Outing Myself

I fell asleep in the library yesterday. Head down. Computer on, sipping away at its battery. Grease-stained construction hoodie on my back. Ripped up winter mitts on the table. A sleeping cliche.

I am slowly embracing the life of a writer. Either that or the life of someone homeless, and let us be honest, if I pursue this path much further, I will inevitably end up homeless and friendless, sleeping in the library or in a McDonalds on a daily basis. I mean, I haven’t felt like I’ve really had a home for a few years, and I am thinking that this is something I like. If owning things makes a home, then I hope to never have what would be considered an extravagant or even decent home. I have felt like I was at home in any of the past thirty stops I’ve made in the past eight months, save for the two times I got attacked in Mexico. Feeling at home is a large part of having a home.

I am trying to treat writing as a second job, committing to several hours in a week locked in one of two basements that lack internet connection or outside sound. If, at this point, I treated it as a hobby (which it is), it would be about as successful as my hobby of sewing, or yoga, or tennis, or showering. I would basically consider it as something I once did but have become to busy to continue. That is what a hobby is.

It has taken me to the point of writing a book, albeit a rather clumsy one, to be able to admit that I write. I mean, it is embarrassing. If you are a musician you play shows and your success and progress is tangible, it resonates with people far greater than any piece of writing, regardless of quality. If you are a writer, you sit at your computer alone for hours at a time, and when you are promoting it, you are quietly plugging your blog on social networking sites, counting until your hits reach triple digits and you can celebrate by drinking a single bottle of beer. In the past, I would often defer to telling people that I spent my Saturday night reading a book, as if I felt I needed an excuse to stay home on a weekend and the excuse of reading was any less embarrassing than writing. It at least seemed more acceptable. It has taken me the five year process of writing and self-publishing a book to finally be comfortable enough to (attempt to) join a creative writing class. To share new works with longtime friends, or to even tell longtime friends that I do write. It has taken me to write a book (of which I am proud of but not satisfied) to freely admit my joy in writing. My shame level is high. Sleeping in the library seems to somehow lower it.

And I feel free that I can finally admit that I do it, and that I enjoy it. That it is a hobby, if not a passion, and that although it is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done and that every word is exhausting to spew out, and every story frustrates me to the point of never writing another sentence again, that it is one of the more enjoyable things I can think of doing.

To Call Them To Wander is the doorknob to my writer’s-shame closet.

PostPostSecondary: 1 (Edited)

Although fate/the admissions department did not permit me to enrol in English 252 at the University of Regina, I haven’t lost all hope. I still have the desire to practice writing, to try new methods and styles, and to walk through the same exercises as those students who are lucky enough to pay $700. Since I no longer have a group of peers to ‘workshop’ my writing, I thought that I would use this forum to present my works and encourage readers to workshop with me through comments, criticisms, and suggestions, while I try my best to keep up with university due dates. Preceding each post I may explain the exercise to clarify what exactly I am doing. But I may not. Thank you for bearing with me and my childish dream to become decent at something.

Assignment 1 put simply: describe the photo below in a prose-paragraph. A mini-plot is permitted. Use imagery.

Please take a seat. He sits square to the stool, causing his shoulders to push up like a wooden frame. His neck ducks under his dusty wool jacket, drawing in to hide from the blade of punishment. Under a swelled coat he hides his his long-known theft. It professes extravagance with a wide lapel and heavy fur collar, but mirrors destitution—too large, with dust and holes. He has seen, stolen his share and his face shows that his mind hasn’t let him forget it. His body, however, still holds, unwavering. Hands higher, please. In reverence, his hands are clasped. Wrists shackled like his ankles, yet the chains are concealed by the coat’s deep cuffs. It wasn’t I who imprisoned him. It was those hands. Still limber. Unfocused. Chin down. Through the viewfinder his chin and lips seem to become bald and the sides of his face become bushier, scruffier—the winter coat of a wolf. A glance at the frame suggests anger and hatred, as his tough/tucked upper lip represses appeals to my human goodness. A longer look. His right eye pleads, although content. His left eye loathes in the shadow of his angled eyebrows that pray to God. There is a modesty there, a humility, but I cannot tell if it is natural or inflicted. There is wisdom when one reaches the depths. Now look at the camera. 3, 2, 1. Flash. Snap. Next.

Photograph of John Roman. Photographer unknown.
Collection: Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums, “Prisoners 1871-1873”

The Wounds of Home

The following will be released in the first edition of Rise Up, a free street newspaper available in Regina, Saskatchewan in January 2012.

