things i learn getting hurt

After not playing hockey all of last season, barely playing at all for the three before that, I pulled out my goalie gear last fall and started playing a few times a week. Three to be exact. I was out of shape, my legs felt like jelly after about 15 minutes that first ice time, but I remembered how much I love playing the first time the puck ended up in my glove.

Shocker., I know. That’s how it is when you love something.

pipelines, violins, politicians, and love...

Anyone else find Obama’s SOTU mostly really good to listen to this year? I mean except for the saber rattling and nationalistic hoopla that seems to be mandatory for Western leaders? The man and his handlers have a gift for hearing the tone of the zeitgeist, even if I don’t really believe for a second that his banker friends will be letting him do much about any of that social equity and taxation of the rich stuff. He at least makes it sound like it would be a cool thing to see him doing.

MOXNews shared an OWS perspective too. Sort of.

Here in Canada, we have no charismatic leadership, sincere or not. We just have lying, cheating, heartless bastards that are about as exciting as dead fish. I hear what you're thinking, but really, I'm being kind. Our PM can’t even bring himself to tell us that he plans on completely gutting the social safety net that our country has been lauded for over the last fifty years; he goes to Davos and an economic summit, as far away as possible from the citizens he’s supposed to serve, to do it. I swear, this is karma for laughing at the US-ians for electing Dubya…

via the rumpus, acculorber weather from occupy wall street

Found this today through Stephen Elliott's Daily Rumpus mail. The accompanying article is here, and you should absolutely go read it, but the poetry is riotous and couldn't wait...

poetry #7 - when it counts (for Kate and Trav)

(one of the joys of being a poor (but not starving) wannabe artist is that you never have to shop for gifts. instead, one makes one's gifts (mostly). for Kate and Trav I had some prints made of pictures I took and bought a couple sale frames. and wrote a poem...)

did it hurt

that first time in the moment after the pregnant silence     somewhere      paused

in time

was there a sharp pain     did it feel like losing something precious

letting go in an irreversible way that meant one thing would never come back

and another would never leave

was there a moment of acute precise

agony

like losing a tooth 
or autonomy        

or yourself

like you were splitting open in the most complete and wonderful ways

was it a surrender to you

a loss     of     you

or was it     like me     
painless     
effortless

for me     to be clear     it didn’t hurt at all

it was dawn over the ocean the universe giving birth to a star an eagle falling out of the nest into 
     flight

that first time

     under     
a warm summer moon or the harsh cold light of a winter sun or a blanket of watching stars

or the covers     maybe     in the hush     after

it was a perfect nova a kissed orchid opening the first smile of the child   

we’ll have one day

it was that easy that free that sharp that utterly complete     
that perfect

and there was no pain no matter how completely i was torn apart

and remade

there have been times     of course     since

when it hurt     
there always are 
to say it to feel it to fear that it might

     …disappear

just as there will be again

when life pins us down shoves us against the wall kneels on our heads pressing us into the hard 
     concrete of reality

and then     in those moments     
saying it feeling it meaning it

has/will hurt has/will come with a cost has/will bleed has/will weep tears that burn

that’s life     we know this     that’s the way it is must cant not be

but when those times

knock down our door invade through the patio window crash in like a thief

i’ll remember     
as you have and will

there will be reminders remembrances tattoos carved deeper than skin into our hearts of that first 
     time

and all the others since

when it didn’t hurt at all when we didn’t even notice when it was

running into the surf escaping the confines of walls and ceilings to dance on rooftops in the summer 
     rain

when it was these things because

it was/is real was/is pure was/is hot as a newborn star and cool as a perfect breeze

as forever as the universe and its birthing and killing of suns

as clean as our future child’s first word first step first smile first hug first love

that’s the promise

no matter the cost the hurt the fear the hate the shock

the weighty enormity of what it all might mean

when it counts most

i’ll/you’ll say and mean and feel and know and own the words

love in mexico…

I was thinking about balance and careers yesterday. About how I could learn to hate something I love if I fell into treating it like a career.

