wikileaks and the cult of personality

I thought I was done. I thought that I said everything I wanted to say about this subject on Tuesday, but I guess not. Maybe today I can finish exorcising it.

I gave a whole paragraph on Tuesday to the concept of the cult of personality dynamic that is interfering so effectively with the larger, international political story. It wasn’t enough. I was influenced by my wish that, in spite of the side shows, the only thing we’d should stay focused on was the leaks. Not so much the content, but the overarching theme extant within them. The big picture.

So I said what I wanted to, for the most part, about that big picture story, the one that includes revelations regarding our leaders in public office and the undue obligation they seem to feel to preserving their own power and serving corporate interests. But I mentioned the cult of personality concept and, when the dust settled, I felt there was more to say about that. More to say about the concept of cult of personality, and more to say about how it specifically affects this story, with all of its high ideals and low behavior, not to mention the possibility of rape and coercion.

It’s hard to do that, stay focused on the big picture, especially when there's just so much information to process. There’s some major information overload happening on this topic, and so many story threads that it’s difficult at best to keep anything straight.

I’ve tried very hard, with lesser and greater degrees of success at times, to keep Julian Assange separate from the Afghan/Iraq/Cable leaks because I don’t think I believe in heroes. Just in general, there aren’t many individual people that can both be truly marvelous and aspire to the kind of notoriety that Assange aspires to. So I’m distrustful as a default position.

I was still disappointed when the allegations against Assange were made public this summer. There’s always a hope that somebody will live up to their own hype, right? It was clear fairly early though that Assange was just a human. Divisions within Wikileaks, narcissistic statements to the press, and then the accusations and the ongoing investigation; Assange was definitely just human, and maybe worse. If you haven’t heard what the allegations specifically are, this is from The Swedish Wire:

“The court heard Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner. The second charge alleged Assange "sexually molested" Miss A by having sex with her without a condom when it was her "express wish" one should be used. The third charge claimed Assange "deliberately molested" Miss A on August 18 "in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity". The fourth charge accused Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on August 17 without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home.”

To be clear, in spite of the arrest warrant and Assange’s remand in the UK pending extradition hearings, these are still technically allegations only. No charges have been laid and Assange is wanted back in Sweden for questioning as part of the investigation. But they are really serious allegations.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, Assange and his lawyers suggest that the allegations are part of a smear campaign, and Assange has unequivocally denied any wrongdoing. And the specifics regarding how the investigation was started, then some charges dropped, the reinstated, and leaked to the press… it’s all very convoluted. And that’s only half of the story.

On the other side of the allegations are two women who brought the issue to the police. There are a endless theories drifting around the web regarding the reasons they spoke to the police. But they’re all theories, and theories and speculation in a rape case are just the wrong way to go.

It was not so long ago that not making criminals of victims, especially in a sexual abuse case, was held up as a pretty high ideal. Outside of this case, it still is (I hope). But inside it, suddenly it’s become okay to vilify the women who made the accusations and assume that they were either part of a giant intergovernmental conspiracy, or that their motives were purely personal and vengeful. Assuming that these women did anything but go to the police to express the perception that they were wronged and seek assistance in that regard is as unfair to them as it is to assume Assange’s guilt.

Let me say that again: Assuming nefarious intent on the part of the accusers is as wrong as assuming that the accused is guilty.

Some of my online friends have been very right in pointing out that fact, and also that we’ve been working really hard and for a long time as a society to change the mentality that victimizes victims twice. The vilification of Assange's accusers is a step backwards. My friends also rightly point out that progressive journalists and writers have been too quick to vilify the accusers in this case in the rush to defend Assange. I think that, to some degree, I'm guilty of that too and I have to own that.

That doesn’t mean that there are still lots of questions that deserve to be answered. The first one, though, needs to be whether or not there’s enough evidence for charges to be laid. If there is there will be the question, to be decided in a court of law, regarding guilt or innocence. If there isn't there may be other questions regarding motives, but it’s way too early for that. And either way, I think that there are questions to be asked regarding the actions and decisions regarding how the case has been handled by Swedish prosecutors. 

Regardless, I have limited hope that many of them ever will be answered. That seems to be how our world works, and it’s part of why I think what Wikileaks is doing is important.

I need to be really specific on that subject too. I believe that what Wikileaks is doing is important. Not Wikileaks itself. What they’re doing. Wikileaks is an organization that has taken collating, vetting and clearing whistleblowers’ leaks to the next level, but they weren’t the first. They most definitely won’t be the last. But they’ve raised the bar and changed the landscape, I believe, for the better.

I don’t believe this because I think that government should be utterly transparent, that every last bit of state craft should be completed in the public eye, but rather that it should be more transparent than it is. I believe that there is so much secrecy in this War on Terror world that it has become difficult, if not near impossible to trust our governments. Many people, including me, are left with a giant vacuum of trust where our faith should be. We don’t trust that our politicians are making decisions with anything like good intentions in mind.

I think that this kind of peak behind the curtain has a purpose: It can make us aware of the selfish, arrogant hubris with which our leaders conduct their affairs, driving home the point that we have to be far more active in governing our governors. It also reminds those in power that they aren’t immune or inviolate; that they are in power by the grace of our votes and will, and that they govern as extensions of the body politic. They exist to serve us. They need to be humble, and nowadays that means that they often need to be humbled.

And that’s why what Wikileaks is doing is important, or at least part of it.

But Wikileaks itself will become an institution in time. Perhaps, in some ways, it already has. Institutions often come into being because of a valid and righteous need. Somebody, or some group, sees the need and meets it. And then, over time, that organization, that movement, begins to be as interested in growing or preserving its own existence as much as staying true to the values and need that brought about its existence. And then it’s an institution, just as susceptible to corruption and hubris as any other institution.

At that point, the institution becomes as much a part of the problem as it is or was part of any solution.

I worry that this has happened, or did happen, to Julian Assange at some point. I see signs that he began to think he was more important than the idea, or the group effort. I worry that he made an institution of himself. I worry that he felt himself above others and above the rules that others have to abide by. I think that, whether there are charges brought against him or not, whether charges result in a guilty verdict or not, he was too casual and disrespectful in the way he treated those women in the summer. I think he started to believe his own press.