Of the past five years that I have been free from the confines of high school education, I have spent approximately two-thirds of my time away from my hometown of Regina, Saskatchewan, the motherly city that always welcomes me back. I have been fortunate enough to be one of the few people in the world that has the means to save money to travel. To see the street food stands of Korea, to ride the blue trains of India, to watch soccer games in Mexico. I have also been lucky enough to have a home and a family to which I can return after such adventures, and friends that give me employment and rooms to rent so that I can save up more money to further travel and again leave the tender arms of my fair home.

As is inevitable with any sort of travel, third-world or not, one sees the absolute contrast between the excessiveness of wealth and the inadequacies of poverty. The gap between the wealthy and the poor classes in India is obvious on any city street, but not openly discussed or even talked about as something that has the potential to change. Living in a poorer area of Montreal for a year and a half, one can see the difficulty for small immigrant families and local residents to function in a large city setting. Travelling throughout America by bus, one sees the neighbourhoods that house Greyhound bus stations in giant cities, places falling apart because of several years of recession. Staying in homes and hostels in Mexico, the country is obviously exhausted of a system that allows the rest of North America to take advantage of it for its natural beauty and drug-trafficking, leaving a tourist-pillaged people and nation. After two years away, I never expected to return to Regina, my place of privilege and opportunity, to see a housing situation equally as grave as any of the metropolises in North America. A vacancy rate of below zero that is not improving, and the lack of vision for affordable housing are crises deemed less urgent in comparison to other places, possibly due to a lower population of the city and province, but are no less serious. In one of the few places in the world that was not seriously damaged by the past several years of economic decline, we see misplaced development into more shopping complexes and chain restaurants with little development of necessary infrastructure. The present wealth of our province should eradicate homelessness, just as the wealth of our nation and other Western nations should guarantee fair and equal food and wealth distribution worldwide. The key word being should. Because of a flawed system of bureaucracy, and insatiable, power-hungry leaders, suburban centres pop up overnight while city centres further dilapidate.

Supporting organizations such as the Carmichael Outreach and Souls Harbour, and by talking with City Council members, MLAs and MPs, the privileged public can communicate that these are not just issues of the poor in certain neighbourhoods, but that they are issues that involve any member of Regina, a city that is in essence one large community. It is not enough to say that we disagree with poverty, any person with the semblance of a soul would say this, but it is necessary to communicate that we aren’t content to sit around as a resource-rich government ignores the immense need for affordable housing, improved schools and better family and child care.

If I were ever to designate a place to call home, Regina would likely be it. And although I haven’t been directly hit by the housing crisis in Regina, as I couchsurf and rent out basements of friends who have grown tired of a saturated rental market and overpriced shack-like apartments, it still feels like a member of my family is being abused and neglected. Like my grandpa is the Plains Hotel being kicked out of his downtown home so that Brad Wall and Pat Fiacco can continue the gentrification of Regina by selling the land to oil-rich Calgary investors, building condominiums for a large unknown population of upperclass businessmen that want to inhabit the modest capital city. Then, when my grandfather begins to look for a new place to live, he finds that even though the government has enough of a surplus to kick him out and build a $100-million condo/hotel, they don’t have enough surplus to give him an affordable, or even available, apartment to rent to rest his ‘Plains’ aging bones. This place that I would designate as ‘home’ is fighting through a housing crisis, and although it may not seem as severe as the one facing the inhabitants of India, or as widespread as the decay of cities across America, it cannot be overlooked. And as my motherly home of Regina aches for help, she can at least take solace in the fact that although her serious wounds are generally still untreated, they are starting to be talked about.

Please contact your city councillor, MLA and MP at the links below to tell them of your concern with the current system.

City of Regina

Province of Saskatchewan

Federal Government of Canada

Nothing Worse

“Nothing worse than not getting enough sleep, eh?” The bearded bus driver said in response to his sidekick, the exact moment I stepped on the bus. He looked a lot like Kenny Rogers. It seems that more than half of the bus drivers in Regina have a co-pilot that accompanies them on those long, cold, lonely morning drives, like they had enough to fill a conversation for more than ten minutes straight. Nothing worse, I wondered? Nothing you can think of could be worse than getting five hours of sleep in your pillow-top mattress in your heated home beside your wife who also resembles Kenny Rogers? Congratulations, my commute-directing friend, you have officially reached enlightenment.

My second stint at university lasted no more than one three-hour class. You drop out once, you’re a drop out forever, they seemed to want to tell me.

The night before, I was stressing out about textbooks. About the prices, and if it was really necessary to buy a ninety-dollar textbook for a Creative Writing class, and in arrogant fashion, I decided that it was not. In my previous English class I didn’t even open my textbook, and this class was even more open than English 100. But through the advice of a friend, I decided that if I was going to do it, I might as well do it right. Study and learn as much as I can, and to think not that I am greater than the class or the textbook or the students. But it was too late. The next day my negativity from the night before cancelled out any chance I had of learning and practicing the trade. Karma got me and I couldn’t say I blamed it.