I think my vacation metamorphosized into an open yet sub-conscious rebellion, one that is tempting me away from getting back into a blogging routine, from committed Twitter sessions, from freelance contracts, and absolutely, without equivocation, from dealing stupid cards at the stupid casino.

And then I remembered that I still hadn’t finished blogging about Mexico and the wedding. The wedding deserves a post of its own, as do the amazing people that made the trek to be there, but I’ve been lolly-gagging for a whole week now, laying back, enjoying the slow current, not worrying about where exactly it was taking me. Languishing. Happily…

Yesterday, driving into to Kelowna to meet an old friend for coffee, I realized this was happening – this sub-conscious resistance – and allowed myself to explore it, feel it, probe it  with my mind’s tongue, as if it were a cavity or a chipped tooth. I found a photo-album in a crevice and opened a mental folder full of those things I’d promised myself when the life inversion started: that this was about creativity, about creating; that success would be measured in days wearing flip-flops, not by counts of commas and zeroes; that victory would be measured in sighs and smiles; that I would not miss the ties or ever be sucked into thinking they were important, at all, ever again…

If you’ve seen the pictures on Facebook (and if not, why aren’t we friends yet? See below and to the right), you already know that the wedding was amazing. Beautiful. Awe-inspiring. Travis, my brother, and Kate, his bride (my new sister) have a unique love. They’re both thirty-ish, so they waited long enough to know. They’ve been together for six years, so they made sure. And they’ve already weathered storms, so they know how to find their way out/hold on/let go when those hurricanes inevitably hit.

I think that they have the real thing, found it and grabbed on and made it their own. They awe me, did I mention that? But I knew that going in. Their love is wonderful to watch, and it does awe me, but it doesn’t surprise me any more. 

Here’s what did: Their friends. Thirty-six of us made the trip to Mexico. Eleven of us were family. That  means that twenty-five friends – co-workers, buddies, amigos, bff’s, what have you – took the time off and forked out the money to travel and stay so that they could be there for a wedding. Consider that six of the people all work at the same salon in West Van, including the owner, and that she actually closed the salon down for the whole week, and an image begins to form of a very tight group.

I was never one to belong to large groups of friends, at least not with any aplomb. I was a fringe-er, a hanger-on at best. Mostly, I was just a loner. Loners, no matter how imagined, rationalized, or real their comfort with solitude, still have moments when they envy those idealized group dynamics. Mostly we tell ourselves that those perfect group moments only exist in ‘90’s sit-coms and movies.

Subsequently, I spent a week in Mexico in blissful envy, happily a fringe-er again, on the fringe of something unique.

I once wrote a post about a Japanese proverb regarding gauging the character of a person by the quality of their friends and I was reminded of it again and again. I wrote then that I have amazing friends, and I stand by it. But I have those friends in ones and twos, scattered across a wide geography.

To see that depth and quality of friendship concentrated among friends that live a work together daily was, well, weird in a beautiful way. That shit’s not supposed to happen in real life. My brother Troy, who acted as best man, noticed it and mentioned it in his speech. The parents all see it. I’m not hallucinating, not alone. It’s abnormal in the best ways.

So this is a toast, sort of, to Trav and Kate who are indescribably beautiful to me, and to their friends, whom I hope (and believe) appreciate how rare and precious is their love for one another…

And I thought, yesterday, maybe it was the quality of that time away that was making me reluctant to get back into the swing, to lean into the yoke, to bend to the plow. And, of course, it was, at least in part. But if I’m doing what I love then why would I resist at all? And I thought; maybe I’m just not quite doing it right. Maybe I’m off mission again, just a bit. Or worse: Maybe I’m trying to turn it into a mission.

I’ve been dancing around this concept for months now, rebelling against concepts of efficient utilization of social media, against the idea that writing is a career, or even a vocation (which is ostensibly better, like it involves a calling or something). But I think that I rebel against the idea that something I do could or would ever define me. That’s absolutely not what the inversion was about.

Writing was and is a facet of that, telling stories, reaching out – absolutely a part and, hopefully, one that funds the rest of it – but it doesn’t define me. I don’t ever want to work that hard at it, devote so much time to it that anything else has to suffer.