Fame and celebrity is a dangerous thing in this day and age. We’re vain creatures, we humans. I remember reading that the brain waves of our pets change dramatically when we pet them, approaching an alpha state, they are so euphoric at that touch, that attention. Fame can do that to us, I think. It certainly appears that way when I watch the behavior of the famous, purring under the spotlight, oblivious to the consequences of their actions or robbed of all common sense.

Julian Assange strikes me as, potentially, such a person. I worry that he was so caught up in doing something good, for good reasons, and became so obsessive about it that he lost sight of who he was and started to believe the newspapers and the fans more than the mirror he looked at every morning. I worry that he thought he could be careless with the lives around him and that it was okay to do so.

So, to be clear, I’m not a fan of Julian Assange. I think his ego pollutes what he’s trying to do. I think that he let his own desire to be front and center get in the way of something remarkable, and now it’s harder and harder to remove the one story from the other. I think that his apparent rock star belief that he could or should use his celebrity to be player was horribly misguided and kind of pathetic.

I’m not a fan of Wikileaks either, in and of itself, but I appreciate what they are doing. I think it’s important for this time and place. I’m not assuming Assange’s guilt or innocence, but I question whether he, or any one person, should be the ‘face’ of anything as big as Wikileaks. Giant, potentially world-changing ideas deserve better than one, frail human face.

I believe that criminal investigations and charges of rape should be treated seriously, all involved given their due respect until the investigation is completed and, if required, courts can render a verdict. Until that happens, all involved should be given the benefit of the doubt, treated as innocent until proven guilty, including and especially the alleged victims of abuse.

I believe that, if possible, when accusations against a person blur the line between personal behavior and the political actions of a group, when they muddy the water, we should try our hardest to separate the two issues and not conflate one with the other.

And I believe that I really hope that’s all I feel the need to say about this. 

wikileaks and the emperor's new clothes

“Which country is suffering from too much freedom of speech? Name it, is there one?” Julian Assange

I didn't want to write this post. I just wanted to watch and post links. I wanted to be a spectator and hope for a good outcome. But here I am. Not writing about it was becoming a distraction that I don't need and so, in spite of the fact that it's a ridiculously complex issue, and that coverage of it in the main stream and alternate media is ubiquitous (if selective), here I am. I hope it's readable, and maybe offers a synthesis of ideas already circulating, but this is my disclaimer: I'm writing this for me. I need to process it here and go on the record. For me.

At best, I'll understand better how I really feel, the whole mess will make a bit more sense, and you'll have found something redeeming in the next many paragraphs to justify the battery power you use and the time I've stolen from you. At worst, I'll be as frustrated as I am right now, and you'll be asleep. Either way, for your entertainment, here's my brain, or maybe my brain on Wikileaks. For the record, the following is based on my understanding of the facts. I'm no journalist (nor do I want to be), or a lawyer, and I'm not doing any vast amount of fact checking beyond reading pretty much everything I can find on the subject. I'll try to avoid making gross errors of the facts, but if I do miss something, or get something wrong, it's an honest mistake. If you find such an error, please post the correction in comments and I'll update the main post.

To summarize then, Wikileaks is a journalistic enterprise dedicated to the ideals of transparency and open government. It supports these ideals by acting as a clearing house for whistle blowers, with systems from simple to sophisticated, designed to allow whistle blowers to provide Wikileaks with secret documents. Wikileaks vets the documents and then, after varying degrees of editorial perusal, they release them. They've been doing it now since 2006. Julian Assange was the original mastermind behind the idea and implementation, and he has remained the 'face' of Wikileaks throughout its existence.

While they've been operating for over three years, Wikileaks hit the big time this year with the release last spring of the Collateral Murder videos, versions both edited for length and completely unedited, of a US helicopter gunship attack on civilians that resulted in multiple deaths, including the deaths of two Reuters journalists. The video, if you haven't seen it, is graphic and disturbing. The audio of the pilots, gunners and their CO's is chilling and suggests a level of inhuman disconnect that shocked the world. Wikileaks was accused of editorializing the video, especially the length-edited version, to make the participant soldiers, and thus the US military, look as bad as possible.

They followed that up with the Afghanistan Logs, and then the Iraq Logs, two caches of military documents that provided unparalleled insight into both wars, the mentality behind the occupations, and revealed dramatically different stories and statistics than the US State Department and Pentagon had previously suggested were accurate. Finally, since the end of November, Wikileaks has been releasing in increments a cache of US diplomatic cables in what is now being called “cablegate”. In all three of the document release cases, Wikileaks has worked with major mainstream media sources, allowing seasoned journalists to scour the caches for weeks prior to public release, assist with redactions, and to help facilitate coverage and add legitimacy to their efforts, perhaps in response to the accusations of editorialization in the Collateral Murder video release. They also, in the cases of the Afghan and Iraq documents any way, invited the US government to participate in helping scour the caches and assist in redacting sensitive information that might put lives at risk, offers that were rejected.

In the summer, US Pfc Bradley Manning was arrested under suspicion of being the source of all of these leaks.

Also this summer, Assange was in Stockholm, Sweden to speak at a conference. He was later accused by two Swedish women of sex crimes under Swedish law. The allegations include sexual coercion and rape. Assange has completely denied any wrongdoing and accused the women and Swedish authorities of participating in a smear campaign against him on behalf of the US government. The lawyer for the two women says that they have no political motives. The allegations revolve around consensual sex that the women say became non-consensual, but the timeline and facts are convoluted, and the stories, so far, are just that.

Assange has now voluntarily surrendered himself to the UK police authorities in response to an international INTERPOL red notice requesting his detainment on a Swedish warrant. That warrant is not in relation to actual charges – no charges have been laid – but rather the desire of the Swedish police to speak to him IN PERSON. Suddenly that's a really big deal, even though Assange offered to make himself available in August and September, and was given permission to leave Sweden, and has offered to speak to investigators by Skype or other means since then.