So for ten minutes after learning that I was no longer able to take a single class, I reacted as if there was nothing worse in the world than getting fucked over by a university. Nothing worse than not getting enough sleep? Yeah right, Kenny Rogers is a dickhead. I kicked at the dry snow, careful not to slip and find out that something worse would be a broken coccyx. I put on loud music and walked the pathway back home wishing that I could say that my dreams were crushed, and that I would never write a book now, and that I wanted to cry, thanks to being twelve hours late to a deadline that I didn’t know existed (apparently one must apply to school before registering, and the professor’s consent means little more than me saying that I have an Arts Degree). Spitting and fuming I looked up from my feet and saw a man, skinny, and not at all like the Kenny Rogers bus driver, riding his bicycle in the snow with a wide grin on his face. Behind his large glasses his eyes instantly suggested that although I may never become a famous playwright, or may never get formal training on how to hook a reader with well-developed characters, or may never know exactly what the verb ‘to workshop’ means, that I will be fine and likely able to ride a bicycle through to old age. And for that possibility I am grateful.

There is nothing worse than being the person that thinks there is nothing worse, when there is in fact a catalogue of things that could be much worse.

Winter-Themed Band Names

Horse and Cart.

I went tobogganing on a Sunday afternoon. In true Saskatchewan fashion, one of the two best spots for sledding in the city is a large ditch next to a deceased Walmart. The best spot is the city’s original garbage dump turned into picturesque, rolling hill. After four or five runs of straight forward sliding, the under-ten-year-olds and I decided that backwards would be the ultimate thrill. We performed this several times, alone and in teams, and, as we expected, the thrill was extreme.

I applied the backwards logic to my life: I wrote a book, and only now will I return to school for formal English training. And like a traditional student I will then use the royalties to pay for tuition. (This means I need to sell something like 1000 books at the current price.)

I am what is wrong with the world. The guy that writes a book because he can, gets it published by a website and sells it out of his parents’ home. Typing the sentence makes me crumble in embarrassment. There is a book written that was recommended to me entitled ‘The Cult of the Amateur’ by Andrew Keen that I have not yet read (the fact that I am presenting this book in my blog even though I have not read it proves that I am the amateur he speaks of). This book studies, as far as I’ve understood, how the internet threatens to take away the artistic achievements of the past through file-sharing, user-generated free content and through allowing the layman to create at will. Our vanity tells us that the world wants to hear what we say and see what we do, and the internet gives us a domain to do this in as many ways as we can think of. We will pay for these advances.

I may be returning to a university, but it doesn’t mean that my ideas of formal, institutional education have changed. The reason I am taking a single class is because I don’t see myself continuing my education with any seriousness. The idea of it all still blows my mind, and the fact that I will be out several hundred dollars to have one lady tell me what I already know, that my writing sucks, and to have ten other students think the same thing but not say it, makes me consider blowing the whole thing off. But because it seems worth my while, and because backwards is the new sideways is the new forwards, I will likely indulge.

Although not always the wisest of decisions, being damaging and irresponsible and often selfish, going backwards is always more thrilling than the conventional, seat-belts and eyes forward, one step at a time mentality. I am ruining the world for it, but I am obviously alright with that.

See you in the halls. I will be humbled.

Photo taken by Noel Wendt.

A season after The Season

It is the season after the season where the seasoned shopping veterans return their Christmas-purchased goods for other sizes, styles, seasonings and the glorious, un-expirable, unbiased store credit. The season after the season does not even pretend to be characterized by joy and peace and love and good tidings, but rather a series of crumpled up receipts and cigarette-scented clothing in ragged paper bags. Disgruntled comments about the roads and how the weather has turned and the months ahead that include said weather. A gluttonous left-over that inhibits those benevolent feelings that rose in us just weeks before.

Although I detest them more than an inner-thigh pimple, I envy the people who are decisive to a fault. Those people who can buy a shirt without trying it on or looking at the price tag or thinking of what pants they could wear it with. Those people who can go through university for ten years, changing their major seven times and end up with a BA in Geography. I detest these people because they think not of the consequences and often end up spending money that they don’t have, but I envy them because they seem to be capable to block out rational thought. They are able to make a decision and live with the outcome no matter how horrendous it may be. I will never be able to do that. I am the great over-thinker.

