse strikes. I guess that makes me a filthy hippy.
Here are some links from del.icio.us:
U.N. reports on climate change.
World leaders respond to said report:
Irreprable damage to the biosphere, the thing that biological organisms, like human bodies, live in.
The general decay of society. Remember, we’re all on the verge of eating and raping each other. Also remember, that I’m bigger and stronger than something like 98% of you, so I’ll be well fed and well… whatever the right verb is… when it comes to it.
I snatched some bird flu links from Warren:
When the world’s done, nobody will be able to say I didn’t try to stop it. BECAUSE YOU’LL ALL BE DEAD!
Oops, looks like I left this as private. Sorry
Here’s another essay I wrote for the page a few months back. It’s actually about something I wrote quite a long time ago. Get ready for the depressing!
So, a long time ago, I went to a therapist who told me that I was having a miserable time, but there was nothing wrong with me that needed medicating. That’s a kick in the teeth, eh? Especially when you’re the type who may have a less than healthy tendency to solve problems by finding some kind of filth to pack into your body to make it hurt less rather than actually dealing with the problems. Anyway, that’s not my point. Said therapist also suggested that I try a common exercise, to sit down some day and write about my “perfect day.” When I knew what I felt would make my life perfect, then I’d not feel so lost, directionless and miserable.
It took me about a year to get around to it, but I eventually did. Now, several years after that, I’ve found that original essay and I thought I’d share:
I was once told that many therapists recommend to people who are unhappy that they, before worrying about all of the little problems in their lives, define in their minds their perfect day, whether that moment should last for a heartbeat or a year. In the interest of self therapy, let me share my perfect moment with you.
It would be the morning. I’d be in my house, a little cottage with two or three bedrooms, an office, and a little porch that faces the ocean. I’d be sitting in an old comfortable chair with a cup of coffee.
In my office, I’d have books. All kinds of books. There’d be a computer that suits my needs, and a lamp with another comfortable chair under it to sit in and read. I might still be awake from a night of writing, or I might be ready to start writing after a night’s sleep.
The writing part’s important, you see. I love writing, and I have for as long as I remember. I started Killpop as an excuse to put stuff I wrote online in a more interesting format than a “Hey, look at my writing” page. I can’t imagine being happy in any job where I couldn’t take advantage of my writing abilities, except possibly working as a computer programmer. That’d rock too.
From there, it devolves into an angry political rant, since, as a Canadian in the process of moving to the United States less than a year after they knocked down the World Trade Center, I thought about politics a lot. I’ll spare you that bit though.
I ought to clarify, also, that Killpop was a short lived e-zine (remember e-zines? Hello, 1996!), that I edited/wrote most of. I stopped bothering when I looked at my list of articles for the second issue and realized that nobody else gave a fuck, and it was just me writing about how angry I was about things. In retrospect I’m glad I gave up since it might have turned me into a journalist, the idea of which, honestly, I abhor.
I’d like to poke fun at my youthful misconceptions at finding a job where I write things every day too. Watch those baby-dreams die, motherfuckers!
Anyhow, let’s skip ahead to the end bit.
Now that I’ve shown you my perfect day I’m sure that many of you must agree with me. It doesn’t take a whole lot of brain sweat to think of little things to make each day a little more perfect, so let’s try it. The weight of the world isn’t so heavy if you’re not the only one to bear it.
Oh yeah, on my perfect day, my cat would still be alive too, and immortal.
So there you go. Only four years ago, and that was what I thought was perfect. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pretty keen on most of that, and I don’t necessarily disagree with the omitted bit, either, although I don’t think I’d give it the weight I did then.
What strikes me most is the thing I that I forgot about and left out of the whole essay, which, I’ve found as time passes, is more important than everything else. More important, even, than my immortal cat. When I read things that I wrote a few years ago, especially highly personal things like this, I’m struck by how strange and alien this person that I used to be feels now. Maybe that’s how everybody else sees me now. How could I leave that out of my perfect day? Was I taking it for granted? Was it actually not in my perfect day? It’s most likely that I assumed that I’d loose what I had and never be able to find it again, but that I didn’t want to dwell on it when I was trying to think about being happy. If that’s why, well, it looks like a case of life imitating art now, of course. Maybe I wasn’t such a dumb kid after all.
