A Thought on Fear

I lie,  and tell you I'm not scared, you lie and tell me you're not either, and we lock ourselves into the lines we've drawn in the sand and pull the covers over our heads, and the world moves on without us and our secret fears pound on the door, and we lose our grip on reality, lose touch, and grow to silently resent each other for not being the people we pretended to be.

I tell you I'm afraid, you tell me not to be, and I don't feel much better but I trust you to protect me and you try, but you grow anxious wondering if you're good enough, strong enough, brave enough for a job no one can possibly do, and when you disappoint me I grow angry and make you feel small, a fleeting attempt to make myself feel bigger, better, stronger than I am.

I tell you I'm afraid, you tell me you're afraid as well.  You understand.  We share our thoughts, our spectres, our demons, and though what scares us doesn't go away, life seems easier to swallow, in this moment our world is just a slight less lonely, and with nothing to prove we can carry on, a light for each other in the darkness.

A Haunting Story

This is someone else's story.  I met Ron, a middle aged veteran, in a barroom in 2006.  I was 23 years old, in my fourth year of university, talking to strangers and listening to their stories. Not all of them caught my attention, but some of them really made me think.  Ron's was one of them, so much so that I wrote it down in a journal.
Ron got pretty emotional as he told me his story, and who could blame him?  I knew we were going into the darkness when he started calling me by my name - almost nobody does - and by the end of the night he was crying on my shoulder.  All he knew about me was that I wanted to write a war novel.  I never saw him again.  His story still haunts me.  So, from my old journal:

____________________________________________________________________________


"You'll never learn the truth about war from a textbook.  You listen to me, little girl.  There is nothing glorious about war.  You wanna know what goes through a soldier's head?  It's 'Get me the fuck out of here.'  And if it's a higher ranking officer, it's 'Get my men the fuck out of here.'  Glory?  It's fucking propaganda.  That's the truth.

"And you know something?  There is no worse feeling than bombing the shit out of a town, and then going into that town and seeing for yourself what you did.  I once had to see the damage I did to a town.  Our orders were to blow the town to smithereens, and we did.  Then they told us to go into the town and finish the job.  I followed my orders.  I went into the town, and saw all the buildings destroyed, bodies lying in the street with their skin burned off, blood everywhere.  And do you know what it was that made me cry?  A dog.  A dog, who had lost one of its legs.  In the army, they teach you only how to kill.  They train you not to care.  But here was a crippled dog in a destroyed city, and it was all my fault.  You know what I did?  I followed my orders and finished my job.

"Now, sweetheart, I never said I killed anyone.

"You want the truth, Natalie, I'll tell you the truth.  And you can spread the word.  I don't like talking about these things.  That war was thirty years ago, and I still get nightmares when I think about it.  You try to move on with your life, but how can you?

"You know something?  I was in a POW camp in Vietnam. I was in a POW camp, and I escaped.  I escaped on foot, with a razorblade.  How do you think I escaped with just a razorblade?  What do you think I had to do?  Natalie, not a day goes by when I don't think about it.  I remember each one of their faces.  It was one thing to shoot weapons from far away, but how do you kill a man face to face?  And I had to!  It was all I could do!  I watched as my friends had the shit shot out of them!  I saw what happened to the people in the POW camp, and all I could think was 'It's not happening to me,' and I got my hands on a razorblade and did what I had to do.

"They sent us out there to kill, and we killed.  I think about it everyday.  And when we got back, they didn't want us.  The only job I could get when I came back was as a cook!  They wouldn't let us into the Legions because we'd lost the war.  We didn't lose the war!  We shouldn't have been there!  They never wanted us there!  I don't want pity.  I was a soldier doing what I had to do to survive.  But you know, the circumstances don't matter.  The war doesn't matter, and the danger doesn't matter.  There's only one word for what happened, and it's Murder.

"At the Legion, we never talk about what we've been through.  We go there for a drink, for a laugh.  We ignore the rest of it.  Nobody wants to think about fighting in a war.  They know the truth.