Sometimes when you look on a map, even if you know where you are going, there are four different routes that look possible and equally as fast and easy. Like you are at the head of an octopus and his legs are your options, intertwined but all ending at the same point. On my short drive to Vancouver, somewhere in Eastern British Columbia, I was unsure whether I was supposed to take the BC-5 highway or continue on the TransCanada or take the third option, even more unknown than the others. The signs only said that there were options, and not which one was the fastest, or most beautiful, or had the best Chinese restaurant on the way. So I cursed the province and my mapless car. I could have picked a route and accepted that trail of asphalt without worry. They all end up where I am going, just with different elevations and types of trees and gas stations to see on the way. Sure seems easy on a map.

Someone told me, “That’s the thing, Nic, they are all possible,” referring to the unlimited number of options and ideas and suggestions I have been sorting through since my last good idea ended in September. And although every option presented to me seems as if it could work, as if I could be a bus driver, or paramedic, or teacher, or taco salesman, or graffiti artist, or tailor, or janitor, or street kid, or clerk, I am somehow unable to choose one, although they would all work out someway in the end. I need to master failure but my over-thinking mind won’t allow me to make the first step.

Then sometimes when you look on a map, there is only one way to get where you are going. Only one road, no shoulder to slow down on, no rumble strips to warn of your apparent doom, no signage to reflect your headlights and tell of potholes or curving roads. Once you pass the junction mentioned above to follow a specific route, it becomes like this. A one-direction, slow-travelling, dark highway that is easy and comfortable, which you can’t get off of until you regret your initial decision to take it or decide that it was the right one whether it actually was or not. That is what scares me. Passing the junction where everything seems possible into the one-lane road that has no options is the most terrifying aspect of my current life.

So I will spend another several months in a limbo competition, waiting until the insides of my feet blister, my back gives way and my knees buckle, trying not to think about the variables, such as a drunk man holding the limbo pole or beer spilt on the limbo floor. Soon enough I hope that either a road will be better lit than the rest (or at least less rainy), either that or I will play a pretty pivotal game of eenie, meeny, miney mo.

Catch a tiger.

To Call Them To Wander

I wrote a book. I italicize because the word wrote is being generous, I mostly sent the ideas to my fingers who pressed the buttons in a specific order to make words that form sentences that sometimes made sense. As for book, it is more a short collection of opinion and rage that at times adhere to a common theme, than an actual book. Five years ago someone jokingly told me that I should write a book and five years ago I was stupid enough to think this was a good idea.

To Call Them To Wander was a project that saw me through many lonely nights in a time where I sorted through my values and beliefs more than I sorted through my underwear. And the idea organization likely demonstrates this well. Owing to the help and encouragement from a few key friends it is now finished and ready to distribute in the modest quantities that are willing to read it.

At the end of the process I didn’t even like the writing anymore. I haven’t read it in nearly six months and never plan to read it again. I’ve already found several grammar mistakes. But if you are interested in reading a paper copy or a free digital copy, then please see here.

I never claimed it would be great, but now I can at least claim that the experiment is complete. Thank you for your support and patience.

Can or Should

The story of how my day yesterday was ruined by a very pleasant man doing his job properly begins nearly two years ago.

To shorten a lengthy tale that has likely already been told, I will simply say that I no longer trust salesmen or lawyers (or anyone that wears a suit everyday), blondes, people that drive BMWs, the well-dressed, or people that just look untrustworthy. This is all because of a call-centre job which tormented me as an employee for four weeks in downtown Montreal.

A young professional entered the store and I was a tense mess immediately after he left. After he left I doubted his sincerity. He was an impostor, I told myself, a man wearing fine clothes, complimenting the store and eating the cookies, all in order to take advantage of me. I can’t tell the difference between someone genuinely being nice and someone that knows how to be nice in order to fuck your life up. This man, apparently, turned out to be the former. I am still unsure.

My frenzy saw me e-mailing several sources to follow up on the happenings of last year. The legal proceedings have come to a close. Settlement out of court. My dreams of being flown into Montreal as a surprise witness have been quashed. Things are settled, life is normal, but my mind is perpetually skeptical of this. An anxiety, something new to my repertoire of issues, keeps tugging at my sleeve. A non-issue pricks me in the finger and my mind imagines that my entire finger was cut off. And then worries about the other nine fingers.

It stressed me out because if the young professional had been an agent of evil, then I missed my chance to strangle him and yell in his face until his morals became clear. It stressed me out again because if he came back I wouldn’t know how to express my hatred for him and his ways of earning money. It stressed me out even further that I assumed he was a sleazy thieving salesman even though he was not.

A negative day for an already negative man becomes a desperately painful sight.

For some reason, as if it were the remnant of a long night of dreams, this phrase kept repeating itself in my head. “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” I was thinking about owning cars and eating meat and taking advantage of people and pummelling salesmen.

The story of how I lost my mind because of an issue that solved itself ended yesterday.

It is still nowhere to be found.

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