The timing and circumstances are, needless to say, suspicious, and it's not hard to start drifting into conspiracy theory territory, but essentially, those are the facts and the end of the boring part. I say boring because, well, if you've been reading the news, and if you are Google-capable, then you can find it all out yourself. Go to it.

There is also a cult of personality issue here, and I despise the cult of personality. I despise unjustified fame being heaped on people of questionable character, whether it's heaped in response to talent or ability or luck or success. In a perfect world, fame would be reserved for those who were of the highest character only. But character isn't sexy. Character doesn't sell. And we do love the fall of our icons as much as the meteoric rise, don't we?

More important by far than Assange is or will ever be, is the underlying reasons and actions behind Wikileaks, and one of my frustrations is that Assange's soap opera is detracting from the message. It's the same problem I have with Black Bloc protesters that feel direct actions against postal boxes and corporate store fronts are an effective way to get an activist message of dissent across: It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of public perception, and a basically selfish and childish motivation to serve self ahead of the cause.

All of that said, the response to Wikileaks and cablegate has been electric and fierce. For the first time in such a public way, the governments of the West have embarked on an unprecedented extra-judicial attack against a non-American site, with massive Denial of Service hacker-style attacks being mounted against Wikileaks servers around the world, and pressure being applied to the “American” companies that have been hosting or allowing Wikileaks to work through them for parts of their operation. That response is a de facto admission that, as much as the US government protests that Wikileaks is only a minor inconvenience, they've really touched a nerve.

But why? What nerve have they touched? The US Government says that any disruption to diplomacy is only a minor inconvenience. If so, then why have they mobilized what amounts to an illegal attack on all things Wikileaks? An attack that, if perpetuated against the US government, would result in federal charges and aggressive prosecution. They are obviously afraid of Wikileaks far more than they are wiling to admit if they're willing to adopt the tactics of those they call cyber-terrorists to try to combat them.

I believe that the answer is obvious: Wikileaks is showing the world just how corrupt and morally vacuous our leaders actually are. As one writer put it, the emperors' clothes have just been shredded by the web, and the naked truth is that our political and plutocratic leadership is utterly devoid of anything remotely redeeming. In war, our “leaders” act like sociopaths, and incite and train soldiers to do the same, and in politics and diplomacy they act with all the aplomb and sophistication of three-year-olds fighting over the sandbox. Our leaders, in short, are not leaders at all. At least not ones worth following.

Several other pundits have also pointed out that, in the wake of the reaction to Wikileaks and Assange (especially if it is ever proven that the Swedish allegations are politically motivated), we will never be able to take self-righteous allegations against totalitarian regimes made by the West seriously again. The West has shown in the most public way that they are just as willing to suppress freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and dissent, as any of the regimes that they point at derisively to make themselves look better by comparison.

The illusion that we live in a free society has been completely stripped away. Our society may not be as oppressive as those totalitarian regimes, at least not on the surface of things, but the people in power are just as desperate to hold onto their power as any other dictator. When someone manages to pull the curtain aside, and we see not only the weak false-wizard back there, but see that the wizard is utterly naked and pathetic, those supposed leaders of the free world react with the same kind of violence and disregard for the law as any dictator does.

That we, as voters, are complicit in their tyranny just makes it a little more sad. 

Again and again, writers who see the value of what Wikileaks is doing, even if they question the details, have reiterated the concept that the best defense against Wikileaks and those who will inevitably follow it is a more open, less deceitful form of government, one that actually does work on behalf of people, and does so with transparency. If you are blameless, the logic goes, the reason for whistle blowers disappears. Even if accusations are leveled, it is easier to defend and prove innocence. 

That's a lesson that most of us are supposed to learn by grade one. I hope that Wikileaks and those who are like-minded manage to break the dysfunctional system we currently languish under so completely that re-making it becomes impossible. I hope that enough people open their eyes to the truth that we can reach a tipping point, and that this time, when the shit truly hits the fan, we can learn lessons from our history that actually stick.

I hope that Wikileaks makes it impossible for us to ignore the truth, and impossible to forget. This is, perhaps, an unrealistic hope. We've been here before under different circumstances, and supposedly we learned unforgettable lessons from those horrific times. Obviously, our ability to forget is directly proportional to our greed and selfishness and laziness. Maybe this time we can get it right. 

I know- doubtful. But then, I've been accused of being an incurable optimist before...

november

When I was eleven, the academic curriculum I was involved in at school was provided the opportunity to do a remarkable thing. Remarkable to us, in any case. We were allowed to make the big, dangerous walk across the street, through the sports fields, and into the giant halls of the Senior Secondary School to the confines of the band class so that we could participate in a unique grade seven music program. Through a quirk of fate and germs, I managed to miss the first visit. When I arrived in the second week, all of the really cool boy instruments – the trombones and trumpets, saxophones and tympanis, the lone guitar and drum kit – were taken.

I was left with the choice of clarinet or flute. The teacher said I had a good embouchure for flute (if @migroddy wanders through, maybe he can explain that concept in the comments), so that’s what I got. In time, I came to appreciate that placement – there are some really cute girls in the flute section – but at the time, just stumbling out of the blocks into pubescence with all of its sharp corners and early-adolescent contrasts, I did not feel lucky. I felt ripped off, like a cruel joke was being played on me. Like a giant “kick me” sign (to replace the one, only slightly smaller, that I already thought I possessed) had just been hung around my neck. I was not an enthusiastic student.

Three months later and heading towards the holiday break, I was facing my first test; about sixteen bars of simple melody that I could not complete on my best day. Not even close. My inadequacy was earned; I didn’t practice. The space between that band class and my closet space at school where I could hide the offending instrument, or home where I could hide it even better, was a bit of grade school social hell for me. Subsequently, I was on the road to failing said test, a probability that was, to me, as or more horrifying than the sentence of having to walk around in public with a flute case.

Not doing really well in school was not something I was comfortable with, in any subject. I was a nerd and proud of it. So with a few nights left before the test I suddenly came face to face with my desperation to excel and please my teachers, dug the flute out at home, and tried to practice.