So, what happens on your perfect day?
There you go. Behold my misery.
Just like I said, here’s the first of those columns that I wrote. Actually, looking at my little stash, there are only two, plus on that’s only half done (and could be a whole book if I wanted), so this isn’t going to take very long at all. I don’t like this one as well as the other one. Less… quiet power.
Your relationship with the place you grew up, or even some place you were later that felt like home after a time, is a complicated one. When you are younger you look forward to escape; getting away from whatever it is about the place or situation that you feel is limiting you. There is no escape, though, because you will always carry everything you ever had with you, and you’ll probably never get what you want, or think you want.
Some people never get to leave. They move out of their parents’ houses and find themselves inextricably bound to that one place, never getting more than a few miles from where they started. They’ll try to see the world, but their weeks of paid vacation to Paris, or Toronto, or Disneyland, don’t bring them to that crucial point that they, and we all, are looking for. You can learn by observing strange places, but you can’t understand things without experiencing them. To get to know a place, to understand it, you can’t approach it with that ticket home in your pocket, because that means that you aren’t trying to find home there. You need to get those balls out, sever as many ties as possible, and let yourself fall in. That’s a really hard thing to do, sometimes, even if you’ve done it before.
Of course, there may be a problem with all of this: I’ve done it and I’m not sure that it’s working. I’d hoped that accumulating these experiences would give me a better view of the world. When I was expecting everything to become more clear and more easily defined even as it gained complexity, it just got bigger, and fuzzier.
While I’m away from those places where I started to form my picture of the world I want to go back, sometimes for good, sometimes just to check and make sure everything is like I remember it, to see if my earlier simpler world view is still supported by the place where it grew. Now that I have gone back, after really living and even finding the beginnings of home elsewhere, I see that some of the things I held most dear have changed, and other things have gone on just fine without me. The shop where I used to buy my guitar and sci-fi magazines is closed, and my favourite restaurant won’t let me smoke inside any more. After living in a place, and feeling like a part of the community, whose fault is it that it cuts a piece out of my heart that, upon my return, the only thing that’s changed about my favourite smoke shop is that the clerk behind the desk doesn’t know my name any more? It’s nobody’s fault, I’m just not a part of that scene any more. I’ve always been worried about people forgetting me; the last time I came home I found that a lot of people I had known before couldn’t remember anything beyond that I looked kind of familiar, and even my close friends couldn’t remember things that seemed very important to me. I felt like I was disappearing, and this time it looks like I’m gone.
I’ve come to realize that this return is essential to the journey. Without a homecoming there’s no grounding, no fact-checking examination of one’s memories and idealized internal portrayal of what was. Without this the memories have no meaning; without verification they might as well be fiction. While our experiences can still bring a larger understanding of the world, we can’t be certain, the understanding is not complete.
At first, I have to admit, this whole process left me hollow. If home isn’t home any more, am I just homeless now? It’s become more, for me, than just longing for my parents’ house, or some more familiar town, or even another country. I’ve walked the old streets and listen to the racket of memories in the old walls, but they’re not my streets or my memories any more. I guess that it’s time to throw all of that old shit aside, and approach the world with a clean slate. I hesitate to pull some Socratic shit on you, but it doesn’t work if I keep thinking of one place as home, and here as not home. So here I go, one more citizen of the world; maybe I’ll find home again, and maybe I won’t, but I’ll always keep my feet firmly in my time space location. I’m here right now, trying very hard to keep from forgetting what home feels like.
Man, can you believe it? I was so goddamned… solemn. I wrote that a little over a year ago the last time I went back to the place I call home. It doesn’t feel that way, but when I say home, it’s the place I’m talking about.
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