"I look at what's going on these days in the Middle East.  All these kids they're sending out, sending home in coffins.  It's such a waste.  A buddy of mine asked me how long it would take me to take down a town out there, and I told him twenty minutes - and I'd flatten everything in the way.  They're sending kids out there who don't know what they're doing.  They should send us old guys.  I mean, I know I can't fit into a tank like I used to, but damnit, we've done it before!  We'd get the job done quicker!

"This world's a mess, and us old guys should clean up the mess for you young people.  You shouldn't be out there, learning how to kill from scratch.  People your age should be studying and partying and making love -"

"...And writing books," I interrupted.  For the first time in awhile, Ron smiled.  He cupped my face with his hands and then hugged me.

"God Bless you," he said.  "You put this in your book."


(2006)

"Fragile" (painting by Rick Hicks, Toronto, ON)

"The name of the painting is inspired by the Yes album of the same name. The colours I used are similar to those of the artist who did that cover, Roger Dean. My style is loosely based on Jackson Pollock and the French Canadian painter, Jean Paul Riopelle. Back in 2013, I did over 120 paintings on paper boards, which were inspired by them."
Rick Hicks
Toronto, ON

The Radio Says There's a Storm Coming

The radio says there’s a storm coming.  Catherine can’t believe it.  “The day after tomorrow,” they say, but the skies are big and blue and the ocean ebbs and flows.  Another wave, another breath, another minute, another day.  “Run away,” they say, but Catherine can’t run.  How do you run from home?  Where do you go?  Catherine doesn’t know.  She doesn’t believe it.

She sits on the beach all day, the sun kissing her skin, a warm breeze cooing in her ear and flirting with the hair on her arms.  She lies on the beach, her toes pushing sand around here and back, digging in, digging up.  She smiles at the sun.  The sun smiles back.  You wouldn’t let me down, would you?

Everybody’s gone.  They ran away.  Fled.  The beach is quieter than usual, littered here and there by other solitary souls with nowhere to go, sitting, lying in the sand, ruminating, meditating,  Ommmm...  The radio says a storm is coming.  These souls don’t believe it.  She strolls along the seashore.  She sells sea shells...  Alone but not alone among the solitary souls, and it could all be over the day after tomorrow, but Catherine doesn’t believe it.  Her mind is empty.  Blank.  Ebb, flow, ebb, flow, life affords plenty of time for self-talk, and we complain of not having enough.  This is not a moment for self-talk.  This is a moment of silence, a moment of peace.  When we shut up, we give the planet a chance to speak.

What does the world say to Catherine, mind blank, alone but not alone, solitary soul in a moment not afforded to self-talk?  The sea gulls protest.  They fly not far too high and scream and scream.  The surf washes in, washes out.  Always moving to a rhythm all its own, in a quiet, subtle, unimposing, inoffensive melody and timbre.  (Have you listened to the water sing?  Oh, please tell me you have listened to the water sing!)  A soft ripple chimes with each step Catherine wades into the sea.  She looks down and watches the fish in the ocean, thrown about by the waves in the shallow water.  If the storm comes, will they all be washed ashore?  Catherine doesn’t believe it.  The wind flies through her hair as she stands in the shallow water, watching the fish.  This is the way we wash our feet, wash our feet, wash our feet...

Who will tell the story, after all is said and done?  Is there anything to tell? This story doesn’t start with Once upon a time because it didn’t happen Once upon a time. It’s rather the ending of many other Once upon a times. Each solitary soul here carries a story, carries a reason.  There are reasons all these solitary souls won’t run away, run away.  Do any of them matter, Catherine wonders, knowing the ultimate answer.  People come.  They live, they love, they suffer, they redeem, and each one goes away when the time comes.  Everybody wants to think their story matters.  Everybody wants to think that there’s a reason, an important reason.  Everybody wants to matter.  So tragic to think of how many people will live and die without ever telling their Once upon a times.  Everybody’s special.  Of course they are, thinks Catherine.  Of course they are.

Once upon a time a child looked for signs everywhere she could.  She gazed at stars and into fires and rivers and knew there had to be a point.  Twinkle, twinkle little star...  To the dismay of the imagination of a five-year-old girl, Nature never returned her calls.  All children need to grow up sometime.