The inversion was about searching for an authentic life, a creative one, full of adventure and markedly lacking in the kind of focused self-discipline that results in dynamic careers. That kind of thing works fine for many people, and I’m not knocking it, but it’s not for me. At. All.

No more ties. No posting schedules. No worrying. Flip-flops always unless the activity requires something technical or the snow is deeper than a three centimeters. Zero pretense. Heavy on the adventure.

The inversion was and is supposed to be about no reserve, no retreat, and no regret. Good choices, no monopolies, all variation, always looking for the next adventure, perpetually learning. No rules. Living it, not achieving it.

I may need a new tattoo to remember this.

So here's to life and love. And let the cards fall where they may…

whispering really loud

Sunday afternoons are quickly becoming one of my favorite times of the week. First, it marks the end of my weekly sojourn into hell, er, I mean, my three shifts at the casino. Getting off work is always an enormous relief.

Then I have the satisfaction of knowing that I’m driving home to Aikido practice. It’s a strange contradiction, squishing the place that I hate the most right now with the practice that I love the most. If I were #amwriting instead of #amrevising, I might not feel that way, but the two hours on the mat every Sunday night is like a bit of heaven, even better than the climbing at the moment.

Yeah, I said it.

Finally, my commute home Sunday afternoons blissfully coincides with Tapestry on CBC Radio 1, and the hour or so of driving feels a bit like a cocoon in which amazing people talk about amazing things with a degree of enlightenment that is always moving.

Last week, for instance, they were talking to ministers and pastors who had lost their faith, some of whom were still struggling to perform their duties in that absence of that faith, still working as ministers and pastors. I think that would tear me to pieces.

This week, host Mary Hynes was speaking with Pakistani musician Salman Ahmad, of the band Junoon (which translates as ‘obsessive passion’). Ahmad spoke eloquently of his love for Led Zeppelin and Suffi mystical traditions, and he quoted Iqbal: 

“The whisper in the heart has strength; it may not have wings but it has the power to fly.” 

He talked about the creative spark within us, all of us, being our connection to the source, the base layer, or the divine. And also that it unites us; that it is the spark that, if we acknowledge it, connects us through art.

And then he said: 

“We all have that whisper of the heart, but the world is so loud that we can’t hear unless we really try.” 

It seems to me, at times, that it’s the other way around though; that our culture works so hard to not hear even when the natural arc of the universe, to steal one more quote, curves towards justice.

If we’d just get out of the fucking way and let it. Or maybe the artist’s truth is to be an amplifier; to scream that spark so loudly that nobody can ignore it. Maybe that’s part of breaking the ceiling too.


P.S. (Because I forgot) - http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/ 

chasing dragons

When I was fourteen or so, back in the days of Mom’s heroics, I fell into a fairly profound depression that lasted for about six years. As amazing as her actions to keep us roofed and clothed and fed were, as super-human as her efforts to care for our schizophrenic borders were, the effort took its toll too. There were large rents in the fabric of our lives, and I slipped through a few of them.

Mom never knew how bad it was at the time. We’ve talked about it since, cried and accepted and forgiven each other for the missteps and gaps. That’s all there was to do.

There’s no such thing as a normal life anyway. TV is just theatre. I’ve never met anyone that had a “normal” childhood.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m thankful for what we had. It could have been worse. I was cared for and provided for, and I learned autonomy early. I was perhaps neglected in some ways, trusted by default to find my way, but never abused. I always knew I was loved.

But I had a serious mind, and it led me to dark places, and Mom had her own demons to struggle with. I survived it. Barely, I realized later, looking back. There were close calls. But I survived. We both did.

After the accident, when my marriage was falling apart, there was another depression. This time I was able to get help and it was shorter, but the return to depression had been unsettling. Profoundly unsettling. Walking over your own grave unsettling.