It was dismal. When Mom now complains about tinnitus, I wonder whether that evening had something to do with it. I know that it didn’t, but still, I now know that nothing says “I love you” like a parent suffering through the early stages of music tutelage. After a whole fifteen minutes of trying and failing I was frustrated and ready to give up. I’d just quit the music program. I hated flute anyway, hated the snickers and the jokes and the insults. Mostly, to be honest, I hated not being better than the others. I hated standing out for the wrong reasons.

And then, for what was to be the first and last time, Mom made me keep trying. Like the one spanking I received, it had a profound effect. And like that one spanking, I’ve later wished she’d done it more. A lot more. I never really learned about how good discipline could be for you as a kid, but I wish sometimes that I’d had the opportunity to learn that lesson better, and younger.

But on that night, she was stern and strong and unwilling to equivocate on the subject of my practicing. As I got up to quit, she got in my face and made me sit back down. On that night, my fear of failure was confronted by that fierce motherly aspect, and my fear backed down.

I took my seat and tried again, her at my shoulder. And then I tried again because that time sounded as much like bird torture as the time before it. And again, and again, and again. It took another thirty minutes of really trying, of having no safe place to retreat to, of being stuck between a flute and a hardass, before the crux passage finally worked. Magically, my spasmodic fingers managed to function together and I made it through the bar of eighth notes and through to the finish. The only smile in the room bigger than mine was Mom’s.

Band and jazz band and orchestra ended up being extremely dependable and relatively easy A’s for me for the rest of my public school career. I was never exceptional, just a bit better than most, good enough for first flute but not enough to ever worry about a scholarship, and I was (sadly) okay with that. I learned to enjoy playing and being surrounded by girls even more. (A good embouchure is also useful for kissing.) All thanks to Mom and half an hour of not quitting.

But, as I said, it was a one-time lesson. I could have, should have, received that lesson many, many more times. But Mom got pretty busy with the boarders, and I was always too proud to ask or admit I needed it. So I coasted, and then floundered, and finally learned how to avoid challenges so as to avoid failure with an alacrity that bordered on evil genius.

It didn’t affect every part of my life, that aversion to risk, just the creative ones. Just the important ones. I did well in my chosen jobs, was successful when I went pack to school at 26 to re-educate following a motorcycle accident, and managed to get through most things looking like I sort of knew what I was doing. But I also didn’t really “complete” a lot of things. When the going got tough, I got going… the other way.

Through my thirties I was provided opportunities to learn lessons that I wish I’d learned in my teens. Somehow I managed to stumble into management positions, and where I was comfortable failing myself, I found I wasn’t comfortable at all failing the teams that depended on me. That sense of obligation or responsibility was the leverage my mind and heart needed to get over the hump and push through to completion, even when my legs wanted to go the other way.

Those lessons took a long time to learn though. I wrote the first draft of the prologue of the story I’m writing nearly fourteen years ago, got forty or so pages in, drew maps, and then abandoned it. I told myself it was just fantasy and not literary enough. I told myself that it was unrealistic to want to be a writer. I told myself that I was almost thirty and should start being a responsible adult. And they were all excuses.

At forty-three, I finally had enough confidence, frustration, angst, disillusionment, hope… whatever… to try again.

You know this part of the story if you’ve been reading along for a bit. (If not, search “life inversion” and catch up.) I quit again, but this time only the parts that were really bad for me – the corporate job, the consumerism, the stuff-accumulation, the pretending and pretension. I decided to put all my eggs in one basket, say “fuck it”, and write that goddamned novel I’d always said I was going to write.

I finished the bastard last Friday.

Well, not “finished” it in the sense that I’m ready to try to sell it just yet, but I finished a second draft. It’s close. There’s a bit of polishing, then the sharing with trusted and valued readers, then a final polish. But then, soon, only a couple months away now, I’ll be trying to find an agent.

When I typed the last word of the last chapter on Friday, it felt a bit like vindication. Not over anyone else. But over me. To me it felt like giving a big middle finger to the part of me that thought I’d never do it; to the voice that whispered in the dark that I was deluding myself; to the piece that was still convinced I was a fuck up. I felt like I was standing over that remnant, that vestigial quitter, on the field of battle, my foot on its corpse, sword in hand, screaming something primordial into the cold gloaming air. My own Barbaric Yawp.

It was how I’d felt, just that once as an eleven-year old, when Mom made me keep trying until I fucking got it, only better.

Some lessons, I suppose, take longer to learn than others. Mostly the important ones.

Epilogue: The mss is essentially done. Like I said, there’s a bit of polishing to do, but it’s pretty much complete at 180k words. I edited over 50k of them in the last month (my own sort-of NaNoWriMo), so thanks for hanging around while I took that break. Regular posts will now commence again. I’ll keep you updated.

P.S. I missed you all.

things i wish i didn’t think

This morning, driving into the coffee shop that I refer to as the office, I was listening to a program on CBC radio about five brain-damaged men who meet weekly with a psychologist to talk about their lives, their anger, and their small joys. They call themselves the “five crazy guys” and their stories are tragic and inspiring.

One of them mentioned that brain injuries are called the invisible disease because, often, people suffering from them don’t look visibly different in any way. Then he said, “But they’re the most invisible to us. We only see “us” in the mirror. We’re just us, and the disease is something that only the people around us, that know us, recognize.”

I immediately thought of Mom. She is constantly amazed when we tell her that she’s been herself the whole time that her history hard drive has been malfunctioning. There’s a disconnect between the idea that she can be present in a moment, be the woman we’ve always known in her demeanor and actions, but yet not remember that moment a week from now, or the next day.

For her, every day is the first day after her illness, the day that things start to get better, the day when the memories will start coming back. And yet, by the end of many days, there’s a worry that creeps back into her eyes when she realizes that most of that very day has already slipped away, and that it really isn’t the first day after, but just another day during.

That look comes every time she asks about a friend that hasn’t been to visit in so long and we remind her that they were over last week for coffee. It appears behind her eyes when she has that moment of cognition that suggests that, if she can be present and still forget about it now, and then the fact that she feels present now might not mean that anything is getting better at all.