Afraid?  Of course she’s afraid.  Who can tell what tomorrow will bring?  The storm is coming the day after tomorrow.  She can run.  She can flee north, like so many others.  She can make a life for herself, start over, and who wouldn’t love a fresh start, the tabula rasa, a chance to try again.  She can be who she wants to be, live how she wants to live, if only she would flee.  And yet, there is no running.  She is who she is.  She could try to be different, but what point is there in denying herself?  It would all come back to this.  She can never erase that Once upon a time she stood on a beach, listening to the surf and the gulls, playing in the sand, feeling the water ebb and flow over her feet, waiting for this storm to come.  Her past will always be her past.  There’s no running from that.

The locals board up their windows and lock their doors.  They cover their treasures with plastic, hoping for the best.  They fill their homes with candles and canned beans, flashlights and batteries, towels and blankets, lighters and propane tanks, raincoats and umbrellas.  They make plans, seek places of refuge up the road.  They write to their loved ones and take photographs and collect drinkable water.  They fuel up their engines and gas cans.  They make plans, arrange exit strategies.  They don’t hear the gulls scream, or the surf wash up onto the shore.

Once upon a time a little girl sat on a rocky ledge by the water, watching the sun go down.  Overwhelmed by the majesty of the sunset and all alone, she daydreamed of the life she wanted to have, a life by the water, a certain someone to sit with in the evenings and watch the sun go down.  A certain someone to hold her hand -  her knight in shining armour.  Didn’t every girl want a hero?  When she grew up, she would travel.  She would run through jungles, climb the highest peaks, jump from cliffs and swim in mountain lakes, and she’d be brave and strong, and just in case it wasn’t enough for her to be brave and strong... she would need a hero, a guardian angel, a big, strong man to catch her if she fell.  He never came.  There must be more, Catherine thinks, and it can’t end like this.  Run for your lives, the radio said, but Catherine isn’t running.

We used to get it, she tells herself.  Silence, but for the sound of the breeze, the screaming gulls.  The Universe speaks in subtle voices.  The messages are simple.  We hear them when we all stop talking, when we all turn off our televisions and our radios, when we stop seeking creative ways to fill silent voids.  We used to get it.  Hundreds, thousands of years ago, we understood.  We knew we could stand atop mountains without being kings of the castle.  We knew we weren’t the final word.  We were aware of something bigger.  We could strive to understand without needing to dominate and control.  Wonder without weakness.  Power without omnipotence.  Reason with humility.  We knew to stand, our knowledge on our shoulders but our hearts in awe.  

And then the magic died.

Good enough was no longer good enough.  We needed to be better, faster, stronger, louder.  We needed to understand things, to manipulate things, to control things, and then to master things.  We became afraid of the things we couldn’t master.  Humans continue to get sick, to ail, to suffer.  The heavenly bodies still revolve around not us, but the sun.  The earth still cracks open every now and then, cyclones still wipe away buildings and tidal waves wash us into the sea, because we couldn’t quite master the weather.  And the radio says there’s a storm coming the day after tomorrow, and Catherine doesn’t believe it.

It’s coming tomorrow, the radio says, and Catherine starts to believe.  She knows why she’s started to believe, but she can’t bring herself to say it.  It’s silly, she thinks.  Nobody would believe it.  Just say it, Catherine.  I can’t. You can.  I can’t find the words.  Just try.  I won’t.  The writer’s block that haunts us all. Some questions can’t be asked, some stories can’t be told, opportunities wasted, souls silenced, all because we can’t find the words.  Is there a meaning?  No.  Will it change anything?  No.  Then Catherine, what is on your mind?

Well, Once upon a time...