Looking back on the last couple months, and especially weeks, I realize now that I was starting to feel a fear, in the back of my head where I couldn’t quite reach it, that I was sliding down the rabbit hole again. That I was falling into pits too deep for me to extricate myself from. That I was slipping away and that all the work I thought I’d done had obviously not been as complete as I’d thought. (And, of course, it isn’t complete, never is, but that’s okay and a different thing all together anyway.) With words all dried up, even the desire to write absent, I was getting very worried that something was seriously wrong.

I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself or anyone else. My friends were worried, I could tell. But I just curled in. It’s what I usually do; try to fix it myself for as long as I can. It generally works, even if it’s not a perfect system. Knowing that support is ready and waiting is usually enough. I still have all those ingrained habits of (perhaps unhealthy) autonomy though. It’s what I do.

But it wasn’t a slip into depression this last few weeks. It was just the mother of all colds, or maybe an inconvenient string of them. I woke up Wednesday and felt human for the first time in a while, then felt better yesterday, and today I’m feeling practically normal.

And I’m breathing heavy sighs of relief.

From here, coming out the other side, I can see that my malaise wasn’t a descent into darkness. The fear was unfounded. But it was there. That’s worth taking note of. I’m taking notes. There’s (always) still work to do.

But there’s good news in this too. When I was telling myself and everyone else that it was just a cold, I was right. While I may have a fear of some of the dark places I’ve lived in, I’m not the person that fell into those pits anymore. Who I was doesn’t define who I am.

And I think I feel pretty damned good about that.

...

P.S. I finished the full reading and notes for the manuscript draft today. The last revisions before beta reading start on Monday.

climbing (part one)

I love to climb. I will never be really good at it, but that’s fine. I don’t climb to be great: I climb to be better. I climb to be.

Ultimately, climbing is about the movement, the dance and magic of will versus gravity. It is touching a vertical wall with as little of you as possible, making it beautiful and powerful and rhythmic. And not falling. But more than not falling; it is tenacity, trust and autonomy, love and fear and courage.

At its best, climbing is a meditation. Attached to the wall, fingers stuffed into cracks or clinging to pockets and nubs that make golf balls seem enormous, and standing on edges the width of coins, the size of pimples, there is nothing else in the world. It all drifts away and what's left is the six square feet in front of you, and that beautiful dance.

Climbing is an impregnable bubble that holds the world at bay. There’s a reverse magnetism in it, an ineffable pushing away of everything that crowds and bumps and forces. When it’s good, there is no sound but the breath, no sensation but the touch of rough and soft surfaces and the internal sway and pitch of balance and counter-balance.

There isn’t any room for the world, crawling up a wall. If the world is there, you aren’t – you’re falling. And there are days like that, days when life can't be closed out and the simplest moves leave you panting or pealing off. But those days are rare. Mostly, just staring at the rock is enough to quicken the heart and stir the wind that clears away the riff-raff, the kipple.

What’s left are clean angularities; natural geometries and puzzles carved into rock and stone, muscles and bone and blood. On a good day it’s ballet. The pivot and sway, pull and friction – it’s effortless, or it looks that way, feels that way.

When it’s done, make no mistake, there is exhaustion and shuddering breaths and hands shaking on the steering wheel driving home.

But it doesn’t feel like it on the wall, the wind blowing softly and the ground receding by inches. On the wall it’s just you and the ageless stone, a connection formed between fingers and toes and something indescribable. Like being plugged into a timeless energy, as stuck to it as it is to you. Welded to the earth and yet fluid. Climbing is like scaling a Telsa coil.

Climbing is submission and assertion, a giving and taking with the stone that is – must be – equal and complete. It is kinetic poetry, the wheel of thought and action flowing so quickly that it blurs. If success is measured by completion, then that completion only comes through symbiosis. It cannot be conquered, the rock. But it can be shared – it can share. And in the afterglow of that conjoining everything smells stronger, tastes better, feels more pure. Everything takes on a clarity that is heartbreaking and affirming.

It is impossible to not smile at the top of a climb. And often, there are tears. They are in honor of the effort and the grace, the fear and courage, and the sheer beauty of being present, truly present, if only for the time it takes to touch the stone and then walk away.