Miriam and I trade glances when the conversation turns this way. It generally sours the mood, erodes perfectly better days. We just hate to see her fighting it and being miserable doing it. It’s the anxiety that hurts her most, speeds the erosion, drives her hope away, and we do what we can to keep her calm and in the moment. But we know what’s coming, and it usually means that the next day won’t be so good. She won’t remember why she’s upset, but it will be there.

Mom has the disease of ALZ, and it’s mostly invisible to her, but not to Miriam and me. I wonder sometimes if she wishes that we wouldn’t be honest, or that we weren’t there to remind her of all the history she’s lost. I don’t want to think it, but there it is. Honestly, I don’t think we’re there yet, but I know it might come – will come; that time when us trying to help her hold on is more of a hindrance than a help.

I hope, when that time comes, that I’m strong enough to let go with dignity.

That thought, that we see her disease more than she does some days, and that there will be a day when I have to let go, just welled up in me as I listened to the radio and I had to pull over. That thought was strong enough to intrude into my manuscript world and make thinking of fictions impossible, and I’ve been doing pretty good most days on the obsession front, I really have.

Not this morning. They were in my face, and I had to get them out, get them down. And now I have to put them aside again, hoping that letting them sound and blow into the cold air is enough to keep them quiet for a few more days, submerged and below the surface again, wishing sometimes that I could forget like she does.

But not really, not ever.

And now I’m staring at the words and wondering if this is for public consumption at all. They’re kind of depressing. But they’re the truth. Take the good with the bad; she taught me that too. 

climbing (part two)

In climbing, the only person you actually compete against is yourself. 

Not that there isn’t plenty of competition: against gravity, balance, time, weakness, fear. But against other people? Pretty much never. In a climbing gym or at a crag you won’t hear anyone say a negative thing to anyone else unless it’s about their hat. I’ve heard climbers chastise themselves for not completing a move or a climb, but criticism of others is non-existent. Support? Encouragement? Even help and information (we call it beta)? We have those in spades. It’s just the way we roll.

I work part time at my local climbing gym. It doesn’t pay tons, but it’s fun as hell, mostly because the atmosphere is just so positive. People come in by themselves or in groups of two or three, but once inside, it’s all one mess of people, all of us united in a love of the movement, the strain, the challenge.

Waiting for your turn on a wall or a route? Chances are somebody beside you has tried it or climbed it, and chances are you’ll get some awesome beta if you ask. New to climbing? Somebody will probably offer some humble and helpful advice when you struggle on the easiest climb. They might point out one that’s easier to start on. They might show you how to manipulate your balance to make a move easier so that you too can defy gravity a bit and glide up the vertical.

And if you stick a move or finish that climb, somebody, even if you’re alone and know nobody, will probably say, “Nice climb”, or share your grin of accomplishment.

"What about the best climbers?" you ask. "Aren't they egotistical and self-absorbed?" Some might be, but I haven't met them. They’re often the most helpful, cheering on the newer climbers, or the weaker ones, urging them on to be better and reinforcing every success.

Sitting at the counter the other day, a couple ladies around my age (which is to say, not young) were getting ready to leave after their bouldering session. I asked how it was and they beamed. “Awesome!” one of them said. “We just started a few weeks ago and, every time I come in, someone offers some new little piece of advice that makes it make more sense.”

I nodded. “It’s one of my favorite things about climbing.”

“Is it like this everywhere?”

I smile, proud of it. “Everywhere I’ve been, yeah. Climbers are just happy folk. We like to see the people around us happy.”

In the gym or out at the crags, it’s the same way. I’ve shown up at crags alone and been climbing with a group or some other single in no time. It takes a bit of trust to climb with people you don’t know, and it’s important to watch them a bit before you trust them to belay you, but that’s part of the thrill; trusting is a rush.

Even when I show up with friends, I don’t think I’ve gone a day in the presence of climbers I don’t know without making a new friend. Maybe it’s the outdoors, or the adrenalin, or the endorphins. Who cares? 


It's possible, to be fair, that there are even climbing gyms or crags where it isn’t like this. Maybe some climbers are just as consumed with shoring up their egos by undermining the self-esteem of those around them as the world seems to be. I’m pleased to say I haven’t met those climbers or seen those places either.

Yes, there are climbing competitions (demonstration sport in the 2012 Olympics as I understand it), and by definition, in a climbing comp one climber is trying to do better than others. But I’ve been to few sporting events where the competitors cheer each other on as much and as sincerely as at a climbing comp.

I know it sure doesn’t happen like that playing hockey. Team sports seem to embolden people to place too much importance on things like final scores. I understand final scores, and I enjoy winning, but it’s tainted for me when that winning requires me to actively dislike my opposition and wish them ill, even for the hour it takes to play the game. There’s something about watching grown men come to blows over a recreational game of hockey that takes the fun right out of it for me.

There’s too much of that in the world, that win at all costs mentality. In sport, business, politics, academics, science, and our schools the emphasis is too often placed on winning as the only goal. Profits are valued over people, bonuses over safety, money over truth, power over integrity. It baffles me. It baffled me in business, where owners and executives only gave lip service to giving a damn about their employees or clientele. It baffles me in politics where those we elect to serve us so blatantly serve the big money that paid for their advertising instead. It baffles me in professional sport, where athletes will destroy themselves and betray their own integrity using drugs to try to get an extra edge. 


I fully and happily admit to not 'getting' that.

I remember watching “A Beautiful Mind” and loving the film as a film. But the part that stayed with me was John Nash’s theorem: That a group of vying agents can achieve greater aggregate success by seeking a cooperative solution rather than competing for one highest-value outcome that excludes success for all but the winner. Nash was American and won the Nobel for his economic theories based on that principle, but the concept seems to have caught on better in other parts of the world than it has in the competitive free-market atmosphere of North America.


This also - baffling.

I volunteer at my gym too, for school groups and birthdays. We volunteers strap on a harness and act as belay slaves for the kids, leading them around the gym to different climbs, making sure it's safe, offering basic climbing tips, encouraging the others to cheer the climber up the wall. Those groups are fun, more than I can explain, but the best moments are with the kids that hate heights or find the prospect intimidating.