Once upon a time I had a dream that felt so real.  Then I had it again.  And again.  I dreamed that I was on a boat, not large, not small, sailing friendly waters.  Suddenly, very suddenly, the winds picked up, clouds rolled in, it started to rain, the waves grew, and the boat began to sway.  I was afraid.  The waves kept growing, first by feet, then by yards, then by storeys.  The boat just rode the waves, up, down, up, down.  It never made sense to me.  The boat wasn’t made to ride waves this high.  It should tip and capsize.  I should fall in, should drown. There was never anywhere to swim to.  And for all my anxiety, I steered the boat.  It would rise and rise, and tumble down the wave, sometimes it would downright fall, but it never tipped.  The water was always not warm, not cold, but comfortable, and I always woke up, alive.  Shaken, but alive.  As I grew older, the storms of my dreams grew stronger, more violent, more uncertain.  Each time, I simply steered the boat.  Over the years, the anxiety left me, and I was no longer afraid of the waves, afraid of the storms.  I started to enjoy them, the adventure, uncertainty, thrill.  The world became engulfed in water, ritual flooding, and I rode out the storm, arriving awake and alive on the other side every time.  I carried the motion of the waves into my waking life, not on purpose.  I couldn’t always shake the edge, but carried on and on and on.  My steps weren’t always steady, my head not always straight.  What worried me most was that one night, I’d lose control.  One night, the boat will capsize.  When it does, will I still wake up, alive, on the other side?  And now there’s a storm coming.  Run for our lives, we’re all going to die, and No, I can’t just leave, and I can’t quite explain why I need to stay, need to be here, need to see it.  And no, I may not make it out awake, alive on the other side, but I just can’t turn away.  I wish I could tell you everything.  I wish I could make you understand.  I just don’t have the words.

The storm comes tomorrow, the radio says.  Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream...

This is a Love Song

It might have been so much easier.

In another life we’d buy what we’re sold, do as we’re told and complacently grow old but never a day wiser, sensitive to changes and arrangements that estrange us from some ill-begotten dearly held conceptions of good and bad and right and wrong and truth and deception, the first to yell “Not Fair,” but never dare to dwell in the supposed hell on which we blame subliminal despair.  Our days would fade on our own pedestal, never to hear the winds of change as they call out to us, and if the tree in the forest were to fall, it wouldn’t make a sound to us if we’re not there to hear it.

It might have been so much easier.

The distant past isn’t always so distant, its shadow ever just a step or two behind me when I wandered, always wondering if the willows I passed would wisp away my worries.  I hope they have.  I fear they haven’t.  And so I went about my days with dark and silent reservations, locked within my contemplation, praying that the end is truly the end.

 I looked up to you and asked for help, for some direction.  I didn’t notice just how much you speak, all words, words, words, so many words I didn’t notice how they kept me weak.  I was distracted by all the pretty words.

I didn’t see there was no soul behind those eyes, the leeches sucked me dry before I woke, and I had not yet learned to fear the Siren’s Song.  There I was, face down in the mud, couldn’t break free from the weeds and that ooze would take forever to wash out, and yet, for the moment, it felt so warm there in the mud.

I had only asked you for directions, but for all the pretty words I began to sing a love song.  Would you like to hear a love song?

This is a love song.

Philosophers philosophize, ideas studied and memorized, ages after their authors die.  When have you last seen the world through truly open eyes?  Some people need to bleed to know that they’re alive.

I wanted to see what you saw, be where you are, breathe that air, so clear and unobstructed.  Instead I traveled day to day, sheltered and protected, wishing I could fly. 

You told me I wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t fast enough, couldn’t do it, shouldn’t want it, that I just needed sleep.  Then you turned and cried in a corner where you thought I couldn’t see you weep.

I couldn’t bear to watch you bare, weak and whimpering, couldn’t muster up the sentiment to pity.  This is a love song in a different key.

I pulled out of the mud and tore at the weeds.  Some people need to march in chains before they wander free.  You’d pointed right instead of left and falsely called it “Truth,” told me there was nothing without proof, and wouldn’t let me speak. 

I wrested free, not easily, stood on the riverbank, one foot on the shore, and I wanted to step, I really wanted to step.  Why couldn’t I step?  Just how many hits and bruises, cuts and lacerations and just how much degradation would it take to be heard?  Some people need to live mute to put thoughts into words.

And I tried to leave it all behind, but was it too soon?  This is a love song set to a different tune, and I Hate you!  Dear God, you scare me and I Hate you!  Why are you still here?  Why do I still hear your Devil’s whisper in my ear, telling me to slow the fuck down?