Every time I find one of those kids, I try hard to encourage them up the wall, They stop when they want to, and I never push hard, but I tell them they’re doing great, assure them the I’ve got them – that they’re safe – and then ask if they want to try for one more hold before I let them down.

Sometimes they don’t, and that’s okay. I let them down and tell them they did great. They tried, stretched themselves, risked. That’s more than most people ever do.

But often, more often than not, over the course of their hour in the gym they find it within themselves, bolstered by the cheers of their friends, to be courageous and reach for that one extra hold, and then reach for another. It’s rare that they don’t touch the roof by the end of their session.

Maybe it’s clichéd, but I have to say; there is nothing – no thing – better than the look on their face when they get back down and know that they’ve just accomplished something that they were positive they could not do only forty-five minutes earlier. Their friends cheer for them, parents and teachers beam, and their smiles get (somehow) bigger. Wide, surprised eyes squint as the smile spreads upwards and transforms their face. That look is equal parts disbelief and conquering hero. It’s a look that says, in some small way, that their world just had to grow, to swell a bit to accommodate their new selves.

I see that same look on the faces of climbers that have just pulled off a new route, that made them stretch and train and practice hard so they could realize it. They don’t give much of a shit whether the climbers standing around are better or worse. It’s not a competition, after all. It’s just them and the moment and the thrill of growing.

And those standing around? We understand. That’s why we smile too. We might only wish we could climb that well, or maybe we remember what it was like to crack that plateau the first time, but chances are, we’re smiling with the person walking away from the wall because we understand. We are full to overflowing with empathy. So, yeah, we smile too.

But not for too long.

Our turn is next you see, our chance to grow a little bit, to compete against nothing but our hearts and minds and bodies and gravity. Our own smile, one that says “I just grew a notch”, is on the other side of the climb. We have ourselves to be better than, and nobody else.

i have a confession

I’ve been more aware than usual lately that I tend to work my way around things obliquely before I actually tackle them head on. I allude to a lot of things for a long time until I screw up the courage, or find the right time, or my self-imposed defensive orbit just degrades to the point that I fall into the gravity well. Directly talking about writing -  that I write and that I want to be a writer, like for a living - is one of them.

It’s time I come clean.

I’ve talked about a bunch of other things that the life-inversion is about; how much I had grown to hate profit motives, consumerism, the systems of the world and politics, my addictions to stuff and appearances, and all the things that we use to anesthetize ourselves – that I used to anesthetize myself with for so long - and how I needed to make drastic changes in order to chase after a better me. All of those things are very true and close to my heart. But it was the story, the novel, that was the real reason. It was the thought of telling stories like my favorite authors told - stories that snuck past my defenses and made me think and aspire – that kept me up at night. It was the thought of the process of telling those stories and how it might help me grow and expand that made me smile at unexpected moments, like a jolt of pure joy. It was always about the stories.

The story, the one I’m trying to tell right now, is a giant, massive beast of an epic fantasy. The manuscript, as I work deep into the second draft, sits just a bit over 200,000 words, and it’s the first of the at least four volumes I believe it will take to tell the whole tale. This alone might make it a cumbersome thing to try to get published, and sometimes I wonder if I’ve written it this way, on this scale, to make it harder for myself. I do that sometimes, like exaggerating the dream of being a writer: I make it so big that I don’t have to worry about it ever being more than a dream because it’s so unrealistic.

But it is realistic. The story is alive to me. I think I’d read it and fall in love with the landscapes and cultures, the heroes and anti-heroes and complicated antagonists, their foibles and demons and dreams, and the messed up realities that they have to face and overcome to try to make things fit. I want it to work as a great story, one that people can escape into as a pure adventure. I want people to read and be there, and feel what the characters feel, and wish it would never end.

I also have hubristic aspirations. I want the story, the way I tell it, to work on more levels than just as a story. I desire it to be like my favorites, with nuances and insights and things below the surface worth digging for, things that come up for air between the plot lines and dialog, or that reveal themselves only through a process of erosion. I want it to measure up to the tales I loved - the genre and non-genre ones - that broke me open and made my world a bigger place and challenged me in tragic and beautiful ways to see the world exactly the way it is and still be a dreamer. To know the truth and still dream.

But I’m still afraid of that dream in fundamental ways too. It’s so precious to me, has been for so long, that the thought of trying and failing paralyzes me sometimes. I have a fear of failure and have had it for a long, long time. I fear that it will simply be not good enough to publish. Or worse, that I will not be sufficient to the aspiration; that I’ll betray my characters and fail to tell their stories properly. That I’ll let them and the story down. It’s the breathstopping fear of letting the story down that paralyzes me the most.

That’s a danger with dreams; sometimes they take on such mythic proportions that we’re afraid to approach them, afraid that we won’t be up to that challenge, and afraid that failing will mean we were never meant to own the dream in the first place. That’s my biggest fear by far.

Although I rarely remember my dreams, I do have this one recurring nightmare:

In the dream I’m sitting at the laptop and suddenly realize that I’m out of stories to tell. The well is dry and I have nothing left worth trying to say. The realization stuns me and I stop typing. And then the walls start to slowly, quietly crack and disintegrate as if they were made of sand the whole time and all it took was a puff of hesitation to bring the house down. I look down at my hands, at my palms, trying to figure out what went wrong, and the same thing starts to happen to my fingers, each digit first blurring and then softly blowing away from the tip down to the palm down to the wrist. And that’s about when I always wake up.

And then, in the dark, I realize that the truth is scarier: I haven’t even finished the first story, and I have nobody to lay that culpability on but myself.

I hate fear, and love it. I hate it when I let it slow me, and love it when I overcome it. I know that I cannot overcome it if it isn’t there, so I try to embrace it and be thankful for the opportunity it represents, but that’s hard too. One of my favorite storytellers, Frank Herbert, had some wonderful things to write about fear, and I remember them almost daily. And I remember that courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

I have come to love this blog, but right now it’s also providing a lot of distraction; fun temptations full of writing bite-sized, pretty, thoughtful, ugly, silly things and receiving immediate feedback. I love where TOL has taken me, is taking me – the friends it’s introduced me to and the ways it’s made me stretch. But it’s in the way right now.

So I’m going to take a partial hiatus from thinkingoutloud-land. I think this means one post a week until V 2.0 of the manuscript is done, but I’m not making any promises.

I need to get obsessive and just finish it. As Sugar would say, I need to finally rip this second beating heart out of me. Because I write, I’m a writer, and there are stories to tell.

And I need to do it before my hands blow away.

It feels good to get that off my chest. Thanks for bearing witness.

****

To everyone that comes here and reads, whether you comment or not (but there’s a special place in my heart for those that join the discussion), both here and on FB, thank you. Just having you around, sharing your thoughts, means the world. Give me through the end of the year or so and we’ll see about getting back to our regularly scheduled programming.

lest we forget

November 5^th to 11^th is Veteran’s Week in Canada, culminating on Remembrance Day on the 11^th. It is the equivalent of Memorial Day in the U.S. It is, in many ways, a weirdly conflicted holiday for me.

Last year I got in a bit of trouble with some respected and valued friends for posting a quote by Noam Chomsky that focused on the yellow ribbon campaign, “Support Our Troops”. I’m going there again, yes I am. This time, though, I’ll try to be clearer about how I feel.

Chomsky’s point in that quote was that PR slogans as ambiguous as “Support Our Troops” are propaganda, and that the ambiguity serves to cloud over a lot of issues. I mean, really, who in their right mind would say they don’t support our troops? “Our troops” are people, like us, flesh and blood. These are men and women that are wiling to put their lives on the line for their countries. Sadly, it takes a war for them to prove it.

And that’s where things get sticky and where propaganda slogans can muddle over a lot of complex, dicey issues. Pointing out that we aren’t fighting any really noble wars these days, or noting the ridiculous death toll among civilians and how lopsided those casualty statistics are, or suggesting that the sophistication of modern indoctrination methods in the military can make soldiers into machines can make it sound like a person doesn’t support our troops. And that’s the point of vague slogans like “Support Our Troops”, because unless one is willing to get into the nitty-gritty of it all and really chew the subject to pieces, it can just sound like one is unsympathetic and unappreciative of the efforts of people who are willing to make supreme sacrifices.

For the record then, just as I felt it last year: I am very sympathetic and appreciative. I treat every service man or woman I meet with respect and gratitude whether they serve now, or served in the past.

I don’t support the war effort though, especially not the current ones. I also have very strong opinions about why our governments have us in the wars we are in, opinions that aren’t very complimentary. I think our governments got us there for all the wrong reasons, and through lies and manipulations. I have concerns about the part that economies play in the martial decisions our governments make, and profit should never, ever be a reason to kill people.

I think that everyone -- soldiers, freedom fighters, mercenaries, the civilians and those left behind who lose people they love – are casualties of war. Nobody gets out of it in tact; not really. Whether it’s directly, or by degrees of separation, we’re all casualties. Even when the cause was good, we were all injured by it. We’re still injured by it, scarred at a cultural level.

I wonder sometimes if those scars remind us, or whether they just deaden nerves and make it easier for us to forget the kind of pain we’re actually capable of inflicting.

In Canada, in the weeks leading up to Remembrance Day, we buy little plastic poppies to signify our remembrance and wear them on our lapels and jackets. There’s a poem about Canadian soldiers dying in France in World War I called In Flanders Fields that explains why:

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918), Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

It’s kind of amazing, although I do wish there was no need to pass torches. But that's why we wear poppies to show we remember. Our cenotaphs are inscribed solemnly with the declaration, “Lest We Forget”.

I prefer “Lest We Forget” to “Support Our Troops”. It’s more honest; less ambiguous. It’s not, in any way, disingenuous or manipulative. “Lest We Forget” recognizes that war is just fucking horrible and suggests that nobody really wins; that we need to remember this and not make the same stupid mistakes over and over and over. "Lest We Forget" honors the truth that, if we’re lucky, at its best, the least correct side loses in any given war, but even that’s not a guarantee. It’s all so blurry these days, and every side seems gray-washed. But no, no matter the outcome, nobody wins.

I wear a poppy during veteran’s week, I do. And I observe the minute of silence on the 11^th. I wear and observe in honor of the people that have given their lives, made sacrifices big and bigger, for me and for others. I have deep respect for that sacrifice, even when politicians and generals and CEO’s seem wiling to spend lives so carelessly.

I wear the poppy and remember all of them. Not just the ones that wear or wore a Canadian flag, not even just the ones on “our” side. They all lived and felt the dawn, loved and were loved, even the ones that we fought against. And like us, they fought for what they thought were the right reasons too, even when they (and we), were (and are), wrong.

Damn rights I wear my poppy. I’m all for “Lest We Forget”. Let’s have more of it. So far, we haven’t gotten the point.

the highest fidelity

I need to tell you a story about friendship. It’s a story about Mom and an incredible friend she’s had for what feels like forever. Her friend, my friend, Miriam, is pretty amazing, and without her our world would be a very different place.

Mom, when prompted, still tells the story this way: I was thirteen or so and mom was still working at the group home five nights a week. It was a poorly paid job, as many jobs connected to caring for the disadvantaged among us tend to be, and she had picked up a second job several mornings a week at a cafeteria that catered mostly to trades-people. This restaurant, Corkie’s, did a fair bit of business every day making sandwiches for a mobile vendor in town. Mom would zip home at six each morning, make sure I was up so that I could make my lunch and catch the bus, and then she’d be at Corkie’s by seven to make sandwiches.

So there she was one morning, in the back kitchen, exhausted and broken and miraculously, heroically trying to hold it all together while she made sandwiches. This particular morning she was failing, crying as she spread mayo and applied slices of ham and cheese, when Miriam came in and saw her. Miriam just reached out and helped, offered an ear and a shoulder, and they became friends.

That was twenty-seven years ago.