When did you get so strange?  This is a love song in a different fucking range!  Some people must be torn to shreds and cleansed before they’re born again.

Philosophers philosophize, but all your words, my friend, were lies, and I want to see something else, be somewhere else, breathe cleaner air, water running cold over my feet.

I do not pretend that after hearing hours of my desperate explanations you’ll begin to understand.

That’s quite alright.

On The Elusive Insidious Intentions of Foliage

In one of my mother’s earlier attempts at feminizing me she gave me a spider plant.  I took it gladly, thinking that greenery might help ward off the Seasonal Affective Disorder that haunts me from October to March each year.  Stab the Frost of Winter’s space in my psyche with mementos of spring and life and colour and such.  It didn’t work, but that’s a different story. 

I wasn’t sure this small, innocent plant would survive in my care.  I’m not a gardener, not a plant person.  Watering plants is the thing I forget for weeks at a time.  I’ve been surrounded by women in the height of summer, in endless lineups (again, another story), talking to each other about their backyard gardens, and I just couldn’t understand.  My grandmother spent much of her later life bent over in her garden, preening, weeding, harvesting, and when she lost the ability to keep up with it, it became overgrown, fruits and berries gushing out of everything, rotting, mushing beneath her feet.  How do people devote so much time to gardens? Plants are so high maintenance!  And these people live on a constant ongoing mission to improve and expand them.  At what point is enough, enough?  How does anyone find time to just sit in the garden and enjoy the beauty they’ve brought about?  It’s not me.  It’s never been me.  I asked my boyfriends to never bring me flowers, and I married the one who never tried.  There was good reason to believe a plant in my care was doomed. 

But here I have this spider plant.  Every so often it decides to take another run at life and gets all green and leafy.  I thought I was failing for letting the soil get so dry between waterings, but the Internet people told me spider plants like to let their soil get uncomfortably dry.  My spider plant, it seems, is “happy.”

A lot of internet people really take their spider plants seriously.

We all need hobbies.

My living history with foliage thickened when a friend gave me an aloe plant as a token of humanitarian aid in my ongoing war with the kitchen.  The kitchen is full of sharp falling objects, hot metal, grease spitting out of pans, and I learned the hard way that my skin is categorically not impervious to boiling water.  The gifted aloe plant was a much appreciated gift of mercy, and I have butchered it on several occasions (the war wages on), and it just keeps growing.  I’m no better at caring for this aloe than I am for the spider plant.  This thing keeps its own water.  Keeps growing, snaking its tentacles into any open space it can find.

I don’t quite trust my two plants.  They’ve proven that they don’t need me, and yet out of sympathy for life I try to keep them “happy,” like a forced prostration to my wicked wives. 

I’m not the greatest wife, myself.  I must be doing it wrong.

And then these two insidious creatures have gone and created their own progeny!  My one spider plant is now two, and my one aloe plant has become an overpopulated colony in the midst of a civil war for livingspace on my windowsill.  I used to believe immaculate conception was a lovely fairy tale giving us a nice Christian reason to brighten up our homes, drink a lot of sherry, spoil our kids and gain 15 lbs over the darkest month of the year.  Now I’m searching the green thumb version of mommy-blogs trying to do right by all these plant babies!  I’m spending money I don’t have on pots and soil hoping it’s the right size, the right kind, trying to keep them “happy!”  And they just keep breeding!

How long until each surface of my home is spilling leaves and inviting insects and turning my one-bedroom apartment into a humid pod overrun by creepy shadow casters?  How long until some well-meaning soul gifts me an orchid that requires actual sentimentality, company and conversation?  How much longer can I get by without owning a vase, or calling a house sitter every time I leave it to water my plants?

I’m becoming progressively ensnared by a sadistic kitchen to my left and a swampy greenhouse to my right!

I guess what I’m saying is: please send help!

Meeting a "Hero"

They tell us not to meet our heroes.
Alright.
I disagree.
Absolutely meet your heroes.  Yes, they will become mere mortals.  Yes, the mystique will be gone.  And sure, they may disappoint.  That's alright.
We use heroes and role models as portraits of our own dreams and aspirations, so why not shatter the glass?  Making them human in our own minds could only remind us of our own personal potential.

It happened like this, more or less:

I was first introduced to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche when I was 20.  I was a young, passionate philosophy student, looking for the cause and ideal that spoke to my own experience of the world so far, and in his writing I found a passion that so few other thinkers had exhibited.  The ideas were controversial, but not entirely groundless.  There was something to look at, something to think about, and when I managed to make it work in my mind, there was something liberating about it.  I was hooked.  Moreover, I was also keeping the company of a handful of artists and "artists", which gave me plenty of social space to explore how I actually felt about ideas.
At the time, someone also recommended that I read about Nietzsche as well, and not just his work, but I was young and thirsty, and because of school, used to reading the work of the thinkers, and pay less attention to who they actually were.
That was a mistake.  Though I never forgot the recommendation, I admit I largely ignored it for ten years.  Then something changed.
I had originally gravitated to philosophy at a point in my life when I was having trouble making sense of things.  I was 19, and the work involved in studying ideas gave me a sense of hope, made me feel better about feeling "lost" in the world we hear about in the news, among other things.
At 30, following an unfortunate event that forced me to see something I would have been happier never having seen, and once again feeling "lost", I turned back to my bookshelf and playlists, and re-visited the ideas and art that had once made the world make sense.  On a whim, if only to occupy myself, I picked up Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography by Julian Young, which I had purchased years before but not yet read (it's a very heavy volume, not conducive to being carried around in my purse and read on a train), and started to read.

Here are my thoughts:

Mr. Young wrote a very artful biography.  I was surprised by how delightful it was to sit at a table and read it for hours on end.  His narrative is as colourful and sympathetic as it is unforgiving at times.  His explanations of the more complex concepts within Nietzsche's writing were fantastic, and I have a better understanding of Nietzsche's work than I ever had a hope of having a decade ago.  The biography is honest, fair, and unapologetic.  Furthermore, I learned far more about the cultural climate of Western Europe in the second half of the 19th Century than I had expected to.  I will read this book again, and likely be as sad to reach the end as I was the first time.

And my thoughts on Nietzsche, himself (albeit, in the years during which he could easily be considered sane):

He was just a man.
Not an entirely unique one, either.
He saw the world through the (ailing) eyes of a depressive who, though pained by illness and physically and politically stifled, was no stranger to beauty, loved life, and thought humanity could do better. (At its simplest)
He wanted to be understood, and was frustrated at being misunderstood and misread.
He changed his mind about things over the years.
He didn't like being used as a pawn in other peoples' agendas.
He had a family and friends.  His sister would have made a great movie villain.
He didn't want to be an idol, per se.
He had his heart broken.
He may have eaten all of 5 vegetables in his life.

Obviously I could go on with opinions and cursory critiques of details and excerpts and pros and cons and lessons learned and final judgments or lack thereof, but that's not what spoke to me here.

I found a certain measure of peace in acknowledging that the great people whose ideas, in their own ways, shape or bolster my own, were just people, just regular human beings (the more interesting and artistic of which I'm finding, curiously, happened to be depressive by our standards) who went about their days not entirely unlike myself, who by writing down the things that went through their heads joined a community of people asking questions, proposing solutions, playing with ideas, changing their minds.  They had good days and bad days, and they had dark times that made them think of how they fit into this mess of a world, and bright times when it all seemed to make sense, and by speaking out, staked their place in history.
If I'm right about this, I can feel a little better about my own place in the world, feel a little more confident in making my own mark, asking my own questions and contributing my own thoughts.
I'm not saying anyone will remember me long after I'm gone - I may never say anything profound in all my time here.  However, I do believe that as a species, we can do better and be better, and I do believe we need to have the kinds of conversations, curious and honest exchanges of ideas, that allow us to explore different ways to achieve that.  Perhaps an early step in this direction is to meet and humanize our heroes, and stop timidly hiding in the shadows, quotes and '-isms' of our idols.