Miriam was divorced too, and moved into the house a few years later to rent a room off of us for a while. When she had a heart attack and lost her business, Mom helped back. Miriam took early retirement and recovered, helping more and more around the house and with the girls. She’s been a part of our lives since then; quiet, industrious, supportive. There. Always. In another age, maybe this one now, or maybe that one if Mom had seen the word a different way, they might have been more than friends. I would have had no problem with that – Miriam is good folk, and they would have made a nice couple – but that’s not how Mom was raised. Sometimes I think that that's too bad.

Either way, their friendship has always been a strong and pure thing. At least some of the strength that Mom managed to harness can be traced to Miriam’s support. Miriam is eighty to Mom’s seventy. She’s been retired for quite a while now and suffered another heart attack and a stroke in the intervening years. When she had the stroke, back when thrombolytic therapy was just receiving its first public bout of fame, my mom pushed the doctors to use it. They, of course, knew way more about it than Mom and ran the appropriate tests before acquiescing, but then, sure enough, Miriam got the clot-busting drugs, and early enough that she made a full recovery. A miraculous recovery in some ways. I like to think that Mom gets a bit of credit for that, for lighting the fire under certain medical bottoms and keeping it stoked.

When Mom’s memory started showing signs of wonkiness eighteen or so months ago, Miriam was there to take care of her and help her stay as calm as possible. She has the patience of a saint, that woman. (As I read a draft of this to her she humbly gives me a “pfft” when I say this – that’s the way she rolls. And when I tell her I’m going to insert a comment about her "pfft", Mom giggles and Miriam pfft's a again. They also roll that way.)

When I came down from the lodge once a month in those early days of the life inversion, I grilled Miriam gently for the details on how things were going. At the time, her desire to keep Mom’s anxiety down had her mostly in an unavoidable denial mode; she had to play down what seemed to be happening, even with herself. I completely understand why.

As the summer went on and Mom’s symptoms didn’t recede, and started to get worse, there came a time when Miriam and I stole a few minutes and just had a heart to heart. In all the time she’d shared with Mom, with us, we had never done this: mano a mano, face to face, just the two of us. It was a watershed moment, one that was sadly long overdue.

We faced the truth together that day and, in our similarly pragmatic, laid back styles, decided on a few things: We’d make sure that Mom stayed at home as long as possible and that she’d know, be reminded every day, that she wouldn’t be abandoned somewhere; we’d get her as much help as we could and fight as tenaciously as we had to in order to get it; and we’d be as honest as we could with each other and her through it all. For Miriam, whose picture might actually be in a dictionary somewhere referencing a definition of “stoic”, the honesty and openness was a grand and selfless sacrifice.

When I went to the UK earlier this year for my also-long-overdue visit with my Dad, Mom hit her hardest patch so far, as if on cue. Two weeks in I was ready to catch a plane back. Mom, her anxiety spiking, possibly because she felt like I was out of reach, or maybe because that was just part of the rhythm of her decline, basically lost about thirty years of history in a matter of days. Miriam was in those thirty years somewhere and Mom lost her.



After two weeks of this, on my second Saturday there, when I was ready to cut the visit short, Miriam and I spoke on the phone. “Wait,” Miriam told me firmly. “We’re getting by and I have her in for an appointment with her psychiatrist on Monday.”

She has a tone, a stubborn thing that reaches convincingly over oceans apparently. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll wait to see what he says. How are you doing?”

“Oh, fine.”

“No, Miriam, how are you really.”

For the second time in the twenty-seven years I’d known her I heard her start to cry. The other time was when, at sixty-eight, she had fallen off the roof cleaning gutters and broken her ankle. And that time there had been a Clint Eastwood-worthy salty string of words thrown in. Not this time.

This time there was only a moment of silence, and then a sniff, and then a sad, tremulous breath. “I’m afraid,” she said, “and tired a bit.” And then, quickly and with conviction, “But we’re just fine. You stay there. You and your dad have been waiting for this for a long time. Everything will be just fine, you’ll see.”

Well it was. The doctor increased the dosage of the medication to help her memory, and put her on the new anti-anxiety treatment. Within days she was feeling better than she had been in months. She got around fifteen of those thirty years back, and the simple, steadfast truth of Miriam returned to her accessible memory files. I have no idea how that works, but it did. We had Mom back.

I wasn’t able to shake the thought of what Miriam went through during those few weeks though. I couldn’t – can’t – fathom what it would be like to wake up and have your best of best friends, someone that you’d lived with for twenty-seven years, created a life of sharing and support with, not remember you when they walked out of their bedroom. I don’t get what that might cost, how deep it would cut; How hard it would be to maintain faith and stay that course.

(An aside here: You may have noticed if you have been following this blog, that I have been mighty fortunate in the strong female role model department. If this were Twitter, I’d underscore this with a hash tag salute, perhaps #understatementoftheyear, or something like that.)

I was over for dinner last night. Mom’s had a slightly harder last few days, the anxiety up a bit, her recall weaker. She was tired and her confidence was shot. There were hugs and re-affirmations of love. I played a few games of single-suit Spider Solitaire with her and helped her get back on a winning streak, and she perked right up. I know that every drug is just a finger in the dyke, and that sooner or later things will start to decline again. That’s reality, and we promised to be honest, but it’s still incredibly shitty to think about. But we try to be hopeful too. It’s just one day. Tomorrow will be better again.

And if it isn’t, we’ll deal with that.

I wait, on my visits, until Mom disappears into the bedroom to play solitaire on the computer after dinner, give Miriam my “I’m serious” look, and ask, “How are you doing?”

“Oh fine,” she said last night. There was a little twinge around here eyes, a sign of the load she carries for Mom. For us. “Some days are better than others, but we’re just fine.”

And I think to myself, this is what friendship really is; something so constant and unselfish that it weathers divorces and heart attacks and bankruptcy and strokes and ALZ and the person you love forgetting who you are, and through it all… remains.

So when I say “we” from here on in, understand that Miriam is a part of that, part of us. It was past time to say so, and she was finally, finally ready to let me. She deserves her due.

#understatementoftheyear